Pregnancy

I remember talking to my friend Meg in her bedroom asking to move in with her when the baby arrived. It felt impossible to be at home. It was a surreal experience. Most mornings from a week or so after the attack, morning sickness became routine. The concept of visiting  the pharmacy was far too daunting after being turned away by the pharmacist who said legally they couldn’t give me a pill as I had just turned 15 two days ago.

Perhaps if I held my nerve, gone to a hospital or called the police then they would have got evidence. Trauma doesn’t have time for straight thinking. It felt like everything was happening at once, being pregnant whilst preparing to do my final year of GCSE’s.         

Making lacerations to my stomach out of fear of what was inside of me, intentional starvation and busying myself seemed to become my strongest ‘coping’  methods and an attempt at killing whatever may be inside of me. Inside my stomach was the devils incarnate rather than a baby. Its innocence already tainted by the way it was bought to be conceived.        

I wasn’t ready to become a mother nor have a termination.  

September came and I had the courage to take a pregnancy test after doing my English homework. My body was going through the motions of a normal pregnancy yet it wasn’t one. My body didn’t feel my own, it felt violated over and over again. Every day I’d get changed in limited light away from the mirror because I couldn’t face seeing the body that was raped in front of me. My body. I couldn’t bare to see the neck he strangled, the hair he pulled and spat on. The breasts he squeezed so tightly that they pulsated in pain. The body that was paralyzed with fear but forcefully moved with every movement made by his thrusting of hips.        

Avoidance and disinterest became key attributes of my teenage years- quitting choir to cut the chances of seeing him whatsoever. I avoided the local area in which the attack took place; guilt racked my brain for not visiting my Grandad with dementia, but he lived too close by for comfort. It’s only recently I’ve managed to go up the Leigh steps again, it’s taken over 5 years.