Football players are assholes. I know; I'm related to their king. My older, and annoyingly overprotective, brother Jake is the star quarterback at Santa Cruz High School. I love him but hate living in his shadow. Everyone worshiping the air he breat...
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TW: This chapter contains content depicting sexual assault which may be triggering and not suitable for all readers.
If you've experienced sexual abuse or assault, the following post could be potentially triggering. You can contactthe National Sexual Assault and Abuse Telephone Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 or visit www.rainn.org.
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Oh fuck. I really said that, didn't I?
I told a room of strangers... something I hadn't told my parents. Something that I didn't want to think about and wished for it not to exist. Something dark, deep, ugly, and humiliating.
And I couldn't take it back. Did I want to take it back?
The tension gripping my chest did. The pounding in my ears did. The sweat in my palms being joined by clammy sweat in my armpits and along my bra line did.
But did I want to?
I gnashed my teeth into my lower lip, to a burst of pain.
No. No, I don't. Because it's holding me back.
Despite how the softest, weakest voice escaped me, and I wasn't sure how much more speaking strength I had in me, my internal resolve shifted in an uncertain direction. All these years, I thought I'd moved past my trauma because it was in my past. By looking forward and turning my back on my past, I never let it go. Maybe my awareness was sharpened since my eyes were squeezed shut, but a new sensation glowed inside me. A tiny, invisible seed implanted itself, buried in the deepest parts of my core being. I'd locked away parts of myself under a smokescreen for moving forwards by disassociating from my past. I assumed that time erased significance and smoothed details into memories.
I was dead, fucking wrong.
The nightmares resurfaced because I wasn't capable of moving past them. For the first time in three years, emotionally parched and starving, I craved the nutrients to help that tiny little seed grow into what I feared but also craved most: Closure.
As soon as I can open my eyes.
The weight of twenty-two eyes, the blue, brown, green, and hazel eyes, eyes of almost every color, squeezed mine tighter. No one spoke. Not a single sound except light coughs and shuffled bodies broke through the thick silence I created.
