calmly_toward_dark Haymarket Prologue of sorts: It's been almost 20 years. Basically two-thirds of my life. Mr Sanders died of a heart attack late in the fall of 1995, about a month before Christmas of my grade six year. For the seven months or so leading to his death (with a two-month hiatus in the summer) Mr Sanders had been ushering myself and my friend Lisa into cleaning rooms, maintenance sheds and classrooms in order to violently rape us and force us to perform acts of a crudely sexual nature. It's something that I don't talk about often. No one in my family knows. Only a few of my friends know — and even they don't know all the details. I've been going to therapy on a semi-regular basis for the last seven years and it was only recently that I was able to tell my therapist. I haven't talked about it because for the longest time I didn't know how. I didn't want to tell my parents because I thought they would blame themselves. I didn't want to tell my friends because I was hurt and humiliated. And I sure as hell wasn't about to tell the school. What was the point? The bastard was dead. What would it accomplish? I'm still hesitant to reveal any details to too many people because Lisa is not well. She always said that she would kill herself if anyone found out. I was and am certain she was serious. She told her best friend Carly when we were teenagers and as far as I know, she told no one else. Just last year, she managed to tell her older brother — who like Lisa had had a tough home life growing up and was never what you'd call a stable human being — and he promptly committed suicide. It was then that I decided I needed to tell some people who were close to me. No one that I knew at the time and certainly no one in my family, but some people who are close to me now. I also brought it up in therapy for the first time. I find now that writing about it helps. Up until now, these writings were scattered and difficult to follow. They were often written in such an emotional state, that they make little sense. This is my attempt to tell my story and how it continues to affect me to this day — almost 20 years later and well into my adult life. Details of the events are still sketchy in my head. My brain has attempted to protect me by banishing a lot of the memories and I'm just now remembering much of what happened. Any conversational elements of the story are from memory. The understandable hang-ups that go with that are to be kept in mind. I don't think I'm shattering anyone's constitution when I say that rape is terrible. There is nothing more violating or invasive. Nothing more personal. The pain you feel as a rape victim reverberates far beyond the physical pain of unwanted penetration. It makes you feel like an object. Like a piece of used toilet paper. It makes you feel worthless. Like you don't deserve to live. It fills you with hate beyond which is otherwise imaginable. It makes you feel forever inadequate and empty. I would hazard to guess that there's not a rape victim on the planet that hasn't contemplated ending their life — perhaps daily. The events that transpired in 1995 have shaped every aspect of my being. They made me who I am in a lot of ways, and although some of those characteristics are positive, I never go more than a few minutes without thinking about Mr. Sanders and Lisa. It's driven me to the edge of death and has affected every relationship I've ever had. I'm not really sure what writing about it will accomplish, but I know it needs to be written — and someone needs to read it. Chapter 1 - In the Pines: Have you ever thought about killing yourself? I think most of us probably have at some point or another — even if it wasn't a serious or sustained thought. After all, sometimes life piles on and that thought crosses your mind: What if it were all over? The vast majority, however, have not attempted to commit suicide. For most people, it stops with the singular thought, followed by a second: Fuck, that would be stupid. I wish I could say that, but I can't. I seriously consider suicide on an almost daily basis. No matter how well things may be going, the thought will always cross my mind. I'm damaged goods. I wasn't always this way. Up until I was 10, my life was pretty normal. I was an only child, my parents split up when I was five and I lived the majority of the time with my father who worked at a nearby nuclear power plant. I saw my mother — who lived a few towns over where she worked as a secretary for a mid-level real estate lawyer — every other weekend. My parents' divorce was apparently a rough one. My mother cheated on my father with a much older man and eventually she moved out. I remember the day she left. It was a Saturday and my dad was at work. I actually helped my mother and my uncle move her out. I remember being sad, but it was by no means traumatic. Despite the harm it did to both of my parents, they managed to shelter me from the wreckage pretty well — at least at first. The prospect of my family splitting apart never bothered me that much. I mean, I certainly wasn't the only kid going through it. It's not exactly a rarity these days, after all. I grew up in a village called Newcastle in Southern Ontario — maybe an hour east of Toronto just off of the lake. Its proximity to much larger urban areas made it seem bigger than it was, but Newcastle itself housed only about 6,000 people. I attended the town's only public elementary school which was just down the street from my house. I entered my grade five year in the fall of 1994 — just shy of my tenth birthday. I was bullied a lot in school. I was never the most outgoing or assertive child — that combined with being smaller than most boys my age led to a near-constant stream of name-calling, mild beatings and teasing. Although the bullying upset me, it was never the type of thing that would cause long-term psychological damage — aside from maybe a little extra angst in the coming teenage years. But in the fall of 1994, things started to change. The bullying, for whatever reason, intensified and I would often find myself dreading recess and lunchtime for worry of getting tormented by my classmates. The school I attended had a massive courtyard that stretched out for more than an acre of grassy fields and was fenced in at the back. On the other side of the fence was a small stretch of woodland — mostly pine trees. In order to avoid getting harassed, I used to sneak to the back of the courtyard and shimmy through a small hole in the fence. Kids weren't as heavily supervised in schools back then as I gather they are now. The one or two teachers on lunch duty were usually too busy up closer to the school to notice my escapes. It helped that there was a tennis court and a series of portables to dodge behind. I'd spend most of my recesses and lunchtimes wandering around the pathways in the woods. I was usually very careful not to get caught doing this knowing I would very likely get suspended if I was spotted. If no opportunity to escape presented itself, I would brave the assholes. I should clarify; it wasn't that I had no friends. I did. I just didn't spend a ton of time with them at school. I think they preferred that. My friends were almost universally "cooler" than me and to be seen with me often in the school yard would have very likely lowered their social status. Either way, I wasn't about to invite any of my friends on my secret recess excursions. They were for me and me alone. But one day I broke my rule: and of course, it was for a girl. I started to like girls at an earlier age than most of my friends. I can remember having crushes on girls as early as grade two when most boys my age still thought they were gross. That fall, I started to develop a bit of a crush on a girl named Lisa. Lisa was innocently pretty. She dressed very plainly and very girly. Her face was pale and cherub-like and was dotted with faint freckles that sat idly underneath her light blue eyes. She had light brown hair that laid pin-straight down to her shoulders. She had very defined dimples and spoke with a slight speech defect that came off as more endearing than handicapping. It almost made her sound like she had an accent of some kind — maybe British. Lisa occupied a similar social stratum as I did — although she was picked on much more than I was. The stereotypical image of a bully is almost always male, but I think girls were worse. At least that's always the impression I had. I formed that impression based on the regular treatment received by Lisa. She had attended the school as long as I had, but she and I never ended up in the same class until grade five when we were sat next to each other — at which point we became instant friends. We bonded over our mutual disdain for most of the kids at the school and our mutual love for animals — mainly cats, dogs and horses although we were indiscriminate. We started hanging out at recess and a few weeks into the school year I decided to show her my ritual of escaping from the school grounds. As it would happen, the very first time I tried to sneak someone out with me, we were caught. The man who caught us wasn't a teacher — it was the school's janitor and groundskeeper, Mr Sanders. He caught us in the most distant corner of the schoolyard behind a row of portables. I was trying to push Lisa over the top rung of the fence when Mr Sanders' voice boomed from a portable window. "Whatcha doin' there," the voice thundered from the abyss. The words startled us so much that we both jumped, causing Lisa to fall back on to me. I managed, by some wobbly miracle, to stay on my feet, but Lisa wasn't so lucky. She fell awkwardly and crumpled into the ground in pain. She let out a quiet yelp and remained on the ground grasping her ankle. Mr Sanders emerged from the portable's back door and rushed to Lisa's side. "Are you alright? I didn't mean to startle you." He was a stout man with thin blonde hair that was starting to turn white. The thinness of his hair was not mirrored in the rest of his physical being. His stomach, his arms, his legs, his neck, even his fingers were thick — so thick that it stretched his skin to a pale state of tautness. He had small eyes that were friendly and smiled constantly, even when his mouth was indifferent. Even as he was showing genuine concern for my fallen friend's well-being, his eyes were lit like a Christmas tree. "I think I'm okay," Lisa managed to say while rubbing her ankle. She wasn't badly hurt. I stood a few feet away, convinced that a long string of detentions awaited us in the coming days. "What were you two doing out here?" he scolded, sounding a bit sterner now that Lisa was standing again. "You're not supposed to be here." My ass was tingling — the way it does when you know you've screwed up. "We were just..." "Trying to escape?" said Mr Sanders, cutting me off with a laugh. "Don't worry about it, I've seen you going back there before. You're Travis, right?" "Yeah. Sorry Mr. Sanders," I said sheepishly. Mr Sanders was beloved in the school by everyone. Every kid knew him by name. He was always smiling and joking with the students and constantly radiated a jolliness that Santa Claus can barely match. Every Christmas, he would put on a skit with a couple of the teachers that would have everyone — students and staff alike — in stitches. "Why do you go back there?" He asked. "You planning on taking your friend with you this time?" "I don't know, I just don't like recess." "Don't like recess? Well you might be the first! What's the problem with recess?" Lisa decided to answer — she was much more assertive than me in the face of authority. She's been a big influence on me in that way. "Because the kids in this place are pieces of shit," she said, unflinchingly. My eyes shot to Mr Sanders expecting him to be angry. Instead he laughed — hard. "Wow. You've got some fire in you, don’t you?" he said through a meandering giggle. As I said before, the details are hazy, but I remember what he said next word-for-word. "I can understand seeking refuge in the pines. Trees are more forgiving." He invited us into the empty portable. "Come hang out with me for a bit and you guys can tell me all about the pieces of shit." Lisa and I laughed uncomfortably and followed him up the portable steps. I'd never heard any adult at the school talk like that. We both thought that made him the coolest person we knew. From that point on, the refuge we once sought in the woods was replaced by hanging out with Mr Sanders in different classrooms and portables while he cleaned at lunch. 121220 ... Haymarket Chapter 2 - A Dense Ball of Matter I was setting forth a plan. One night, after the last of the bustle had crept down from its hard boil to a soft simmer, I began to realize the hell that was about to set in. It happened every night. Sometimes I had to be alone, but most of the time, even the feeblest of company was necessary. Unfortunately, many nights were like this one — spent alone, save the cats. There were two of them and they were hungry now and still skittish from a raucous thunder storm that was still winding its way down. They were near-identical twin sisters — white and grey with black stripes — and one of them lingered across my feet, leaving only the faintest brush against the hair on my legs. The plan was simple: Do whatever you have to in order to quell the binding. "The binding" was what I had started to call it. It wasn’t always painful, although sometimes it was, but it was always there. It was like the universe had decided my solar plexus was just the place for a brand new shiny black hole — an endless vacuum which pulled and pulled and pulled on my ribs and lungs and spine. I imagine it's what most people call heartbreak. It's similar, I guess, but more persistent and never really gone. The binding was doing its best to pull me toward my own centre on this night. I sat at my steel computer desk, hunched over on the verge of tears. I tried to pull against it and straighten myself, but my confused muscles refused to cooperate. A light breeze would have caused me to sob uncontrollably. Nothing made the binding go away. In fact, it was often hard to tell what caused it in the first place. Of course, I knew what was causing it, but I was refusing to let it display itself. At particularly bad times, the binding was a manifestation of the feeling I got when Mr Sanders would touch Lisa. When he would touch me. When he would make me watch as he fucked Lisa. When he'd make touch her. When he would fuck me. What made it so effective at completely demobilizing me was the fact that it seemed to be rooted in the same strand of feelings as intense love. It came from the same place and had many similar traits. That night nothing worked. I gathered myself enough to pick up my guitar. This sometimes had an effect. The smell of the finely-manipulated mahogany and the ability for me to clumsily strum at the strings while still bent around the binding seemed to distract me. Maybe I'd write a few lines in one of my underused Moleskins. I'll form a G chord and string together a melody with near-nonsensical words describing the blood on my hands after Sanders would guide my fingers up into Lisa. I'll get the same urge to vomit that I did at the time and quickly abandon that. Soon I wouldn't be playing the guitar so much as it would be holding me into shape and preventing me from completely shrivelling into a dense ball of pure matter — ready to explode into a supernova any second. I decide thinking at all is the last thing I should be doing, so I return the guitar back to its resting place, leaning against a wall beside my desk. I force myself to push back against gravity and then quickly give in to it again by falling into the adjacent couch. Maybe some mindless sitcom will soften the edges. Bad idea. Of course, the storyline of said thoughtless sitcom revolves around a janitor. Why wouldn't it? Seems about my luck. Of course, I likely would have found any small reason to allow myself to be taken prisoner by the binding again. I found myself back up, sitting on the edge of the cushion, hunched around my treacherous inward gravitational pull. That was it. That was enough. I stood up with blurred vision, obscured by tears and exhaustion. I walked into the kitchen and grabbed the seven-inch carving knife from its wooden block. With one fluid motion, I swung it around in my hand with my fingers and pointed it at the binding. I gripped the handle with my left hand and placed my right, palm down, on the butt of the handle. I brought the steel point to my skin and allowed it to depress a dimple right underneath the center of my ribcage. I was shaking. Not from fear, but from the sheer effort needed to hold myself up. All of my emotional energy was focused on this tiny ball in my chest and the job of the carving knife was to eradicate it once and for all. It all made sense. Cut it out and it'll be gone. I'll be dead, but fuck me if that wouldn't be a relief. Fuck me if it wouldn't stop the constant cycling of my mind. Just do it. Thrust that steel blade in until it hits the spine. Skewer that black, cancerous ball of lead and imagine it bleeding out right along with me. I was 27. It felt like maybe that was enough 130418 what's it to you? who go blather from