Firefly’s Story

My story, here’s hoping.

Mature audiences only. 15+ would be my recommendation but I don’t know. When I was 13 I read this sort of thing. But please, if you’re young, don’t read this.

Between the ages of 4 and 10, my brothers repeatedly beat me after school. My parents worked full time and to me, they were almost like strangers. My two half brothers and my one half sister hate me. They despise me, they always told me that my dad favored me, because their dad lived far away and my mum divorced him and married my dad. Whenever I went crying to mum, she would say ‘You shouldn’t have bothered them.” or “don’t take the bait.” like it was always always my fault. I was so little! I was learning to be resilient since I was child still throwing tantrums, are you serious? I’m so mad but being angry isn’t my nature. I’m just sad. After all, anger is just a product of sadness.

My friend, the few close ones I had, we completely feral. My friend, her whole family smoked and her dad went to prison for raping her older sister for years. But… before he did, I slept over her house and he laid near me and touched my hair and he put on a horror movie called Hostel 1 and 2. I remember drinking water, lots of water that he got for me, he got all our drinks so I thought it was okay. I was 9? maybe 10? And the night blanks, I just remember play fighting with him and my friend on her bed and stuff… I can only assume so much… I don’t remember what happened after but something doesn’t sit right in my stomach. I remember being peer pressured to smoke and stuff by her older sister and friends. It was… scary.

So much more has happened, I have scars on my legs and wrists, stitches and so on. I start self harming when I was in year 7. The school made me hide it and cover it up and keep a jumper on with the sleeves down. It was a catholic school, and they all hated me. That’s when I started getting groomed online. I think I was roughly 10? And so, for 6 years of my life I was groomed into a lifestyle called BDSM… by men who wanted to use me, control me, and hurt me.

I’m going to court soon for one guy. I don’t want to even think his name.

I have scars from them. Initials, numbers, words cut into my body, bruises from hitting myself with various objects, piercing my skin with needles, doing absolutely horrid things with my body… it got so out of hand and they were blackmailing me and making me feel awful for everything I did and said. One guy said “wrists use to be a thing of elegance and beauty, but look at yours all ruined”. That I was not special or good enough for him. They always mentioned other women and girls, and I felt jealous and inadequate. I did unspeakable things with various objects, forced to wear certain clothes or not wear. I live with humiliation and pain. I can’t deal with the memories of the things I did. I feel so humiliated!!!

I look at my boyfriend, and I see them. That’s the impact they’ve had on me.

I work so hard, so hard. I don’t understand what I did to deserve this. I’m a straight A student in a private school – and I work so hard to get those grades -, I go to work, I socialize well with people, my empathy levels for people is so high that I force myself not to listen into stories because it hurts me so much. I cry over complete strangers. I stopped reading, watching movies and paying attention to stories and the news because it simply hurts too much and I will stress and worry over people. Even simple statistics of the amount of people starving, or being raped, will make me hurt.

I had an incident with my sister who I hate, and cannot and will not ever get along with. My parents knew that I cut to keep myself from suicide, that I cut when things are too painful and they said they understood. I cut when my coping resources are no longer available. My parents were out camping that night and left me with my sister and they were out of phone range plus my sister was on the phone all night. So I cut and made an fb status about it because that’s all I had to reach out for help. I cut and my sister read the status and was yelling me and I shut down. I became a little girl and was unable to talk so she called the police and the ambulance which everyone in my family agreed was soooo out of proportion. They restrained me because I couldn’t talk or move. They put hand cuffs on me, the same ones like the man who recently raped me and I COMPLETELY lost it. I’m tearing up right this very minute. 11:13pm. I fought so hard and even pushed one of those big men to the ground. I was ferocious and screaming and crying out that I didn’t deserve this and I didn’t do anything wrong and I can’t even talk to my guy friends let alone big police men. They brought back mountains of bad memories with men. I hated them. I hate the police just for that. I can’t be talked into reason about this. They made my life ten times harder all because they weren’t mental health experts and were sticking their nose in places they didn’t understand. They restrained me and even when I told them, through my screaming and my tears not to do this to me because I was traumatized and I told them not to restrain, especially when I was in a full blown anxiety attack and they didn’t listen. They didn’t care.You know what they said when I said I didn’t do anything wrong, they said “Yes you did, you cut yourself.”

I am so overwhelmed with anger and sadness and grief and hurt and everything that I just can’t believe it.

AND THEN

My sister said “You owe me apology for the other night. When you were yelling out all those things. You owe me an apology. I’m not going to let you walk all over me”.

She’s 21 years old. And she said that to me. My mum, thankfully went off at her.

But, the pain is still there.

So, world, what you got for me?