By Emilia Stavale

Those little purple flowers reeked of rancid butter yet the horizon, ever so picturesque, made the stench and the trudging along worth it all the while. At least in retrospect. Abductor muscles wrung tight as spooled thread each day I rose. Only pigeon pose and reformation could save me then. My heart, my faith in my own worthiness to be loved torn asunder. I made careful sorrowful stitches to mend the girl in disrepair.
They said I must learn to be self-sufficient and understand natural consequences, as if to produce a coal from naught but friction should make me well. (A friction not dissimilar resided in my heart and mind and in my household.) In some ways it did. Make me well, that is. I found I could be content (more or less) within myself, and without desired circumstance.
I often look back on those months and ask myself how deeply I was traumatized by them. Feeling betrayed, shipped off to be someone else’s problem. Working so hard to be worthy, presenting my new and improved self, and being cast aside yet again, worse than before. At least first I had nature, rolling vistas, mountain streams, and caregivers who cared. Next, prison, for all intents and purposes. Those might as well have been correctional officers.
Three horrible birthdays in a row, beginning with that one, my eighteenth. That day I was made to relinquish my newfound adulthood, to sign away my autonomy, my custody of myself to a corporation, lest be cast away for good, or so they said. Whether they had bluffed I’ll never know. That was the lowest blow. At least for a while. On second thought, was the worst thing being made to go to that useless place at all?
The situation was nuanced, I know. Yet it’s hard not to feel slighted after having worked so hard and not being given the benefit of the doubt. Did they really not believe me, or were they manipulated by corporate interests?

I am ashamed to carry this resentment, after all they have done for me, but what can I say? I was damaged enough already. Have been damaged yet since. Had they found me a suitable therapist would I have “needed” to be carted off at all? Had they listened to me and not a corporation, would I have “needed” to be carted off again a year later, college fund spent in the process? Of course it’s impossible to know, yet I cannot help but wonder. I cried out for help for so long only to be dismissed or medicated. They’d really prefer a zombie over a happy girl?

Alone, alienated, outcast, bullied, abused. Miserable and desperate for a listening ear or a commiserator. Friendless, in a sea of “peers”. My schoolmates and the media convinced me I was worthless.
Not pretty enough.
Not skinny enough.
Not fashionable enough.
Not personable enough.
Not enough.
The only solace I could find was an unreciprocated friendship with my boombox and a razorblade. Returning to my room after every torturous day of hating everyone, moving on to loathing myself. This cycle persisted for many moons. Dr. Jordan was no help at all. Matter of fact, she made things worse. I needed someone to care, to help me. She felt like another authority figure, casting judgment, belittling me. Contrary to popular belief, it isn’t actually a therapist’s job to prescribe advice. All they are meant to do is help one process one’s feelings and come to one’s own conclusions about what they want and what is best for them, even despite the behest of society or authority.
I tried to confide in her on occasion and was met only with shame, made to feel persecuted. When I attempted to explain that I had been coerced into physical contact with a boy, she jumped to conclusions and told me not to be promiscuous. When I told her I had tried marijuana she told me that drugs would stunt my mental development and that I shouldn’t indulge, never once trying to gain any insight into why a straight edge girl like that had been driven to do such a thing.

•••

I was only nine when I first imagined ending my life. Fantasizing about what peace it would bring me to not endure such torment. These thoughts plagued me for decades. Still today, on occasion, I wake up wishing to have slept longer for even nightmares are sometimes better than reality. I no longer wish to cease to exist. Not often, at least. I have found joys in my life. I have found love. Yet the traumas follow me and I cannot escape them. I am cursed by their presence, ever lingering, telling me things are wrong. Wrong with my mind, my behavior, my body. I no longer wish to die, and somehow I cannot go a single day without fear that death is upon me. The tables have turned. I feel old and I fear I am in danger. My neuroses poison me into believing I cannot trust my body. The medical trauma has triggered in me a sense of everlasting dread. I cannot escape what is no longer with me. It may not be here in body, but it is ever-present in spirit.

The other traumas are near impossible to tally. Men treating me as disposable and unworthy of real love or fair treatment.
Boundaries ignored.
Doors slammed.
Dishes broken.
Never a fist.
Oh, for it to have only been a fist.
Bruises heal. I have carried the damage (of being gaslit and otherwise psychologically abused day in and day out for months and months on end) for a decade now, and it seems irreparable, though the psychological violence ended many years ago. I have found lovers I can trust and still, sometimes, I doubt them, because I was programmed to believe that I am a burdensome loathsome useless person, though for years now I’ve been told otherwise. It is difficult to unlearn these things.

I found drugs and alcohol, a way to quiet the deafening roar of anxiety, a way to soothe the trembling and the heaving of my chest. And in the end, things only grew far worse. I had to find a way out of that vortex of despair. I clawed my way to safety from myself with little help. Now nothing numbs me to my haunting. I am forever burdened, it seems.

•••

The next lonely birthday things were just as bad as ever. At nineteen I still had no friends, I was still unlovable. The few I thought I could count on had disowned me upon my return from Utah. “Oh, it wasn’t in my head, she really has a lot of problems… I don’t want to deal with all that,” I imagined them saying, justifying the abandonment to themselves. I had been told many times before that I was “too much”. How is it that a person can be simultaneously “too much” and “not enough”?

I had loved S before I was made to leave him and everyone for eight long months. I had missed him all along. Yet upon my return I found my feelings weren’t the same in spite of how I longed for them to be. He expected them to be. He still loved me. I carried a fondness for him all that time, but when again he sat near to me I found I could not muster the butterflies. They had flown off into the mountain sunset, far, far away. Perhaps it was the trauma and resentment, the anger and sorrow, and perhaps it was the medication, numbing me to both good feelings and bad, alike. Perhaps it was all of these things in conjunction with one another, compounding into a conglomerate wall around me. I tried to love him as I had. Only weeks went by before I realized I was cheating us both. I tried to do the right thing and be honest, to let him down easy, but he didn’t understand. He buried the hot of his cigarette deep into the flesh of his own hand while I clambered clumsily around in my own mind searching for the words to make it make sense to him. To him, I hadn’t been there and life had gone on as before. To me, those eight months weren’t simply an absence. I was absent in the Midwest but I was all too present in Hell.

So I turned another year older, banished by him and branded a pariah by all else whom I’d considered to be a friend or acquaintance. I wandered up and down the streets of Royal Oak alone. I perched upon the curb outside of the tattoo parlor and wept. A stranger approached me with concern and offered marijuana and a listening ear. “Follow me,” he said, and I did. He led me across Washington Avenue to a residential building which was still being constructed. “I know a way in,” he exclaimed. I followed him to the roof, where we smoked and I confided in this man I knew nothing of. I told him how it was my birthday and I was miserable and lonesome. He told me not to worry, that he was older and things would get better as I grew older, too. I tried to believe him. I never spoke to him again.

A year later I’d found a community, at least for the time being. A much older man was grooming me and for my birthday this year he’d (purposefully) given me a gift I never wanted: genital herpes. He said “well maybe now you’ll learn not to be so promiscuous.” Not once did he express even a crumb of remorse towards me. For that unwanted gift or for any of the psychological horrors he bestowed upon me. Now, eleven-and-a-half years later, the audacity of men still never ceases to stun and appall me. A maddening I fear I may never escape.

The next birthday, my twenty-first, wasn’t all bad. At least I could drink. I enjoyed a big-gulp cup full of Jameson, peach schnapps, and Sprite beneath the railroad tracks with my new beau. He was sweet to me, at least then. He had helped me through the grief two months earlier when my biological mother had suddenly left this earthly plane. I thought I could be happy now. I was wrong. A month later the abuse began, and what followed was two years that felt like a lifetime. On my twenty-second birthday I hosted a dinner party at our shared trailer home. His friends came, because of course I wasn’t allowed to have friends of my own. He treated me horribly all night, with palpable disdain, and it didn’t go unnoticed. His friends had all begun to pick up on what was going down by then. I only spent one more birthday with him. I don’t recall it at all. By then I had already decided I was leaving him. I have no recollection of the two birthdays that followed the breakup either. The first good one was my twenty-sixth. The first bad one had been my eighth. Less than one week after September eleventh two-thousand-and-one.

•••

Childhood had been a comfort. No worries, only Saturday morning cartoons and swim practice. Beach days and autumn breezes at the cottage. No cell phones, no apps, no emails, no zoom meetings, no bills. Just books and VHS tapes, my Walkman, my boombox. Christina Aguilera and the Backstreet Boys and the Beatles. Things were fine until first grade. It was the first year I’d have a full school day. One of my parents would walk me across the street to the school, and I’d cling to their leg in the hallway and sob. Back then it was called a temper tantrum, though it is now clear it was undiagnosed autism presenting in the form of a meltdown brought on by social and separation anxiety, and it happened each day without fail. I’d be dragged away from them to the principal’s office where she would try to soothe me with reassurance and fidget toys.
I only had two friends then, and one of them decided to hate me after her family put down their dog because he had bitten me. Then, Cassie was my only friend. I never understood why her mother didn’t like me. I reminisce fondly upon the times we spent as children living only a block apart in that idyllic village.
In the third grade I transferred districts. I had to start over. Not that I was leaving much behind anyhow. The Talented and Gifted program did seem to be a better fit, short-lived as it was. I got along with my peers, just as nerdy as me. They embraced my tomboy aesthetic, never criticizing. Yet still, I was outcast at times. Though I had what one might consider friends, I was still excluded at recess. In the fourth and fifth grade this meant sitting on the ground near the benches etching doodles into the soil with a twig. This was when I first dreamed of death. This was when I first felt profoundly unlovable. By fifth grade, Cassie had moved away. I hardly saw her anymore. She made new friends and had little time left for me. I felt so lonesome in that neighborhood then.

When it was time for middle school the class was split up, sent off to different campuses. Alone again. For all of sixth grade, I continued to embrace my own sense of style, much to the dissatisfaction of my new peers. I took note of what the bullies said, how the popular girls dressed and behaved, though it hadn’t fully occurred to me that my fashion choices were playing such a significant role in encouraging my mistreatment. At the end of the year on a hot day, I had worn a tank top to school. I was in typing class, I leaned back in my seat, hands clasped behind my head, elbows out. Amanda looked at my armpits and said “you should really shave.” That was it. At that moment I had resolved to be cooler, come seventh grade.
Over the summer I begged my mom for a flatiron and contact lenses. When it came time for back to school shopping I was careful to select only items reminiscent of the in-crowd. On the first day of school I straightened my poofy hair, inserted my contact lenses and donned my light wash, low-rise capri pants and aquamarine cap-sleeved babydoll top. I went off that day nervous but hopeful. In my last period math class a popular-adjacent boy, Kenny, looked me dead in the eyes and asked, “Melissa?” Gratification. I had been mistaken for the most popular girl in my grade. But the pride was short-lived. I may have been more fashionable but I was still disregarded. By Christmas break I had decided it wasn’t worth the effort and so I returned to my baggy tee shirts and jeans.
By the middle of that school year I had made a friend. Let’s call her Marilyn; she wasn’t exactly popular, but she was accepted by the cool kids. I never understood what she saw in me (apparently not much…). In the spring our class went to a sleep-away camp. Most of it is a blur, as is much of my youth, but some things I remember vividly. One such memory is of how, at camp, Marilyn’s friend accused me of stealing their other friend’s acne medication, and mercilessly bullied me in the cafeteria, exclaiming loudly how I needed it because I was “pizza-faced”. At the end of the week, on the last night of camp, there was a dance. As a young autistic who struggled socially I had little concept of what dancing was supposed to be like. Nobody had told me that even at twelve years old I was supposed to act sexy. All I knew about “cool” dancing was what I had seen on YouTube in hip-hop videos. I just didn’t understand that I was supposed to dance like the women and not the men. Everyone laughed at me, but Peter asked me to slow dance anyway. Nothing ever came of that, but I am appreciative of his softening the blow of the bullies. Now, of course, the following day when we were all packing to leave, that girl found her medication and I was exonerated. Too late, the damage was done.

Throughout middle school I had felt I was treated slightly better when I tried to conform. So I went into ninth grade with the same mindset. In retrospect, perhaps that was my first mistake. I should have tried to become invisible, undetectable in that vast sea of Hollister and Axe body spray.
My high school was overcrowded, so there were three lunch periods. The only person with whom I was acquainted in my lunch period was Marilyn. She sat with her mean friends. She invited me to sit with them, though they’d have preferred I didn’t, and their discountenance was apparent. One day I asked Marilyn why they gave me dirty looks at lunch. She told me it was because they believed me to be vain, for I was always compulsively touching up my face in my compact mirror. The reality could not have been more to the contrary. I was so deeply insecure that I felt compelled to check constantly that I was presenting myself as pleasantly as possible. Of course it had backfired. After this I felt unwelcome at Marilyn’s table. From then on I spent my lunches crying alone in the staircase-to-nowhere near the orchestra room.

That was the year I met him. Let’s call him Mark. He was in my German class and I found his laid back style and aloof comic attitude indescribably alluring. I joined the Model UN that year and he was a member too. He was a junior and I perceived him as intelligent and charming.
We were never taught about consent. We had all heard of rape, I’m sure, but nobody ever explained to me that twenty-three “no”s and an “okay, fine” was not a “yes”. Apparently nobody had explained that to Mark either. My sophomore year, the Model United Nations went to a conference in Kalamazoo. Mark was on the same committee as me. One day, he asked me if I wanted to come to his room for lunch, “to work on committee stuff.” I knew he had a girlfriend, and I knew I was obsessed with him, and I knew he would never date me, but I said yes. When I arrived his roommates were there but they swiftly took their leave. “Committee stuff” had been a guise. He wanted to talk and watch TV. I was wearing low-rise boot-cut jeans, a checkered studded belt, and a tee shirt. He was wearing sweatpants and a v-neck shirt with his signature American Apparel zip-up hoodie. We sat on the bed and talked and then he kissed me. (“Does this mean he likes me too?” I wondered…) At some point he stopped kissing me and suggested I give him a blow job. I said no. I had never done anything like that before, and I didn’t want to. He asked again. I said no. This went on for a while, thoughts circling through my mind. I wondered if I didn’t, would he ever speak to me again? But, no, I couldn’t, he had a girlfriend. But I didn’t want him to hate me. I had already liked him for so long. What if I never got another chance? He kept asking, standing at the edge of the bed, looking down at me. I kept refusing. Eventually, worn down, and afraid of rejection, I sighed, “okay, fine,” and before I could change my mind, he grabbed me by my belt and pulled me off the bed, and onto the floor in front of him, on my knees. The rest… I’ll spare you the details. It happened so fast and I couldn’t believe it had happened at all. I didn’t have the vocabulary to say I’d been coerced. I didn’t know that was assault. Not until years later. When I tried to confide in anyone about it I told them I’d “given” him a blowjob. I hadn’t, not really. He had taken it. But before I could explain that I hadn’t wanted to they always jumped to conclusions and shamed me. Of course, Mark told his friends, and the rumor mill revved up.

Now I was still being bullied, worse even, but I was being simultaneously sexualized. I had always wanted attention from boys, I had wanted to feel desired, but not like this. Sean started tossing little balls of paper into my cleavage in English class. Sometime around then (again, the timeline is a bit hazy) Jesse sent me a dick pic (unsolicited, mind you) that my parents found on my phone and I was grounded for three months. No phone, no computer, no TV, no iPod, no social life, no fun. An already miserable bullied girl forced further into solitude. They even gave away my guinea pig, Sadie (after the Beatles song), to my sister’s friend. I’m sure Sadie was better off, but I was so alone. I still have a scar on my wrist from that day. The other scars all faded with time, but not that one.

I don’t recall much from the next two years. Just hospitals, therapy, psychiatry, and misery. The time dragged on, yet for how long it felt I have so little recollection. Before I knew it I was on a plane to Utah. And that takes us back to the beginning.

This piece began as a poem about a wilderness therapy program and morphed into a rambling monologue about childhood, adolescent, and medical trauma.

Some names have been changed, to protect me, not them. Fuck them.