Mature. Viewer Discretion is advised.
*The people inside of this work are FACE-CLAIMS. This has no correlation to any IRL individual.*
*This is messy plot. Made when I was a teen. Beware.*
The story of a young woman who finds her style, self worth...
"And when the moon, it shines, I will leave two lines. Just find my love, then find me..." ♫ Tomorrow by Daughter. TW: Emotional, esp with this song.
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"This way."
Walking through the Bureau's local field office, made me feel like an ant in the jungle.
A small, scared, useless ant who was only there to be fed on by other insects and creatures. I was a meal to be eaten alive or squashed under a man's boot, and it seemed to me like every single person around me, wanted to.
It felt like, for the past three weeks, time had stopped.
Time stopped, I shrank, and I shrank, and I shrank some more, until I was unrecognizable, even to myself.
I was haunted. Poisoned. Sick and bedridden, like a woman on her death bed, and... there were nights I wished I was.
I relived my attack every day when I looked in the mirror.
I saw my face and I saw that video camera pointed at me, livestreaming to hundreds of creeps while Axel stripped me and defiled every inch of my body like I was a pretty doll in a display case.
Every time I fought back he hit me, cracking my porcelain skin and making me worth just a little less.
The scorching burn of his fingers was seared into my skin and all of the marks that he'd left on me, no matter how faded, were fresh. Washing my body-- touching my own fucking skin felt like I was ripping through my own flesh and reopening every healed wound all over again.
Again, and again, and again I felt the slice of his blade, the burn of his friends cigarettes, and the sting from his hand against my throat.
I could hear his words in the back of my head; I could hear the laugh that followed every tear from my body.
This wasn't something I would ever forget and I hated that so many people around me wanted me to move on from it like it was something so simple or like it hadn't happened.
They meant well, they wanted me to be okay, and I knew that, but I wasn't okay. I wouldn't be for a really long time.
I told Koi that I felt like an ant and she told me "ants can carry ten times their weight, toots."
She told me I was strong.
I loved her to pieces, to smithereens, but that was a ridiculous notion to suggest when I was at my weakest.
Everyone did. You're so strong. You're so brave. You can overcome this. Please believe me when I say you can do this. You're a survivor. I know this anxiety feels like it'll last forever, but it won't.
The meaning of the word strong was: not easily disturbed or affected; powerful.
I was not 'strong.' I didn't come out of this a better person than before. I was at the lowest point in my life despite everything I'd been through in the past nineteen years and for the first time, unashamed of that because this should've never happened to me.
