The dreams started in eighth grade, the year when I sang in the choir and performed in theater.

And the year when Logan, the I’m-better-than-everyone-because-I-can-act drama geek, tore me apart with his words daily.

The year when my mom’s lupus hit hard.

They always start the same. We’re in the bathroom. Someone I love (my mother, my grandmother, my sister) slides their hand up my small thigh.

I ask them to stop.

They laugh.

I cry.

I always woke with a start, tears streaming down my face, my body shaking and my heart aching.

I kept it to myself for a few weeks, brushing it off because I thought that the nightmares would stop. Thought that the pain would subside but it never did.

Why would the people I loved and cared for ever want to hurt me?

I was nice because I laughed at my teacher’s jokes, brought gift cards to school to give to friends, and told others how pretty they were. Made good grades because I thought it meant I had accomplished something in life. I was there for my friends and family by listening to their stories of ignorant parents and the repercussions of smoking.

Why did I dream about that warm, yellow bathroom every other night?

I started to shrink away from those who meant the most to me. I flinched when friends went in for a hug. I forgot to say I love you.

It had been easier to tell myself that I was just a bother. That I was a complaining, good-for-nothing, pathetic kid who wanted to cry wolf.

But that wolf had to crawl out of those dark woods at some point.

I didn’t think I’d ever be ready for the day that creature bit me. I bled until my pulse almost stopped. Until my reality sank into the deepest pores of my skin.

I wanted to take my hand and wring that beautiful neck until he whined from the agony.

But I was only 14. I was too young for that kind of thing.

I ask my mom if I could talk to my therapist, like I did when I had an emotional breakdown which resulted in ripped pictures and notebooks floating around my room and one smashed mirror, alone. I’d feel more comfortable that way.

I was done with the bogus “put-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other” and “tell-yourself-you’re-beautiful” methods the woman had used before.

I wanted to scream for help, but my stories are just that. Stories.

The further I distance myself from those who used to keep me afloat, the further I fall into the repetition of the what-ifs and who-dids.

What if the dreams were memories?

Who did this to me?

Why?

Why.

My mom watched me transform. She saw me cry. Saw me avoid closing my eyes because I couldn’t let go of the images imprinted on my mind. Just like I couldn’t forget that hand that gripped my thigh so tight that one autumn night.

One day, I’d had enough. I walked into my mother’s room and turned on the light, sat on the edge of her ripped and fading blue comforter. I told her about the dreams with the hand. The nightmares with my sister. My friends.

“Even you, Mom.”

I wouldn’t tell her, but I saw her face twitch as her tentative smile fell. It was as if her favorite shirt was bleached in the washer. Her tight lock on my past was about to break open from my simple question.

“What happened to me?”

And suddenly…

I didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to understand what those terrifying glimpses of a possible past that haunted me on my vulnerable days meant.

Don’t do it. Don’t tell me.

Please, don’t say it.

I take it back.

Oh, God, I take it back.

She sighed and took my hand in hers. Averted her eyes.

But I was only fourteen and I was too young for that kind of thing.

Too young to know that the police arrived at the scene minutes after I admitted what happened in that sad excuse for a restroom. Too young to know that I told the men in the uniforms that someone had poked me with a stick. A stick that hurt me and made me cry.

Then, I understood why a father could have the audacity to leave his four-year-old daughter. There’s no way he could have believed the truth.

My world turned right-side up.

“Katelyn, your grandfather….”