my grandparents remodeled it entirely after i grew up. it looks almost beautiful now, unlike the nightmare that it was during my younger years. this gloomy balkan decor; beige, brown, grey, red everywhere; this faint smell of rotting. i never knew where it came from. i kept asking everyone who entered that house: "do you feel it too?" no one ever did. maybe it was me rotting inside that house, after so much physical, mental, sexual abuse inflicted onto me.

i don't remember anything before the age of 6. i just know that the abuse began way before i remember. it began earlier than i want to ever admit and that fills me with dread. i so desperately wish i could hold my younger self in my arms, tell her that i will rid her of all of the tained hands that are imprinted onto her body, i will shield her from the judgmental eyes that follow her. but that is not feasible. it's long gone, long dead.

i try to lick my wounds by telling myself that "time is such an abstract concept", i lose myself in absurdities, theories, concepts, the answer is so much more simple than i would've thought. time goes forward, no going back. those times in which i was hurt repeatedly are over, and it is impossibly bittersweet. those times in which i would wet the bed every night because of the constant abuse, i would have to stay awake to be aware of the much-too-old hands on my much-too-young body, i would hurt myself physically, punish myself before any one could ever get the chance, all of the insults thrown at me i would assume to be my reality as to "protect" myself from a world in which i could possibly be "good".

jesus christ watched over me as i was ripped apart and put back together again, and no one saved me. no one helped me. i prayed to god and his choir of angels to either kill me or help me yet nothing ever happened, time just kept going forward.

now i am forced to move on, to completely separate myself from the years that made me. to rip myself apart from the reason why i'm like this now.