A Damaged Girl

This week, I came upon a moving entry from one of my favorite bloggers who I recently found, CCG at Confessions of a College Callgirl.

She spoke about a subject in her post entitled "Sick and Sad" which is close enough to my heart to have nearly ripped it from my chest.

The above is a piece of my original photo-art, entitled, of all things, "Damaged Girl".
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She, like I, was wounded at a young age with abuse and has all of her life lent upon the unsteady flow of attention from men to keep her bruised ego floating on the surface of her problems. She wrote the most touching blog entry which got me thinking in a far more personal way (as if my sexual life weren't personal enough) than I usually do for this blog. She, in many ways, is my mirror image.

Even with all of the joy in my life and even though I know I'm living the life I was meant to, it still mangles my heart when I think of all of the sorrow I've endured on the way to my life now. My life is beautiful most of the time, but there's still pain.

I have been the first to admit that Im a severely wounded person. Physically, emotionally, chemically, sexually and all other ways possible. Its been a hard road to the point of understanding that not everything in life is supposed to be like the beautiful films they make in Hollywood.

My mother told me that in life you can be and do anything you want to in life and that happiness is everywhere you look; the next day I was raped, and all this at only age thirteen.

I feel like I have to put up colored screens in front of my emotions, just so people will like me. I'm the sunny girl that everyone knows who would do just about anything for a friend. I bake cookies and cakes and sing and dance and act and paint. I smile and giggle and walk with a bounce that makes my ponytail sway and sometimes I want to hurl myself off of the 17th Street Causeway Bridge and drown.

The charade can only go on for so long before it begins to break.

Its hard to be so honest and dark when every waking hour is spent trying to convince yourself that everything is ok.

I've tried to keep this blog light and sexy and carefree because thats what people want to read...right?

I'm and intelligent, loving, pretty, education oriented young woman and God help me when my mind starts to stray to the sadder parts of my memory banks. I've spent so much time and energy doing things that increase my self-formed conception of my eality and it hurts so much to know that most of my self esteem has been rested in the palms of the countless strangers I've allowed to sully the sanctity of my body.

A glance from a man I'll never see again has meant more than any platitude given to me by a best friend. Its such an awful circle. I don't give compliments easily because somewhere I have the sick misconception that somehow it will deplete my stores of the ego bolstering compliments I myself have received.

Think of all the moments I'll never get back because of my insecurity about my body, my perception of my levels of popularity and desire. My thoughts mirror those of CCG's so closely that it aches far too much to even go back over what she's posted so I can relate my own side on all of it.

All of my relationships have been made in an effort to kindle the never-ending longing for love and companionship Ill never truly feel because deep down I loathe all men because I've seen their most brutal and disturbing side in the faces of nameless criminals who have defiled and bruised me. How could I love someone who resembles my biggest nemesis?

I seduce all of my male friends to give them just a taste that will keep them at my side like weeping puppies, jut for the satisfaction it gives me. The most fearful part of this detail is that its become a sad addiction of sorts, completely beyond my control, like a subconscious neural reflex. I hurt them first so they don't have the chance to hurt me back, and so continues the vicious circle of insane reciprocity.

I hope that somehow and in some way that eventually I'll find a way to cull these pains, but until then I wander ceaselessly like a love-starved infant. How can I start to build my own identity outside of the unfulfilling momentary acceptance I get from countless, meaningless exchanges?

With each glance and with each fumbled tryst I lose more and more of myself, where will it end, if ever?

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