That trust wasn’t a mistake, I had finally found truth in the universe, one that held me up through my drowning bouts. I had trusted and lost before, I didn’t trust myself nor anyone around me but this time I listened to a quiet voice, not masked by fear nor anguish, a voice so clear not masked by the past nor future expectations, there was a voice within me that spoke with such clarity I recognized it as my own.

It took so much from me. It took my sense of self, I didn’t know who I was anymore. Was I the girl that did all the wrong things good girls don’t do?  Could I even trust myself anymore? Do I reconcile the fact that all my actions and decisions landed me in that unlucky place? It took my sense of trust in the world. A world that wounded me and left me to die. A world that inflicted pain upon me in my dire state of neglect from the shame. A world that was not there to protect me when it happened, a world that blamed me into solitude.

This coming year, along with the peace and love I have jarred for the comfort of my soul, I also bring my voice. These pages a megaphone screaming my arrival. No longer will I be silenced. This year will be the year of a reckoning, truth telling and healing for me, healing for all around me. I will be a one woman riot.

I can’t keep quiet.

I lay my face on the ground to feel the cold, to feel something that told me I was home. That told me I was safe. I was grounding. I spent the next few days grounding several times a day. The smell of my memory had lodged itself in my nostrils, refusing to be washed out no matter what I tried.

I looked around inspecting carefully though there was no possible way the monster would be here. It was almost twenty years ago and I am a million miles away from where it happened. He wasn’t here. My mind was playing a cruel trick on me again. I calmed myself and brought the girls inside.