Bite Your Tongue, Carol

"Bite your tongue, Carol,"

That's what you all told me,

Trying to silence me into shame,

Because you were too blind to see his game,

And I?

Am I not human?

Was there any need to protect him?

Why should I hide behind this wall of shame?

"Stop Lying, Carol,"

Do you have any idea what it felt like

For a seven-year-old girl to feel his hands touching

her in private places of her body that should have been

forbidden?

Innocence, lost!

An entire childhood, wasted!

And I was innocent

Just as I was when I told you the truth,

Only for you to silence me,

Once more;

Hiding me in the shadows,

Concealing his disgusting behaviour;

Virginity ruined,

Stolen from me,

A me that was too young;

A child who should have been protected from the wrong-doing

of that dirty, selfish man!

Go on,

Go ahead;

Blame it on his problems,

I was just a child,

But his filthy problem was never my fault;

A child is always unaccountable for the filth of

non-consensual or consensual sexual contact;

Yes!

I said that dirty word,

Dirty to the eyes of the adults who don't believe it

Because they never saw it.

You will never understand the shame,

the guilt, or the filth that a child feels about her body,

Growing up with such trauma;

You never heard my tears,

Or felt the bile rise in my stomach

Every time he touched me;

Sometimes it happened in front of other people,

Those who claimed that they loved me!

Those who walked around with their eyes shut,

Pretending to be blind,

Acting as if nothing happened;

As if they never saw it!

"Why didn't you speak out, Carol?"

"Why didn't you tell us?"

I was seven years old!

Scared,

Terrified,

I was too young to understand that what he was doing to me was wrong!

But you!

You were adults;

Old enough to know that what he was doing was wrong!

Old enough, but not responsible enough to speak out for me;

Oh no!

I was faced with being hit, being threatened and being called a lier when

I finally spoke out.

Have you any idea how long I have lived with this torment?

I am almost in my fifties.

Yet;

I am still suffering,

Still living with the nightmares, and still remembering what he did.

Go ahead!

Tell me that I shouldn't remember, because I was only young back then;

I may have been young,

But my heart and mind still remembers

It makes me sick,

To have those memories playing in my mind,

Like ugly old films in my mind,

On show,

In the Cinema for everyone to see,

It makes me want to vomit,

Thinking of him seeing me naked,

Touching me,

like a toy;

I could say,

"I didn't say that out loud,"

Carol's no longer biting her tongue;

This is my truth,

My story to tell

Silenced no more,

As I stand tall,

Shouting loud and proud.