"...followed by a brisk mauling."

Just because we can’t move on doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

Realized last night that people I’ve just met in July know me better than my family does anymore. Which is not to say my family doesn’t love me. They do. My parents and my sisters, without them, I would be dead thousands of times over. They love me, and I love them. They are the most important people in my life, and always have been, and always will be. It’s just that they don’t know who I am anymore. Which is partly because they don’t want to, but partly because I don’t want them to. I can’t trust them with things. I can’t share things with them. I can’t tell them truths that friends of friends of friends up at school know. I can’t be “me” around them, because “me” isn’t the person they know and love. Last night, we were watching “True Blood.” And one of the characters was detailing how another character had kidnapped and tortured her. And I had to go upstairs, and cried for an hour, because it was too close. And they didn’t know. They couldn’t know, because I’ve never told them. And maybe never will. Maybe never can. Maybe can never go beyond phrases like “domestic abuse,” “sexual assault,” “rape,” “threatening my life.” Maybe can never go to “ritually and sadistically abused,” “kidnapped,” “brainwashed;” let alone truth. So things like that, they’ll never know. They’ll never know why I choose to go to bed early, to shut the door and turn on the fans so they can’t hear me cry. Never know why. Never know these things that people up in Farmington, people I barely know, people who I’ve just met, people like that can be trusted with. Because I’m not the person they know anymore. I sort of feel like, right now, that in order to keep living, I’ve had to create an identity, an alter, who exists solely after IFN. That I live as that alter now. That my identity in the world, now, is an assumed identity. That being this alter is the only way I can allow myself to live, to get through the day, to forget the things that have happened since 2005. That to be the me-they-know would be so intensely an emotional and psychic trainwreck that I wouldn’t be able to continue living. So I have to be this alter. This new identity. This new person. This new person they don’t know. This new person I can’t share with them. Dad, yesterday. Half-joking. “It better not say Trixie Jack Mattachine on your diploma. It better say K———— S——. Or I’m getting my money back.” Joking. Half-joking. Half-serious. How can I say, now, ever, that I want to change my name, legally? How can I tell them that graduating college is the last thing K———— S—— is ever going to do? How can I say that I need to be Trixie, legally, so that I don’t have to ever again be the girl IFN did all these things to? How can I be me, ever again, ever, now? The me I am now, the one they don’t know? And if I can’t be, then this isn’t home anymore. It isn’t home. And I don’t know where is, anymore. If this isn’t. But if I can never be me here, then it can’t possibly be home. My mother, father, older sister and twin sister are the most important people in my life. But they don’t know me anymore. And I don’t think they ever can. And this is your fault, IFN. And the fact that you are still alive fills me with hate. The fact that you are alive, out of prison, free, that you are abusing women—several of them—and there is nothing that anyone seems to want to do about it, this makes me so angry I can’t help but cry. I want you to die. I want you to die. How can I expect to feel close to Allah, to feel worthy of His love, when I wish death upon one of His creation? I really really wish I hadn’t quit smoking. I could really use a cigarette right now.

I wish you would die. I really do. I don’t want to. There’s this horrid queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Bitter bile in my throat. Crying now. Been less than five minutes since I had that thought. Already crying. Already can’t breathe.

I hate myself for wanting another human being to die. It goes against everything I have come to believe this past year—and all of these new beliefs and faiths have made me a better, happier, more peaceful person.

But how else is this supposed to end? Court case after court case, after arrest after restraining order after probation after parole after slap-on-the-wrist after 27-days-for-3-counts-of-sexual-assault-and-2-counts-of-physical-assault, after five years, after more threats after more threats after more threats repeat ad nauseum. Where does this end? Where does this end? Where does this end?

When every single phone call has to be screened; when every single cop car is a panic attack; when every single courthouse holds an image of your face; when every single new boss/adviser/office/CA/landlord has to have a copy of that useless restraining order; when every e-mail is filtered through three separate  systems; when every photo taken raises the question “Is there anything here he can use to identify me?”; when every single paper/assignment/letter/article/conversation is under an assumed name; when every NH license plate is terror—and all the other ones, too; when every crowd is hiding my death; when every part of me my sister doesn’t understand is a part that exists because of you; when every authority in my community knows my name, my face, my past, my problems only because of you; when everything I see is a memory; when every friend I open up to thinks of me afterward only as the-person-you-did-those-things-to; when the present and all futures are marred by who you are and what you did and what I became because of it;
when every breath is in spite of you;
when every victory is still a loss;
when every action is motivated by fear;
when no distance is quite far enough;
when it’s five years past and my life is still defined by you;
then when does it end?

When does it end?

With jail? With more probation? Tomorrow? Next year? When my memory has failed me in the winter of my years? Or is it only when one of us is dead; a rotting stinking corpse decaying in a wood box placed back in the Earth? Or is even that not enough?

Does it end?

Allah, guide me. Give me strength. Help me to find purpose and faith and hope and peace. Help me to move through this world in liberty, not fear. Help me see you in every ray of light, in every dark corner. Allah, guide me. Hold me. Help me. It’s been four days since I have prayed to you. And that is my failing. And I do repent. But it has been four days since I have felt your presence. And I need you, Allah. I need your light to guide me. I need your presence to heal me. I need you, Allah, to help keep me whole, so I may help others.
Allah, guide me to find the strength within myself to help myself. Deal with me in weakness, Allah, so I may bring others to your strength.

Alhamdulillah.