When I was five I walked out of a funeral home with parts of me rotting. I had not been consumed by grief or heartbreak, but by disgust and confusion. Images of hands and hiding under chairs and confused forced laughter played over and over again in my mind. I didn’t understand, but I felt wrong, my body felt like a sign flashing ‘GROSS’ in big bright lights. Yet, no matter how horrid I felt, I couldn’t open my mouth. I couldn’t let the truth out. I didn’t know if it really was wrong or not. I was five. He was fifteen. What did I know? Maybe he was the one stricken with grief and heartbreak. After all, it was his father’s funeral we were at.
Three years later I left the bathroom on the second floor of my home aching. My skin burned and I wanted to tear it away. I stood at the top of the stairs, my knuckles white while I gripped the railing. Downstairs laughter and music erupted, I watched in silence as my family members hugged and kissed and danced. I watched as he hugged and smiled and danced. A churning sensation rose in my stomach, my acid boiled and bubbled. I lurched forward and sprung my hand to my mouth before running back into that bathroom.
I didn’t go back in there for a year. It smelled of vomit and sweat. His sweat.
Throughout the years he never stopped. His hands always found their way to my skin, always found a way to burn my flesh. Until I was fourteen and he had been dead for a year, I spent my life pulling away my skin under boiling water during showers. I tore through my arms and legs trying to cut him away. My nights were dark and restless, haunted by heavy brown eyes.
Fourteen was when I learned that ghosts don’t need breath to suffocate you. They don’t need bodies to hold you down. He had been gone for a full year, yet somehow I still felt his shadow slip into my bed at night. His absence wasn’t a relief, it was a question mark. A sick riddle with no answer. Would he have stopped? Would anyone have ever known? Did anyone already know? Would this have been all my life? Could I have escaped?
During my sophomore year of high school, health class became more than just menstruation and disease. That was when we really started talking about sex. The first time I sat in that room, listening to my teacher and volunteer speakers preach boundaries and the word ‘no’ as if they were magic fixes. As if those simple things were all you needed. All I needed. I remember, sitting in that cold hard chair, thinking how stupid it all was.
Then, another kid raised their hand, “What if saying ‘no’ doesn’t work?”
I froze.
Part of me was glad someone else asked the question while another part was filled with that same churn in my stomach. That question became a whole new conversation. I couldn’t move. I sat in my painful chair, my stomach aching and my head throbbing. I stayed quiet, drawing shaky flowers in the margins of my notebook as if maybe, if I made something delicate enough, I’d stop feeling like a fire wrapped in skin.
Days like this never end. There will always be a book or a speech or a question that goes too far into detail or reveals more than is comfortable. I always stay though. I never walk out. I listen, no matter how uncomfortable, and I answer. I responded calmly and collected. I’m smart, wise, and mature. But maturity wasn’t something I earned; it was something I bled into.
Healing isn’t gentle. It doesn’t arrive with light or sudden clarity. It comes in fragments, like glass I have to crawl across just to feel real again. Some days I still feel like I’m bleeding invisibly, but I keep walking. I write. I breathe. I remember. Not because I want to, but because forgetting feels like forgiving, and I’m not ready for that. No matter how painful, I don’t think I ever want to forget. Because if I forget, how can I speak? How can I take back the things he took from me?
He took years from me. Stole birthdays, summers, songs I used to love, my own skin. But he didn’t take everything. He didn’t take my voice. Not forever.
I’m using it now. And maybe someone else will hear it, and maybe they won’t feel alone like I did, maybe they’ll share their story too.
Author’s Note:
This piece is about resilience. It’s about experiencing something at a young age and throughout your life and how that can ruin a person. It’s about bringing to light an uncomfortable but necessary conversation. I wrote this piece not only to share my own feelings and experience, but to hopefully let others know they’re not alone.
Leo Catalano | 16 | Bloomington, MN | @li0n.mann on Instagram
