Sitting at a Crossroads

Someone once told me that to love was to live in pain. I’ve never known a truer statement. Today my brother asked me to go into his room, take his guns and knives, and hide them so that he would not kill himself. He sat down and cried. I have never seen my brother cry. I myself struggle with the idea of suicide, but to hear the words coming from someone I love so much ripped the air from my lungs. I thought that in that moment, he had taken his knife and plunged it into my heart. Perhaps this is why I never told anyone about my own pain. The hardest part is not watching them get hurt, it’s knowing that you were too late to prevent it from happening. That is where we leave the people we love.

I have always had an overactive sense of empathy. For some reason, everything I feel is intensified. Perhaps it is because I have known more tragedy at such a young age than most people experience in their lifetimes. Death and fear and pain are just background noise to my daily existence. Every day I pray for a break. Just a couple months free from all the cruelties of the world, but who am I to deserve such peace? Life is tough for some and tougher for others, I just happen to be in the latter group.

I suppose I should explain one thing I have experienced to make this easier to understand.

A girl’s 18th birthday is supposed to be one of those milestone birthdays, something exciting and fun. That’s not how I remember it. It was January and there was a layer of snow on the ground that was packed down into a sheet of ice. I had to walk slowly to keep from slipping and falling, so my attention was on my feet. The next thing I know, there is a sharp pain on the back of my head. For a moment I thought I had fallen because of the ice, but then I saw 5 men standing over me, one with a rock in his hand. Before I realized what was happening, one man put his knee on my throat… I couldn’t scream, couldn’t breathe. The other men pinned down my arms and legs so I couldn’t move. As hard as I tried, I just wasn’t strong enough. They took turns kicking me in the sides and back until it wasn’t necessary to hold me down any longer. But when they started to take my pants off, I found the last bit of strength I had and started to run. I wish I could say that I escaped. The last thing I remember is praying that they’d kill me when they were finished. I woke up with torn clothes, covered in the snow they had kicked on top of me, hardly able to move. When I made it to my car, I called the police who told me they would be there in an hour. Apparently I was not a priority, so I drove home. It took 2 years for me to tell anyone. No one even suspected something was wrong and it made me feel so alone. I always wondered how they couldn’t see? They couldn’t see how much physical pain I was in, or that I wouldn’t let them touch me anymore. I wondered how they couldn’t know.

Ever since that day I have been sitting at a crossroads. I’m trying to decide if this experience will define my life. It may make me stronger, or it may destroy me.

“In the space between yes and no, there’s a lifetime. It’s the difference between the path you walk and the one you leave behind; it’s the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are; its the legroom for the lies you’ll tell yourself in the future.”