Prologue

I have intended to write about her for a long time. I created this fake account under a pseudonym months ago to tell the stories that have left me scarred for over 5 years. Although I’m a writer and a storyteller, I have no intention of crafting these stories into a compelling narrative. The intent is not for these stories to be read. The intent is therapy.

Writing has always been my therapy. For a shy, introverted, fat child from a small farm town in the middle of nowhere writing things and asking others to read them has been my way of screaming out to the world:

I’m here! Would someone fucking listen to me!

Being listened to is not what these stories are about. They are about reliving the trauma one last time, putting it into writing, letting the memories escape into the ether, and if all goes according to plan leaving my mind forever.

I have tried so many things to move past the PTSD. I threw away everything that could remind me of her. I scrubbed all of my social media. I wrote stories about how much I hated her and the terrible things she did to me while we were together. Hell, I even let my dog chew up the stuffed animals she gave me as presents. But I’ve never just let all of it go. I’ve never let out the good along with bad. I’ve never told the full story (or at least the parts that have stuck with me all these years later) and I think that’s why so many of these things are still in my mind.

I’m not sure if this goes for other people, but for me there is something special about writing memories down. Once something has been put on paper or nowadays a computer screen, the space it occupied in my brain tends to be freed up.

I noticed this when I went back through some of my old writings. I would write stories about stuff that happened to me fifteen years in the past and when I went back to read them a few years later, I was shocked by the details I no longer remembered. I held onto those details for 15+ years, yet two years later they seemed foreign to me. That is exactly what I’m hoping for now.

So here I am, on a Saturday morning. My goal is to write it all out over the course of a few hours or the entire weekend if necessary. I’ve shut off all the lights in my apartment and drawn the shades so no light is visible. I’ve stocked the fridge with enough food, water, and booze to make it through the weekend with out leaving again. I will do my best not to waste time editing and formatting, something I’m already struggling to resist writing this prologue. I will do my best to just let it fucking flow.