Can you say no?

Can you decline a wedding invitation, a request to go dancing, an enquiry about your ballet shoes?

Can you say no to the girl who asked you to watch her sister while she spends some time with her boyfriend?

Can you say no to the woman who wants to go cycling with you… but you really want to be alone?

Can you say no… when someone says they will pay you £2.50 an hour to teach their son another language?

Can you?

I couldn’t.

I couldn’t say no and I was told all the time.. SAY NO. Say NO. No.

No, I said, to those telling me to say no. No, I can’t say no.

Even though I just did.

Say no to the man who says ‘come and see me, be brave.’

Alarm bells clanging and mouth dry and heart wringing in fear.

Say no, Lenora, please.

Say no.

Just say no.

But I did not say no.

Sometimes I think I have healed but then I wake up dripping in sweat, heart palpitating, from a dream in which I am saying yes to all the things I do not want to do. I am frantic and anxious and running away but I cannot escape him, he has his sharp claws dug deep into my back.

It’s been eight years.

I said yes for two years and then one day I said no and it took all my strength to do it.

And it took me seven months to stop hyperventilating everytime my phone rang.

Took eight months for the severe stomach pains to go away.

It’s been eight years since I said that final no, and I still dream I can’t say no.

So please say no.

Let your children say no when they’re little, so that when they’re big and need to say no, they should be able to.

Say no.

To the right people.

It’s okay.

Things I wish I could have told you

(You know who you are)

(But I hope you don’t read this)

(In fact, I hope you are dead by now.)

(Please. Never contact me again. Ever. Please.)

1. I hate you. You debilitated me. To this day, three years on, whenever I think of you I palpitate and sweat in fear. Right now, just reminding myself of it, my hands are shaking and my heart is in my mouth.
2. Clearly, I am scared of you.
3. Why am I torturing myself by thinking about this.

 

Okay, okay.

THINGS I WISH I COULD HAVE TOLD YOU:

1. Don’t touch me, I don’t like it.
2. You are disgusting, and your voice is disgusting when you swear at me and insult my parents.
3. I never loved you.
4. I pretended every single time, so you would leave me alone and let me go home.
5. I was terrified to leave you, because I was terrified you would hurt me if I tried.
6. When I finally did get the courage to, it was not for all the reasons you thought it was. It was because I hated your slimy being, your manipulative ways, and your revolting habits.
7. You stink.
8. Your teeth disgust me.
9. Your feet are long and horrible and you are a lying cheating scumbag.
10. I really, truly wish you were dead. But I know you aren’t.
11. I don’t wish you well at all. You treated me despicably, then had the audacity to send me on a guilt trip, making me feel bad when it was YOU who hurt me and used me and lied to me and made me your back up plan.
12. You blamed me for the bad things you did, as though you weren’t a human who could make choices.
13. You destroyed my happiness.
14. No really, you destroyed it. I live in constant fear of you, and I don’t even know why anymore. I am anxious all the time now, and I find it so hard to laugh and be free, like I used to.
15. You say I ruined your life. That makes me so angry because all I ever did was be loyal and kind to you. You treated me so badly that when I did leave you, you dared to tell me I ruined your life and make me feel bad about it? I hate that so much. I feel like punching your face, YOU ruined MY life.
16. You cannot go through life thinking that people owe you things. Nobody owes you anything, ESPECIALLY when you stomp all over them and make them feel insignificant and use them – they CERTAINLY don’t owe you anything then.
17. I wish I could tell you to STOP CONTACTING ME.
18. STOP. CONTACTING. ME. I don’t CARE ABOUT YOU. I am NOT INTERESTED IN HEARING FROM YOU.
19. Leave me alone.
20. Seriously. I do not care. At all. Ever. I want to erase you from my memory. I want us to have never happened. I regret everything. I regret hearing your filthy scumbag voice. I hate you. I hate you. I won’t tell you any of that myself because you will see it as encouragement and then the contact will never stop ever. You treated me like absolute crap. You dirty, filthy animal. Go and die somewhere. You classless ignorant being who never wants to make any good out of his life and who moans through life blaming others for his misfortune. You brought it on yourself, lazy asshole.

Love Letters #5

This love in tinged in darkness, I’m afraid.

I stand alone, in an empty bedroom. My clothes are strewn all over the floor. I can’t tell if I am in love, or if I am afraid.

A crumpled letter is gathering damp from my sweaty palms, clenched around it so tightly that I cease to feel where my clammy skin ends and the paper begins.

My hair is a black, scraggly mess, and my frame feels small under the weight of the large black hoody that shrouds my shoulders, several sizes too large for me. My feet are like lobsters, spread out flat on the varnished floorboards upon which they stand.

If I could go back in time, I would. I would change everything.

His face looms in front of me, long and hard, his nose so sharp it could slice cheese. His lips so thin they ceased to exist when he smiled, baring his teeth that were gapped and tinged in brown.

Dear Cecelia,

You broke my heart. You are an evil, horrible girl. How could you do this to me. How dare you. I won’t let you leave me, Cecelia. I will hunt you down. I will knock on your door and take you away. I will report you missing and find you that way, and drag you away with me, kicking and screaming I don’t care you will love it. You belong to me, only me. You hurt me so much I punched a man in the face for shouting at his girlfriend. How dare he shout at her, how dare he, when my girl left me. Come home, Cecelia, please. Come home to me, come home to where you belong.

I don’t belong to you. I belong to me. I don’t belong to anybody. And why should I stay with somebody who treated me so horribly for so many months? Somebody who forced me to do things I didn’t want to do, who preyed on my naivety and innocence, when you knew so much better. Somebody who lied to me and made me lie? Your girl? I am not your girl. I never was, you lying scumbag. Kidnap me? You think any sane person would be enticed to go to somebody who threatens to kidnap them, and who calls them a hundred times a day?

If this is your kind of love, I don’t want it. This is no love.

Come home? You aren’t home. You are cold and barren and terrifying, with your threats and your tempers and your blackmail. You are loneliness and depression. You are fear and hatred. You are misery and fury. You are not home. You could never be home.

I belong at home, yes, millions of miles from you. I wish you were dead. I wish your brain were ash, I wish you would get run over by a car and be mutilated by ten lions before I ever set eyes on you.

The sun is setting. The room is cloaked in dark twilight, the gentle light of street lamps  outside filtering in through the net curtains. My clothes are shadowy mounds on the floor. My heart palpitates as my breath becomes loud and shallow.

Stop writing to me.

 

 

Dear Lenora

Help me.

I am terrified. I want this to be over. Why can’t it be over?

If somebody ignores any contact from you, manipulative psychopath, for years and years and years, then why do you persist in trying to get in touch?

LEAVE ME ALONE.

Can’t you hear? Isn’t this deafening silence an answer to you? You thick, selfish, disgusting, revolting, ignorant, arrogant, pretentious psychopath?

LEAVE ME ALONE.

I hate you. I HATE YOU.

I hate you.

I hate you.

I HATE you.

Thick, thick, skull. Loud grating voice. Evil cackle. Abusive, manipulative ways. Terrifying threats. Horrible, evil texts. The words on the screen make my flesh creep and my blood run cold.

Lenora. Help me.