Like I Want to End It, Before It Ends Me

“Annalisa wait! I can explain…..it’s not what you think it is or what it looks like. Just let me talk to you. Anna……Anna wait!!!”

That’s just about the last I heard before my sobs became the only sound I could hear in the silent Saturday night. I remember just running, like somehow the distance I left between me and him would make me feel less wrecked. I was honestly just devastated! I don’t know if it was the fact that his denial of this evident act of betrayal made a fool of me or if it was the simple fact that it was my best friend’s giggle that I heard. I didn’t even have to see her to confirm my horror. Her phone was on the kitchen counter, her jacket thrown loosely over a stool. I seemed to have crushed a party of two happy beings that actually are great together, now that I think of it. Michael and Claire come a long way. That’s what they always told me. I guess it should have meant something had I paid attention to it. I was just so happy that I had a great relationship with my boyfriend’s childhood friend that I never stopped to think for a second that I was the joke. Even the five years behind us is starting to feel like a joke. Where has my sense of humor been? How was I so naive? I hate myself. I hate Claire. I totally hate Michael. And I hate being alive. I just want to end it all before it ends me, if it hasn’t already. I’m sorry mama, but this is where it ends for me……Goodbye!!!

“Ooowkay, cut! Let’s take five and run through it again. That should be the final for today and you all go and get some rest because the competition is tomorrow. I need you to be at your best. Tasha that was intense. I love that you owned the character, made the run up to the suicide quite the experience. I need exactly that tomorrow. ”

My Theatre Director is amazing, and pretty tough, she doesn’t dish out compliments like confetti. I am flattered. I mean I honestly worked hard to get this main character role for the District Anti-suicide Campaign Drama Competition scheduled for tomorrow and if we ace it, there’s a chance I might get the award for best actress. That would just seal my college application. I have dreamt of myself graduating from that drama school since I was old enough to know the difference between fantasy and possibility. I needed this not just for me but for my mother too. The accident left her permanently crippled and all the savings for my college education went into her treatment. We tried everything, and eventually we just had to accept it, well at least I had to if I was to keep waking up each day and living through another 24 hours of uncertainty. Someone had to be strong, and my mum wasn’t about to be the positive one. That inability to take care of my little brother and I, something that she had done so lovingly and efficiently ever since my good-for-nothing dad left us for a young girl my age, I think it was getting at her. She spent her days in tears and could not even face me. It broke my heart so much, and maybe that’s why I worked hard to make sure that she and my sibling were taken care of. If I got that college scholarship and maintained my two part-time jobs, all I would have to save into is their upkeep and my little brother’s education. I went all out at practice today because Annalise reminded me of how I felt at some point, except my desire to end it all hadn’t been over some boy, but over a grown ass man. It was six months after my mum’s accident the previous year, and the health insurance company told us that they couldn’t go on paying the medical expenses and our living costs. I guess because my mom’s company felt guilty over the accident since it was a result of negligence on their end and they hoped that we wouldn’t sue, the boss (whatever level of authority he had) offered to finance our upkeep for the duration of my mom’s stay at the hospital. I should have known that generosity these days doesn’t come without expectations.

 

A month after he started taking care of us, He started showing up unexpected, sometimes in weirdly late hours and he would talk about how he needed to check on us and ensure that we were safe. From what I still don’t know because we live in a very safe neighborhood and apartment. It just never clicked on my mind until it was somehow too late that we needed protection from him. That he was the threat to our lives and our dignity, at least mine. I remember that day so vividly it brings back the muddle of fear, anger, hurt and trauma that I experienced on the Friday night he violated me. He had said that his wife had asked if we wanted to spend the weekend with them at their farmhouse and I had said that I had drama practice that weekend and couldn’t go but that my little brother would love to join them. I remember his enthusiasm when Mrs. Brown collected him from our place around 3pm on that Friday. It warmed me up to know that he would at least have a distraction from his constant tears over how he missed my mother. I didn’t go anywhere after that. Made a light dinner and watched a movie before I tucked myself into bed at around 8:30pm. I didn’t hear the knock, if there was any, and I certainly didn’t hear my door open. All I remember is his ugly face when he took that pink blanket off me and told me to shut up or else he would harm me. The irony in that still messes me up. In his mind I should have been more afraid of some form of harm and not the sexual assault, like it wasn’t more devastating than any other physical harm I could think of. I guess that in a way I am Annalise and Annalise is me. Because every emotion that my Director required me to put into the character of this suicidal young girl who just discovered that her boyfriend of 5 years is cheating with her best friend is a replay of the hurt of my rape experience. Getting into that character is my way of letting out, sharing my pain, because to this day I have never told anyone about it, I still think I never will. I know that I may be wrong but I just want to keep believing that one day I will wake up and not have a memory of it. That it won’t feel it as it feels every day, like I want to end it, before it ends me.

I guess that in a way I am Annalise and Annalise is me. Because every emotion that my Director required me to put into the character of this suicidal young girl who just discovered that her boyfriend of 5 years is cheating with her best friend is a replay of the hurt of my rape experience.