Marshmallows for Breakfast

by Dorothy Koomson

  Click. Some days I would tell myself it was just sex. I'd been lucky with Tobey because he was a man who respected me and loved me and treated me as though I was another human being. This time had just been different. It was just sex. Even as I was telling myself that, I knew it wasn't about sex. It was violence. It was hate. It was his rage that he'd pushed onto me and into me. Most days I wouldn't think about it at all. And even as I wasn't thinking about it I knew his rage had infected me.

  Click. College became a struggle. Socializing became a struggle. People became worried about me. My grades fell. I went to the doctor and he diagnosed depression. Told me I should drink less alcohol, eat more fruit and vegetables. “Take up exercise, as well, young lady,” he said. “Looking better will make you feel better.” Looking better? I wanted to say to him. I have no idea how I look because I haven't so much as glanced in a mirror in months. I cant bear to see myself. To see the words stupid embroidered into my features and victim carved into my eyes. I bucked up my ideas. Pulled off the biggest acting performance of a lifetime to finish college with a better-than- average degree and to let the world think I was normal.

  Click. The flashbacks began almost straight away. They take me back there, and I feel it all over my body. His voice in my head, his body next to mine, the terror in my heart. They haven't gone away but I've found that moving or doing something else or focusing on the present stops them in their tracks. I think—I hope—they'll go away one day.

  Click. I did have sex again. It was five years later and he was nobody special or important. He was like every other man since then: I'd date them for a while before things got physical. We'd always go out on dates to public places—never stay in—and I'd always let them know I didn't do sleep-overs. I always went home. I'd learned to drive in that time so I didn't drink and always drove home. When we did have sex I'd never remember it. I'd pretend to be there. I'd pretend to enjoy it. But I always switched off, stepped out, removed my mind so my body could go through with it.

  Will was different. I liked him. My body and mind responded to him. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted him to kiss me. I didn't do it because I was dating him and that's what you do when you date someone. I wanted him to touch me, to hold me, to kiss me. I wanted to make love to him. To have sex with him. Since I was twenty I hadn't responded to a man like that. Since that night, I hadn't known I was capable of wantingmy body to be that close to a man's. You can't tell people that, can you? You can't say: “I know that married man is special, that I do have a connection with him because for the last twelve years I've not had a man kiss me without me tuning out and pretending I like it. I know I love him because all of me wants him.”

  Click. Sometimes I would call the Samaritans and not say a word. I just needed someone to be there. So that I wouldn't go the other way. I wouldn't do it.

  Click. You asked me why I hate myself and I told you it's hard to explain. I'd sometimes say it out loud: “I hate myself.” I'd hate my body not because it was fat or thin or didn't fit clothes. But because something that had always been mine, something so precious—my body—had once been used by someone else. He'd taken it over and I hadn't been able to stop him. For those minutes it wasn't my body and I hated that. I'd hate myself—who I am—because I hadn't paid attention to all those signs that he was dangerous. I'd had a feeling I should just get the train home. I'd had a feeling that I should have hooked a chair under the door handle on the nonlocking door because there were only the two of us in the house. I'd had a feeling that someone who could watch my drink being spiked and do nothing wasn't 100 percent trustworthy. But I'd ignored all those feelings. I'd had them for a reason and I'd ignored them because I wanted to be polite. I put what someone else thought of me before what I knew would keep me safe.

  I don't hate myself constantly now. It's only every now and again. I don't say out loud that I hate myself anymore. And those feelings only come up every now and again, when I'm reminded of the two big mistakes I made. The second mistake was not asking for help earlier. Because if I had, the condition, which I got from him, might not have developed into PID. I may still have been able to have children.

  It's OK, though. I'm OK. I have my rough patches, like the moments when someone says or does something that reminds me of that time, but overall I'm OK.

  And that's it. The whole story.

  Kendra

  CHAPTER 48

  After about forty-nine minutes and forty-six seconds, I decided to not give Kyle any longer and moved towards the bedroom door.

  He could've read it three times by now. He was obviously hiding from me now that he knew the truth. Now that he knew he'd been hasty in his declaration that he would believe me.

  I stood in the doorway and watched Kyle. He was hunched over, his elbows resting on his knees, his face in his hands, his shoulders moving up and down, sobbing. I wanted to comfort him, to pull him close and tell him it would be OK.

  But it wouldn't. It couldn't.

  I froze as he dragged his hands down his face and ran the palms of his hands across his eyes. Then, slowly, like he was moving with a heavy heart, like he didn't want to do what he was about to do, he stood and turned to the door. He stopped when he saw me. Stopped, stared. His face was a mass of blotches, his eyes shot through with red, the tip of his running nose also a pinker shade of scarlet.

  “I, er,” he began, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “I was just going to splash some water on my face then come find you.”

  I said nothing, just moved farther into the room so I could put some distance between us. This was like standing in front of a firing line, waiting to be executed. This was like standing naked in the middle of a stadium under all the floodlights. This was like being a frightened person who had no armor because someone now knew everything there was to know about her.

  “I read it,” he said.

  “So now you know.”

  Kyle nodded. “I believe you.” He even made it sound convincing. “I believe you and the thought that you went through it alone …” He shook his head, bit his lower lip. “If you knew how much I care about you …”

  “Kyle, stop, you don't have to say that.”

  “I said I believe you.”

  “Oh, I see. Pity. Seriously, I don't need your pity,” I replied.

  “No, you need my friendship and understanding and support.”

  I didn't want him here. I'd been fine all this time on my own, keeping my secret, coping on my own. “I want to be alone.”

  “Don't try and shut me out, Kendra, it's not going to work. You're my best friend.”

  “I want to be alone. I'd like you to leave.”

  “I'm not leaving you, not now, not ever.”

  “Oh, great, another man who wants to force what he wants on me.”

  Kyle was stunned, his blotchy face reeled a little, then looked as if it was going to crumple again. I knew he'd leave then. I knew he'd realize that on top of everything I was a psycho. He was silent for a few seconds then said: “Tell me what happened to you. You never said it and we both know you have to fully acknowledge something before you can start to deal with it properly. Tell me what happened to you.”

  I shook my head in disbelief and looked away.

  “Tell me what happened to you,” he insisted.

  I tutted before looking back at him. “I've told you, or are you getting off on all this?”

  Kyle's face hardened, set like stone as he stared at me. “Tell me what happened to you.”

  “I've told you.”

  “Tell me what happened to you.”

  “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “Tell me what happened to you.”

  I ran my hands through my hair. I knew what Kyle wanted me to do. What he wanted me to say. And I couldn't. I just couldn't. If I did, I'd become a victim. In his eyes, in my eyes. The only thing I had left—how I defined myself— would be lost. And that was unacceptable to me.

  “Tell me what happened to you.”

>   “I can't.”

  Kyle took a few steps nearer to me, closed the distance between us. “You can, sweetheart, you can.” With him being closer to me I could see tears sitting at the bottom of his eyes. This was hurting him, too. And it hurt him because he believed me. He was the first person to do so without doubt. Sometimes even I didn't believe me. Sometimes I wondered if I'd got it mixed up. But Kyle believed me. Deep down I believed me. Now I had to acknowledge it. Believe and acknowledge it. I felt myself give it up. Give myself up to the past, give myself up to what happened.

  “Tell me what happened to you,” said Kyle gently.

  “I was raped.”

  THE WORKS

  CHAPTER 49

  What you do is you get better bit by bit, little by little, one day at a time.

  If you try to do it all at once it won't work. You'll fall back and you'll hate yourself. If you want to change long term, you have to do it slowly.

  Slowly I got better.

  Hadn't known how sick I was, how much I hurt until I let someone else see my wounds. Someone elses see. Kyle was the first. Gabrielle was the second. Will was the third. They all believed me.

  It sounds silly that I thought they might not. But all these years I never thought anyone would believe me. Especially since he wasn't a stranger who leapt out at me on the street. He had no knife or gun. I knew him. He was a friend. I'd let him kiss me once, people had regularly seen us together. How could I be sure that anyone would believe that what happened wasn't what I wanted? How could I be sure that anyone would believe him capable of doing that to me? Those were some of the many things that kept me silent. Kept me from telling anyone what he did to me. Now I discovered they would and did believe me. And I was free.

  At first, the others treated me differently, acted as though I would break, as if I needed to be protected from everything wrong in the world. They did it from love, it drove me mad.

  Kyle constantly asked me how I felt, Gabrielle rang me at all hours to chat, Will constantly said he'd use the last of his holiday allowance to come to England for two weeks to be with me. I didn't want them to act as though anything had changed. I was the same person they'd all met. They just knew another part of me.

  Summer and Jaxon were the ones who helped the most in the early days of accepting what had happened. The kids didn't know I'd been traumatized when I was younger and I doubt they would have treated me any differently if they had known. They would still have berated me for not letting them get burgers from certain joints; they would have still tried to eke out a few more minutes from bedtime; they would have told me I was silly for not realizing straight away that New Garvo was actually a kangaroo not a dog; they would have asked me why I was laughing when the wolf at the end of Little Red Riding Hood wasn't killed but was put in a time-out.

  My two children by proxy were like that. They were straightforward, they wanted nothing more than for me to be me.

  The others only annoyed me because I was still coming to terms with it myself. I was still accepting what those three words meant. I knew. I'd always known. But it wasn't until I said those three words out loud that I acknowledged what they meant about me. I could stop pretending it hadn't happened but suffering because it had. If there was one person I shouldn't be pretending with it was me. I had to accept everything that had happened to me. I was raped.

  Once I could say that to myself, I could admit I was powerless over what had happened to me all those years ago. But I was in absolute control, had absolute power over how I reacted to it. How I built my life around it. How I let it influence my every waking moment.

  I went into the pain and tried to get to the other side.

  I went to Gabrielle's chiropractor, I went for counseling, I sat staring into space, I curled up in my bed and hid from the world. It wasn't easy.

  Sometimes the hole in my throat would open up, the silence that had been stuffed into the core of who I was would expand, would become so large I couldn't breathe. The flashbacks would become so strong I'd panic myself into a near- catatonic state. It was terrifying. It was worth it. Every time it happened I knew I wasn't alone. I knew it was normal. I knew I wasn't the only person in the world to feel like this. I was normal. A bad thing had been done to me, but I was still normal. Kendra Tamale was normal. That was the biggest gift of telling my secret—I discovered I wasn't alone and I was normal.

  Will and I spoke or e-mailed every day. I missed him. I wanted to be with him, to lie curled up with him, to kiss him, to see his expression when we were talking about big things and about mundane things. We were still giddy at the thought of being together. He couldn't come to England because of his kids; I couldn't afford to go to Australia yet, but that didn't mean we couldn't do this until we could work out how to be together or it wasn't working anymore, whichever came first. He told me he loved me every day. I was cautious of saying it, but I'd shared something so monumental about me he knew how I felt. We were both free now—he was a single man, I had liberated myself of my secret. We only had to get over this physical distance and considering how far we'd come, what we'd been through to get here, it didn't feel like such an insurmountable hurdle.

  Gabrielle and I had a more honest relationship. She cried when I told her, said it wasn't my fault, and that I could talk to her at any time. But we never talked about our experiences. Not ever. We just got on with being friends and colleagues and there was a certain comfort in knowing that someone else knew me like I knew her.

  Kyle and I became close. Closer. We'd often meet for lunch on days when I wasn't picking up the kids; we'd sit up and talk late into the night; we planned outings with the children. I'd been wary of friends—people—for so many years, now I had a best friend living across the garden. I had my good friend Gabrielle and I had my long- distance love, Will, but because he was the first person to make me open up and to unequivocally believe me, Kyle became the best friend I'd ever had.

  TOASTED BAGEL & CREAM

  CHEESE

  CHAPTER 50

  I was an alcoholic mother. I can't breathe when I think about that.

  I cant breathe.

  What I put my children through. The amount of times I drove drunk. The amount of times I shouted at them because I was hungover. The amount of times I might have hurt them because I blacked out and my ex- husband told me how nasty I got. I have no memory of those times but they all do. I have committed a mountain of atrocities against my children. Against my family. Against who I am.

  It wasn't until I kidnapped my children—yes, I really did that—and I started drinking again that I realized who I was. What I was. I gave in. I stopped fighting. I stopped fighting the truth and hiding from the truth, and I came back here.

  I got it. For the first time I realized that I am powerless over alcohol. I am an alcoholic. I am like you. I used to sit in these rooms and think I wasn't like you. I wasn't that bad. I just liked a few drinks; I wasn't that bad. But I was. I am. I am an alcoholic.

  When I drank I was funny and pretty and I could talk to anyone, I thought I could cope with anything. That wasn't the reality at all. Everything was always someone else's fault when I was drinking. If my husband would just tell me he loved me more I wouldn't need to drink to boost my self- confidence. If my mother didn't nag I wouldn't have to drink to be able to speak to her. If my kids weren't so energetic I wouldn't need to drink to be able to keep up with them. If the people I worked for weren't so demanding I wouldn't take so long to finish my projects. It never occurred to me that it was the drinking that was stopping me from being able to function properly.

  The most important thing I can do now is get sober. Stay sober. That's number one for me at the moment. I've been going to at least one meeting a day every day. At first I thought that would be impossible, then I realized I found the time to drink every day, why shouldn't I be able to go to a meeting every day?

  And, when the time is right, and I'm sober, I can be the mother I want to be. But that's future thinking and
if there's anything I've learned it's that I've got to do this one day at a time. I never really understood that before. You simply decide to not drink one day at a time. Every day you make that commitment again. Sometimes it's one moment at a time because the urge is so strong. But I try to think, if I can make it through the next hour or next half hour or next minute without a drink I'll be OK. Or I'll call someone. I won't sit there and struggle. I get help. One day at a time.

  It's only now that I'm starting to see that I've been grieving these past few months. Grieving for the person I was when I drank. Don't get me wrong I don't want that back, but I found it hard to know who I was without my liquid self- confidence. But you know what? I remember what my son's imaginary friend is called. I know that my daughter thinks that Weetabix tastes like marshmallows when you have it for breakfast on a Saturday. Not any other day, just Saturday. I know my daughter won't wake up in the middle of the night having nightmares about me throwing up on her because earlier on she got a whiff of alcohol on me. I know my son won't ever have to stand over me, scared because I've passed out and he can't wake me up. I go to work and I don't have to swim through a brain fog to be able to concentrate.

  One of the most painful things is that my ex- husband is dating again. Nothing serious, but he's a good man, it won't be long before he meets someone special. I thought he had, but they're just friends. It kills me to think of him with someone else. Kills me. But it's good, too. It hurts, but I'm not using it as an excuse to drink. I have a bad day and I have to live it. I have a good day and I have to live it. I get to experience the world for real. I get to experience the world as me—not hungover me or drunk me. Just plain old Ashlyn.

  Today is my first sober birthday. One year without a drink. I thought it'd have got easier by now, but the urge never truly leaves you. My ex- husband wanted to bring the children and come spend the day with me. We'd go out and celebrate, he said. And he'd come to this meeting to be with me. Yes, even though we're divorced. But I said no. Their lives, my children's lives, have been enough about my drinking and my getting sober. The next time I see them I just want to be celebrating being with them. Because I'm their mum. I can't wait until I can go home to them.