23 years since. I can hardly believe time flies that fast because it feels the same in my stomach today as it did all those years ago. This year the anniversary days nearly line up with the original incident timeline per weekday. Last weekend was the repeat of being told “I hate you” before the onset of this weekend coming. Yup, the person I tried connecting with def left on those notes on the same day they were uttered all those years ago. Cycles aren’t options… no matter how hard I try, here I sit watching the whirlwind all over again.

The helplessness. Knowing what was coming and not being able to stop it. Sure I was a child but lives were about to come due. And what’s worse is their dad (my step) echoed the sentiment speaking of old days when children were killed from previous marrages. I wonder if he remember the untimely foreshadowing he gave? I know I can’t forget it. Esp his first words upon my return home were ‘why isn’t she dead, too?!’

So for those of you who don’t know me (which is all lol) this weekend is the trauma anniversary of my brother and sister being murdered by their mother. She had stalked us. Smoking outside windows at night. Breaking in the house watching us sleep. Her journals revealed her actions, plans, and training. She murdered them both and then offed herself.

Survivor’s guilt? Absolutely. I tried all I could to stop visitation. I had dreamed of their bodies in that room, bloated from the heat in July in the south. My brother knew and believed me, but kept going to protect her. And she was lost on love for her mother. A woman that really felt she was saving them… well us. But I wasn’t there. And My nervous system never seems to let go being hunted. Sure I have been stalked since… but they wanted sex. She wanted my death. And that lurking cloud is heavier.

Just the same, the next part of the cycle is me reaching out. Seeking connection. Then being trapped and raped for it. See my family didn’t have space for me, and I was new in the school… my brother was my closest friend. We were the reason my mother married his dad. In the aftermath there was no one to lean on, after the brief moment granted by my grandparents neighbor and the passing support of the boy at school the girls bullied me for talking to. The touch I received was by the rapests that trapped me.

Because predators saw me unprotected. No other reason.

Keep the victim blaming. If teenage girls can’t trust their families, pastors, and neighbors, people need to seriously adjust society. But everyone knows that, don’t we? That’s why all the fantasy media with society collapsing.

Anyway, every year since, this time comes. My mind pushes away what it is and yet my body reaches. Finally an opening to meeting someone new and doing something different… I think, as I make all the same mistakes. Hungry for the basic needs met of every other human in times of great grief. I wish my nervous system would accept that it’s not coming and that predators will continue to use it for their hunger.

(In all reality, their unmet needs are not much different from mine. I just refuse to steal autonomy though I suppose thats similar to what I was trying to do when I thought sharing my body meant someone would stay. Def not the same though… because it still left room for their no and I… was not allowed the final word over my body’s sacrament or the conditions in which I shared it.)