Ripping off the Bandage

Eric was my bandage.

When Eric came to me the night I had been assaulted, he applied a balm to my wounds. And wrapped them up tightly.

And I clung to that. I clung to him.

And when he told me that he wanted to be committed to Cara, that being with me had been a mistake, it hurt so much more because he took himself away from me. He took the only person who knew what had happened to me that night.

And now when it's nighttime, that's when I'm all alone. And that's when it hurts so much all over again.

Bits and pieces I had managed to block out are flooding back to me...

I can see LI here. In my space. I can remember how I pushed him away, how I told him to stop, how I told him to slow down, to stop. And I remember how I just lay here so still afterward, just needing him to leave. And I hear myself telling him "it's okay" as he apologized over and over again. Because I knew that if I told him it wasn't okay that he would not leave. And I needed him to get on that plane. I needed him to fly far, far away. I don't think the door was even closed behind him when I clapped my hand to my mouth and tried to stifle my sobs.

And I just keep seeing that over and over again.

And I remember how I felt when Eric put his arms around me an hour later... And it felt so good to be held. And it was so lovely to be able to just hug him and smell him. And I felt safe.

And then everything got all fucked up.

And with Eric gone, I can't cover up what happened that night anymore. The bandage doesn't stick anymore.

And I don't want to remember that. I only want to remember what happened afterward. And I'm trying, but that's all ruined now.

And I'm hurting so badly that I lashed out at the one person who I could have talked to. And I broke it.

And I wanted to. Because he was the one who made me feel better, and then he took himself away. And now I get to deal with this double pain of betrayal.

And tonight... When I spoke to a friend... And I said that I'm going to have to have these tough conversations in the very near future. And I said out loud that I don't think I could ever tell the husband that I had been sexually assaulted. Because I'm afraid that he would blame me. "Why did you even invite him over that night?"

And Eric never blamed me. Told me that, no, LI had no respect for me to do what he did. But he never blamed me.

And now? When I find myself crying for hours each night? I find myself being able to answer questions that I had never asked out loud. Scary questions. Questions that I never asked because I did not want to hear the answers. But now I ask myself the questions and I find myself able to answer them because I know the answers for myself.

It's not a pretty place I'm in right now.

And I know it's gonna get a hell of a lot worse before it gets better.

But I know that I'm sorry. I am sorry I hurt Eric the way that I did. But I know it's too soon to tell him so.

So, for now, I'll keep going through the motions. Trying to infuse my days with enough gratitude to get me through the nights. Trying not to think about the answers I now know. Trying to get my strength up for what's coming.

Because this RetroMama shell looks like the same lady. She's just not one to return phone calls like the one she got tonight. From a guy she met awhile ago. One who'd intrigued her at the time.

She's not interested in talking to any man right now.

Of course, she's thinking she's not interested in talking to any man EVER.

She's just a little bit too broken right now.