NIGHT FIRE #poetry

Somewhere at the depth of night,
My heart trembles,
Shakes and cries out,
In a furious, strange sort of fright.

Memories anew assault my senses,
New demons clutch and slash at my flesh,
My skin freezes,
With a rememberance of times long past.

Extract from "Beyond Survivor - My Truth, My Story" TRIGGER WARNING

As I awoke I felt millions of nerve endings scream their rebellion. My head thundered, I could hardly move it off the mattress. I tried to work out how I got in this state. I had drunk myself into oblivion frequently but this was different, my body knew the answer but my brain refused to accept.

I lay there in the light of early dawn, my body seemingly glued to the bed. No pillows softened a place for my head and no sheets covered my naked body. Hours seemed to pass as I tried to focus my thoughts, to gingerly explore why such pain racked my body. I slipped in and out of terrifying sleep. I woke again, managed to focus on the clock on the wall opposite. 10:35 am. Strange, I'd left the flat at 10 pm, what had happened in the past twelve hours to cause this pain.

I slowly moved myself into a sitting position. I almost screamed aloud in pain. I looked around me, my clothes were strewn across the floor, bed clothes heaped amongst them. I tuned to look at the bed, the spot where I had been curled up. My brain screamed no!! There was blood, a lot of blood. I moved sharply, too sharply as invisible knives cut into my flesh. Dried blood along my legs, my hands and arms. Pictures flashed through my head, memories of the night before tormenting me from the shadows of consciousness.

I staggered to the bathroom and emptied the contents of my stomach down the toilet pan. My head was screaming, my body joining in the chorus. I had to clean myself, I made my way to the shower stall and turned on the water. I lay on the floor of the shower stall and let the water pour over me.

I started to cry, big heaving sobs broke free from my chest. I had been raped again.

Later that morning I realised that not 12 hours had passed since I'd left the flat, but a day and a half. This fact frightened me. I could have died and no one would have been any the wiser for days or even weeks. I had no friends, no family at hand. I was alone in a world where it seemed I was getting crazier and crazier with each passing week. It took a few days for the memories to become clear, I had been drinking and had all but passed out in a night club. I was offered a ride home which I had accepted. My first wife and I had not long separated and I was lonely, rarely sober and acted out sexually to anyone who showed the slightest interest in me. The events of my childhood had clouded my perceptions of sexuality, of right and wrong and I had no self respect.

Authors note :-

The memory of this event is quite new. Following the incident I spent months being tested for STDs, thankfully I was clear of all. During this time I began cutting myself again. It was a vain attempt to bleed myself clean of the shame and guilt I felt. I had been a "cutter" as a teenager too, for the same reasons. Shortly after this event a new personality rose through the ranks of my inner army and the memory of the attack was tucked away. With hindsight I can see why things happened the way they did. I can stand to one side of the memory, analyse it, deal with it and then put it where it belongs.

It seems that patterns of abuse emerge when one is able to look back at life with impartiality. Choices I made as a young adult are now, with hindsight, obviously influenced by the conditioning received during childhood. So often in my adult life I had placed myself in abusive situations. I was conditioned to be an underdog, to lie, to steal, to cheat to please others and simply to survive. Physical contact from another was nearly always associated with a feeling of being dirty, of having been used, of waiting for the pain to return.

Those that singled me out to gratify their perverted sexual needs turned an innocent child into a monster.

This is an excerpt from book two in what will be the "Beyond Survivor" trilogy. I hope to get this out and available by the end of this year.