Nearly two years ago, I wrote my final goodbye letter in my childhood diary, the light pink pages growing a deep magenta with my tear stains. That day, I wrote the story of a victim. Today, I write the story of a survivor.

 

I remember rolling my eyes every time in therapy when they told me to change and that healing was possible. To me, it felt like those lies that parents told their kids to give them hope. As far as I was concerned, my healing was about as real as the tooth fairy. What annoyed me even more was when I heard people around me talk about how “healed” they were. It was like those classmates I’d had in elementary school who would talk about how they saw Santa Claus the night before. I began to grow tired of the war in my mind that seemed endless. When you’re struggling for so long, you eventually just give in to the drowning. I really did try to stay above water, but remembering what he had done to me all those years ago pulled me back under, and this time I realized I couldn’t fight anymore.

 

After the memories came flooding back to me, memories I’d long repressed but had slipped through the cracks like tar into my nightmares, I decided this was it. It wasn’t in my hands anymore, the decision had been in the hands that had done unspeakable things to me years and years ago. It felt as though his hands were guiding mine when I decided to attempt to take my life for the final time. As I was writing my final goodbye, apologizing to my loved ones for what I, no he, had done, I realized something that changed my life forever. He may have taken away the safety in my own skin, the youth in my eyes, but I couldn’t let him take the pulse in my veins. I could not let him win again.

 

The ride to the hospital with my mom was cold and empty, the hospital even more so. For the time I was there, I was determined to expel the flood of darkness he had breathed in me. So, I started to write. I wrote in crayons when I wasn’t allowed pencils, pages, and pages of everything that haunted me. Even after my time inpatient, I continued to write. When all was on paper, the world felt dark and miserable. So, I continued to write, but this time, I wrote about the good. My mom’s laugh, my new puppy’s loving eyes. The world began to be in color and bright again.

 

 I decided to fill my life with what made me happy. I continued writing; the bad and the good. I threw myself into my hobbies and passions, as I realized that the good wouldn’t just come to me; I had to seek it out. I fell in love with film, more specifically the power I held to be able to tell stories. The crayon writings from the hospital became adapted to my first script for my first ever film, and it felt like youth was returned to my eyes. Not only that, but I saw how much my story, the story of that little girl forced to become a survivor, helped others. From that first film, I decided that this is how I would take back my life; I would create beauty out of the ugly parts of life through my work and inspire others to rediscover the light in the world. I will reclaim not only my life but the life of that little girl who lives inside me.

 

 I cannot change my past, and I cannot let myself forget it, but I can change my future and the story I tell: my story, not his. The story of a survivor, not a victim.