My Cell

TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual Abuse

This darkness is a prison

My heart and mind and body

Are trapped inside with no key in sight

My eyes have yet to see anything but blackness

My ears have yet to hear anything but this deafening silence

My heart has yet to feel anything but this pain

Why does my mouth stay shut

Why does my heart not express

Why do I not break this silence

They do not know

But I cannot tell them

I am only a body

I can feel his fingers

I can feel his breath

But I sit there frozen

The only thing I see are the terrors of my mind

The only thing I hear are the screams that I held in for so long

The only thing I feel is his hands all over me

But no one else sees these terrors

No one hears my screams

No one has felt his hands

But they are not in my cell

They are not bound to this darkness

They are not in search of the key

The Story Behind the Poem

This is the first poem I ever wrote about my experience of being abused by my dad as a little girl and not being able to talk about it. I didn’t write this until the spring semester of my sophomore year of college when I was 18 years old. By that time, I had finally told my family about the abuse that had gone on for so many years. I was finding my voice, and it was so painful, but extremely freeing.

I had never expressed the way it felt to be abused in a house full of people who could have helped if they had just known what was going on. I had never expressed what it felt like to never talk to anyone about the abuse except my abuser. It truly was a prison, one that I felt trapped in even after telling my family, and even after the abuse had stopped.

I was so lonely and pushing down so much pain. I was able to suppress my trauma to a point of almost forgetting it, but I never quite forgot it. It would sneak back in and cause me to stumble through the everyday things of life, and no one knew why I was emotional, why I was sensitive, why I was closed off.

After I told my family about the abuse, the trauma I had suppressed and the emotions I had bottled up all wanted to come out at once. These were things I didn’t let myself deal with for years, then suddenly, I had to face them. Learning to process and feel the pain from the abuse I had endured and also trying to function at the same time was extremely difficult.

I had just escaped this prison of silence and abuse, then I was tossed into this prison of PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). I was an 18-year-old who was working part-time, going to college full-time, and also trying to have a social life, that in itself was already a lot. Doing those things while also dealing with PTSD felt like a whole different type of prison.

When I tried to go to work and focus on those tasks, when I went to class or tried to do homework, when I was hanging out with friends or at an event, the trauma would show up. Everywhere I went, everything I did, the trauma had a way of manifesting itself. I would experience flashbacks of the abuse, I would experience triggers that caused my brain to hyper-focus on the abuse, or I would be sent into panic attacks because my body suddenly went into fight mode after something reminded me of my abuse. Even though the abuse itself was over, the effects lingered in my life and left me feeling trapped.

Back then, it really felt like there was no bright side. I was finally not living in the same household as my abuser, but I still hadn’t really experienced much healing. There were so many transitions that I had to make and so many changes going on, it was overwhelming and a lot of the time I felt pretty hopeless.

When I wrote that poem, it was one of the first times I realized I could write something that didn’t have a happy ending. I could actually just express how I felt and what I had been through, and that was enough. I didn’t have to dress it up and make it look cute.

I honestly felt like I spent my whole life trying to make sure other people were okay and no one was inconvenienced, hurt, or uncomfortable. Talking about abuse isn’t comfortable, but there I was, writing a poem about abuse and sharing it in my poetry class. It didn’t matter if it made other people uncomfortable, because I needed to share it.

There was something very therapeutic and healing about allowing myself to recognize that what I had been through was hard. Writing about how painful it was, how lonely it was, how hopeless it was, and telling the story of feeling trapped and silenced and not feeling the need to lessen how bad it was, I had never done that until I wrote that poem.

It’s sort of funny looking back because I thought that this poem was so vague and that people might not even know that I was talking about abuse. When I shared this poem in class, my classmates told me their interpretations and what they thought about it, and people clearly knew what it was about.

My professor reached out to me to thank me for my vulnerability and asked if I was okay. I was so surprised by the reaction to my poem for two reasons. One, because they really liked it, and that helped me become more passionate and confident as a writer. And two, because these people talked about the seriousness of abuse and made me feel truly seen.

It was very validating to have a bunch of strangers tell me I was a good writer and express their sympathies for what I had been through. Those people didn’t have to say the kind things they did about my writing, and they didn’t have to express that they cared about the pain I had experienced, but they did it anyway.

When I wrote and shared this poem, it was one of the best feelings I had during a very hard time in my life. I needed an outlet for all of the complicated things I was working through, and I needed to release some of my pain. I also needed validation, support, and some kind people to make me feel less alone. It is crazy that God provided all those things through a poetry class full of people I had never met.

In that class, I was able to share, bit by bit, my story. It was a very scary, very exciting time for me. I think those poems really catapulted me into becoming the writer I am today. I realized I loved sharing my life with people and it helped me to connect with others and with myself.

So, even though the poem itself is a very dark and sad piece of writing, it helped me learn more about myself and step further into healing. It allowed other people to encourage and support me, and it showed me that it’s okay to talk about uncomfortable and painful things. In fact, it showed me the importance of talking about abuse and loneliness.

That poetry class is probably one of the biggest reasons why I am writing this blog now, which is really cool to think about. I am thankful that God allows impactful things in our lives at precisely the moment that we need them. And I am thankful that first poem spurred me on to keep writing and gave me the confidence to share my story with others.

I hope you enjoyed reading this post and that it was impactful to you. If you enjoyed reading one of my poems, you are in luck! I will be sharing more of them in the future, so stay tuned. Thanks for showing up,

-Elena ❤