Trigger Warning: VCUG, Medical Trauma, Sexual Trauma
I’m sweating, my hair is sticky against my neck, and my thighs are stinging from the acidity of urine you’ve failed to fully wipe off my skin.
My stomach hurts and I'm still shaking from adrenaline as I try to hide my swollen eyes and splotchy face behind my mother’s leg. I can’t bear to look at anyone after what I’ve just done. I want to disappear. Every second I have to stand there as you clean up my mess is agony. I continue pressing my face into her leg as she struggles to zip my jeans back up.
But then I see it, your hand at first, reaching out towards me and I flinch, you ignore it. Then what you're holding, followed by your face, beaming at me.
A sticker.
One of the squares that you’ve torn from a large roll attached to the wall.
And I want to cry. The tears are welling again and it takes everything to not let them spill. “You're being mean” is all that comes to mind.
I was just fighting you. I hate you and you won. And now you're giving me a gift? A reward?
You’re cruel.
You’re rubbing it in my face. That I lost. That I’m small and you don’t care.
You invaded me up there but it wasn’t enough. You've come back just to prove it. That even with my clothes back on and clinging to my mother, you can reach me.
A sticker disguised as an award, but only I know it’s meant to show me my failure. To remind me that you are the winner.
Something I can look at when I try to forget what you’ve done, what I've done.
A secret memento between the two of us, reminding me that I'll be back and you’ll win again. Get away from me, I hate you.
~ Anonymous
Just thinking about a child being handed a sticker as compensation for a lifetime of severe sexual and medical trauma does my head in
This! This is so powerful.