Sacred

now, whenever I'm feeling down, I draw, far more consistently than my bad habits I used to rely on, and I posts my works. now ive been told my works have a similar effect on others. I appreciate your blog and your artwork a lot. ❤️🫂

- Twelve, @thrashingdreamer

Twelve. I'm glad my art makes a difference in you, and in the people who see it. Reading your response, we also experience feeling embarrassed or feeling like our viewers think we are a bit 'weird.' However, being weird isn't really the problem, but rather what those people did to make one become 'weird.' Whenever you feel ashamed, just think that the ones who should be ashamed are those who committed those acts.

Today marks exactly six months since I got out after five years living in a locked residential facility and moved into my own apartment. Six months of freedom. Six months of trying to rebuild a life after feeling like the world kept moving without me for years.

And I’ve been crying since yesterday.

I think deep down I already knew nobody would remember this date, even though I kept mentioning it over and over again these last couple of weeks. I think I was desperately hoping that if I talked about it enough, someone would finally realize how important it is to me.

But nobody did.

No messages. No calls. No “I’m proud of you.” Nothing.

And I know maybe for everyone else this is just another day. But for me this date means surviving something that nearly destroyed me. Five years in a closed facility changed me in ways I still can’t even explain properly. Sometimes I still feel disconnected from normal life, like I’m watching everyone else live while I’m just trying to learn how to exist again.

These six months alone in my apartment were hard in ways I never expected. People think freedom automatically feels good, but nobody talks about how unbearably lonely it can feel afterwards. The silence. The isolation. Realizing you have nobody to share your small victories with. Nobody who really understands what you survived or what it took just to make it this far.

I am gonna spent this day alone in my apartment crying over a milestone that apparently matters to nobody except me.

And that feeling is honestly devastating.

Because I don’t think I even needed people to fully understand what those five years were like. I just wanted someone to remember. Someone to see me. Someone to acknowledge that making it six months outside after losing five years of your life is actually huge.

Instead it feels like I disappeared for years and came back completely forgettable.

The older lady who saw me working the theater district and without a word slipped me a 20, SAVED MY LIFE

The nurse at the ER who refused to buy my bullshit story when I walked in and said I needed STD prophylaxis- she SAVED MY LIFE

The other victims I met while being trafficked, the older girl who told me, "shut the fuck up, don't posture like that," she SAVED MY LIFE

Even the young guy who was in with the traffickers, who got in over his head and snuck us oreos and cheez-its- he SAVED LIVES

The other survivors I've met in the aftermath who have listened and shared their wisdom- they've SAVED LIVES

You know who's never come close to saving my life? The cops. The court system. The Feds. Wider society as a whole, even. I've never been helped or cared for by these systems. I've been helped and cared for by PEOPLE. By regular human people who were all just doing their best.

More than it's ever haunted me that these awful systems and evil people exist, it haunts me that I'll never be able to thank any of those good people who've saved me. It haunts me that they'll never know how much of an impact they've made. The way I repay them is to try to bring that same energy into the world- and maybe do the same for others without even knowing it.

Our perpetrators were adjacent to a church we went to. This all happened every single week- sometimes they even came to our schools when the weekend wasn't enough. Certain kids were sought out in the church, put onto a bus and brought out to do their rituals. I happened to be one of those kids.

We have 3 bio brothers. Love them to death, and still do. They weren't included in anything, but they were used as leverage. Tell anyone, let it slip, and they would be added to the hell I faced for years.

I suspect now that it was the emotional blackmail that led to us to dissociate and only remember the good times until recent years. I also recognize they thought having my 3 siblings out of their practices made my story sound fake or outlandish to an average adult- because wouldn't EVERY kid in the family be involved? Hell, one of them even broke into my house undetected. But it sounds fake to a parent when I wrote that down for our school's writing assignment, because kids will make those things up. I got an ear full from my parents for making up a fake story that terrifying and sharing that with a class.

But that's what they do. They isolate you so you sound like a wild, imaginative child to everyone else. This is why it's so important to know: you are not lying to yourself. Memories can be distorted by others, or might present differently to protect yourself, but never actually made out of thin air. You cannot just make up memories for the sake of it. Ever. False memory syndrome is a lie from the pits of hell.

You are not crazy. Your story is not made up, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

A tiny pocket world. Outside of prying eyes.