April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and while my story is not one of just sexual assault, I thought it apropos. I actually wrote this a while ago, but thought I'd share.

"Oh, grow up," he said to me years ago, and for a moment I wanted to blow the pot smoke back into his face and walk away. He, the thirtysomething spending all his money on pot whilst choosing to live wherever he could sleep instead of getting a job and a real place to live, was telling me to grow up. It seemed preposterous. Putting it all in perspective, he didn't know me any more than I knew him. All he saw in me was a rich girl on vacation from California slummin' it for a cute boy in a parking lot. In reality I really enjoyed all their company. In reality that cute boy was my first kiss, and I'd have let him fuck me if I hadn't been afraid my "chaperone" would catch us and turn him in because I was only seventeen. In reality I was already a survivor. I's already pulled myself through the fires of death, illness, mental breakdowns, suicide attempts, eating disorders, addiction, and molestation.
My survival story started young. At five years old I took full ownership of my parents' faltering marriage and stared into the night's oncoming headlights considering walking straight into them like an insect on the highway. From there I learned to suppress things children aren't supposed to know, hear, or feel. I pushed from my memory the "tickle game" played by my mom's one boyfriend and the "intimidation" and "which drug dealer is calling to threaten all our lives now" games played with subsequent men in her life. My mom's sickness and death, as well as my own inner struggles, gave me constant occasion to revisit the thoughts I'd had of "joining the night" years before. I tried several times, lost myself several more, and eventually tried running away from it all. That's where I met Russ, Jason, and John. Half grown but still scared. A survivor still fighting for her life against her life.
Like most things in this world, you can never leave the past behind, but you can use it to strengthen yourself for future blows. In Philadelphia I've found myself up against hurdles I never imagined I could clear, but none I let defeat me completely. I've kept my soul in the wakes of death, loss, intrusion, emotional and physical abuse, sexual assault, sickness, grief, and a storm that still rages inside me at times. There were times I just wanted to stop fighting it and let life take its course and swallow me, and there were times I gave up and it almost did.
This is my story every day; one that reminds me I've walked through fire, flood, and ice. I'm a survivor, sometimes despite my best efforts to the contrary, and the world will not defeat me.

Not today.

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