Journal Entry 4: 10.10.2018
Saturday
On Saturday, I
Something happened to me. Something horrible happened to me. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault.
Wasn’t my fault Was my fault Is my fault
I don’t know if I can write this.
I can’t.
I won’t.
I’m done with journals. They mean nothing. Just words. Trivial feelings I once felt. But I don’t feel that way anymore. I don’t have those words in my head anymore.
Everything is so different now. Nothing is as it was before.
Before…
What if someone was to find this? What if my mum was to read this, if she was interested at all in what I was thinking, what I was feeling? What then? There would be questions. The police would want to talk to me. They would ask me to come to the station and make a statement. I’ve seen TV shows. That’s how it works. And even then, people like Him get away with it all the time. They’ll blame me. All they have is questions.
Questions.
Those questions would need answers and I don’t have those. I don’t know what happened on Saturday night. And then they’ll blame me. Say it was all my fault. Everything is always my fault. I do everything wrong. I mess up all the time. I can’t get anything right.
I don’t know what happened.
I don’t know anything.
All I know for sure is that my life ended on Saturday. My old life that is. It ended and a new one began. And not one I’d ever wish upon anyone to live.
I’m not making any sense.
It’s because nothing makes sense to me anymore. Nothing is right anymore. Everything is wrong. So wrong.
I guess if anyone ever reads this, I should at least try. I’ll try to explain. Where should I start?
Maybe I should start at the beginning.
Saturday was like any other day for me. My mum works shifts so she’s hardly ever home, and when she is all she does is sleep. I can’t fault her for that. She’s doing her best. She’s single-handedly keeping a roof over our head and a meal on the table for us. I work a little, answering the phone at the taxi rank a few afternoons a week and at the weekends, but I only make just over four quid an hour. That doesn’t get us far. But I give most of it to my mum, putting it in the empty tin of Quality Street in the bottom kitchen cupboard where she keeps all of her money. She says banks are for people who have money, not people who need it, and especially not those who use it almost immediately after they earn it.
So on Saturday, as usual I put my earnings into the tin, expect for one ten-pound note which I spend on a cheap bottle of wine from Aldi’s and one pack of cigarettes which I try and stretch out over the week at school and on the walk home. I’m usually at a house party on the weekends, so I just bum a smoke off anyone that’s there.
That’s what I was doing when I met him – Him. He was smoking outside, and I wanted to save my pack for the week, so I lied and said I had just run out. He slid his carton out of his jeans pocket and popped the lid open for me to take one. I pulled out two and tucked the second one behind my ear for later. He thought that was cute. I thought He was cute.
I wouldn’t have even been talking to him if Rhys hadn’t ignored me. I went there, in my new clothes from H&M – which I can’t return now because…
Anyway, I see Rhys there sitting on the armchair in the living room next to the iPod dock, can of beer in his left hand, while his right hand wraps around the waist of Lucy McNeil. Yep, she was sitting on his lap, with her tongue down his throat.
After that, I spent twenty minutes crying in the toilet while some random hugged me and told me ‘Boys are really simple. Just make him jealous – flirt with someone else and he’ll be all over you again soon.’ So I did just that. I picked someone. The guy outside smoking Camels. He was older, one of Lee’s brother’s friends who just showed up uninvited, and he seemed worthy of making Rhys jealous.
But I was wrong.
I was so wrong.
We started drinking more. He’d brought vodka and rum, and I began drinking everything he gave me. I was drunk. I knew I was drunk. The room was moving in front of me, pulsing like it was alive or something, and I couldn’t stop banging into people when I walked. I fell on the stairs a few times as I climbed up with Him. I’ve never been that drunk before but I remembered when my mate Ana was she stuck her fingers down her throat and said she felt better after. I tried but I couldn’t make myself throw up in the toilet. So I staggered into one of the bedrooms and lay down on the bed. I thought if I slept it off for an hour then I would wake up and feel a bit more sober. Sober enough to walk home anyway. But until then I couldn’t go back like that. My mum would kill me. And I did fall asleep for a little bit. I think. But, when I…
When I.
When I woke up, I wasn’t alone in the bedroom anymore. The first thing I noticed was the H&M skirt. Navy with embroidered pink roses. It was on the floor beside the bed. It wasn’t on my body anymore. My shoes were beside it. My tights. My tights were ripped. I could see the fabric frayed and split. All I thought at that moment was why are my tights ripped?
And then I felt Him. And it was happening. It was happening to me. But I didn’t want it to happen. So I started saying No. But he wouldn’t stop. He told me to shut up. But I didn’t shut up. I started screaming. Because it hurt.
It hurt so bad.
And he wouldn’t stop.
And then I couldn’t scream anymore because his hand was over my mouth. My face was so wet, and I realised after that I had been crying.
I had been crying and he wouldn’t stop.
I said NO and he wouldn’t stop.
And there was blood.
My blood.
Because what he hadn’t known at the time – or maybe he didn’t care – was that until that party, I was a virgin. And I wanted to stay that way until I fell in love.
That sounds so stupid now.
So childish.
I can see that now.
I was a child before Saturday and I’m not now. Because of Him. He stole that from me. And I hate him.
But mostly, I hate myself.
They’ll say it was my fault. My fault. All my fault.
They’ll say it was because I was drunk.
They’ll say it was because I wore a short skirt.
Because I had make-up on, red lipstick, black eyeliner – adult make-up.
Because my top was low-cut.
Because I wore a lace bra.
Because
Because
Because it’s always the girl’s fault. Never the guy’s. And most certainly, always my fault.
I HATE MYSELF.