You learn more from pain than you do from pleasure. I have learned this over the time I’ve walked the Earth. It’s one of those lessons you learn after you get kicked down, except you have to be kicked down over and over again before you learn something. It’s easier to hurt than it is to heal.

I have learned more from the pain I have experienced than I have from the pleasure. Unfortunately, I am a slow learner. My smile was too open. My body was a gateway. My hands never held such a strength. I was taught to say no but I was never taught that one day someone would not listen. I was never taught how to open up about something that made me feel so shameful. I buried everything in the pit of my stomach. You could see my pain in the bags that hung dark and hollow below my eyes. It takes time to forgive yourself, especially for something you could not control.

My body starts to shake. I am lying in her bed trying my hardest not to wake her. I’ve had one of those dreams again. The dreams that make it seem like it’s happening again. My breathing is erratic at this point. I am trying to calm myself down but I can’t stop seeing his venomous smile through tears. My hands close into fists against my chest. I bite my lip so hard I begin to bleed. I cannot see anymore. I cannot hear anything but white noise. I feel numb. I want to dissolve. I am counting down from ten when I feel gentle arms pulling me against a warm chest.

Her hands snake around my waist and I feel her warmth radiating into my bones. Soft lips ghost over my bare shoulder and cold fingers grip my balled fists. Wisps of her hair fall against my cheek. When she touches me everything stops. All the noise between my ears and behind my eyes, the ailments you would never see from the outside, it all stops. I am coming back to Earth. I am leaving the space between places. This is what healing feels like.

There is something potentially heartbreaking about branding a human as your home. At any given moment you could be alone again. I still panic about that sometimes. I panic about the lonely. I don’t desire to render my body back to the times where it was winter all year. I don’t want to feel like I was floating inside of my skin. I don’t want to be so hollow. She is here now and I am constantly expecting her to leave and let me drown again. She swears she loves me. That is all that I have. It is what keeps me rooted to the ground. She is home and I am safest with her.

I have a fear of cemeteries. It isn’t a real fear like spiders or snakes, but it is a fear that I have adopted. My girlfriend’s house is plotted against one. She resides just by the village of the dead where I wished my soul would leave my body so I could stop hurting. I cannot explain my fear to her. She’s never asked but I can’t help but wonder if she’s trying to protect herself more than me. Either way, I am thankful I only have to relive these terrors in my head and not out loud.

When I think back to the days I pit myself up against a boy whose hands felt like Hercules, back to the days my body belonged to someone else, I burn with hatred for the world. I burn with hatred for myself. It took me a very long time to realize my body belonged to me. When I think about those times now, I cringe. When I see his face in the school hallways I still go into panic mode. It is hard to ignore someone who made themselves so crucial to your existence.

I met him when I was too naïve to realize that love was not a yes game and that if I said no there would be no consequences. I recall every word that dripped from his mouth, every message that was sent to me with daggers, everything stays ingrained in my brain like a nightmare I am always stuck in. I remember the times he forced me against the frozen cemetery ground. I remember every tombstone I was hurled against. I remember every bruise and every cut. I remember all the blood. I still feel all the pain. I am still trying to heal.

I am constantly trapped inside my head. I’m always thinking. It is harder for me to communicate. I often think that is why he came after me for so long. I couldn’t open my mouth and relax long enough to tell someone what he’d done to me over and over for three years. I’d take buses to hospitals for rape kits to protect my parents from knowing. I didn’t want them to know. My skin felt so animal and so wild. How can you tell your parents, who raised you to be the so kind and gentle, who vowed to protect you from all harm? How can you tell them that you let this go on for years and didn’t seek help from someone who could protect you?

My girlfriend holds me on her lap. She pulls my hands open, holds them in hers, and she whispers that I am safe. I cannot tell you the last time I heard this and believed it. Outside there are birds singing in the cemetery, the holy land of the deceased and decaying that I once wished to bury myself alive in. I can still recite names off of tombstones from fractured memory. It is a gateway to the place between spaces. I am here now and that’s what matters. I am safe. I am loved. I am home.