INTRODUCTION CONTRIBUTORS ABOUT

dear micah

Jordan Templar

Trigger Warning: This piece deals with the abuse I went through as a child at the hands of one of my mother’s partners. If that’s not something you’re able to read, I totally understand, take care of yourself first.

dear micah, 

i used to be a child, once. i used to have a childhood. i was an adult by the time i was six, long before you turned up. there isn’t a lot of time as a child that i remember being happy. i certainly didn’t have anything happy for a while after you. 

i’ve given plenty of thought of what i would say to you if i ever saw you again. you’ve inspired so many imaginary conversations, so many imagined belts of yelling, so many imagined impassioned pleas, so many imagined cryings. i don’t know if you ever realised just how much you’ve damaged me. 

i was just a kid. i didn’t have any notion of what sex was, what my body was. i had some notion of how others viewed those things, but what you did warped those things within me as i grew older and developed those views on my own. i couldn’t connect my body to what i was feeling inside, any sense of femininity i had was driven away by the fear of what others would do to my body if they knew i was a girl. when i realised that i’d started puberty, i begged my body every night to not develop breasts. i thought sex was something i’d have to do whether i wanted to or not, that i’d have no say in the matter, that the time would just come and i’d have to do it, like going to the dentist, or getting a bone fixed. 

it wasn’t until i saw my cousin danica with her girlfriend that i realised that i wouldn’t have to have sex with a man if i didn’t want to. i have no desire to have sex with women or people of other genders either, but that’s beside the point. 

the point is that you destroyed these connections within me. gender and sexuality shouldn’t have to come from trauma, they should just be natural, innate things. i don’t know if i would’ve had these realisations about myself otherwise, but the trauma you put me through is now an intrinsic part of that history for me. 

i contemplated suicide as a teenager, between listening to the jonas brothers and reading harry potter fanfiction. no one should have to create a whole different universe in their mind where they have an alternate history, where they never meet the people that hurt them the most, where they’re happy. i remember thinking that maybe if i killed myself here, i would wake up there. 

it’s a silly thought, of course. 

i don’t know if you ever think about what you did to me, what the ramifications were of you hitting me, telling me i wasn’t worth anything, molesting me. 

i hope it eats you up inside, what you were willing to do to a child. 

kindest regards, 

jordan

✦✦✦

Dear Micah, 

Sometimes I wonder if you realise just how thoroughly you destroyed our family. 

For years after you left, along with all the sadness, I was angry. I was lonely. I thought no one would believe me, let alone my own mother. We held so much animosity towards each other that for most of my teenagehood, we weren’t mother and daughter. We were two people who hated each other, who were forced to live together. 

The day she brought you over to meet us I had an instant bad feeling about you. When she asked me what I thought of you, I told her the truth. I didn’t like you. She told me just to get to know you better. I was only seven, but that was the moment I knew that she would never believe me about anything bad when it came to you. 

When you moved in when I was eight, you started telling her I was a naughty kid, that I wasn’t being careful with important things, that I was eating too much, that I was telling lies and that I needed to be disciplined for being so out of control. That’s when you started hitting me. 

What kid isn’t cheeky, what kid isn’t a little clumsy, what kid doesn’t eat a little too much of their favourite food, what kid doesn’t tell a little story from time to time because they have a vivid imagination? At what point did me, being a kid, become such a bad thing? My younger brother did all those things, too, but you loved him like a son. 

My mum went through so much being with you. She still has PTSD that she won’t get treated for, fifteen years on. When I finally told her what you did to me, how you hit me, how you touched me, she realised that she’d sacrificed my childhood for a relationship that wasn’t even worth it in the end, because you started abusing her. It was a long while later that I’d finally realised that she’d sacrificed a part of herself, too. 

The first time I ever felt like I wanted to kill myself was after you proposed to her, and I knew I didn’t want to live if you became my step father. I was just ten years old. No child should ever have to feel like that. I still remember the sickening crack that came with you breaking her finger as you ripped her engagement ring off after a bad fight. 

I remember urging her to go to the hospital, but she refused because she didn’t want to tell them how her finger was broken. It’s still crooked, yet another permanent reminder of the influence you once held. 

No child should have to comfort their parent because something like that happened to them. No child should have to watch their parent be hurt so badly by someone they love. 

Regards,

Jordan 

✦✦✦

Dear Micah, 

My brother and I used to have a proper relationship as siblings before you. We fought, we didn’t get along at times, but we also loved and trusted each other. I knew I had to protect him, though I was also resentful of that fact, being older and developing my independence. 

We don’t have that any more, and it’s because of you. 

You became a father to an intellectually disabled child, you practically weaselled your way in and made sure that you were one of only two people he would trust with full devotion. He believed you when you said I was bad. He believed you when you said I was careless. He believed you when you said I didn’t care about him, that I didn’t love him. He was vulnerable, and you took advantage of that. 

I was just being a kid. Kids are cheeky, kids are clumsy, kids act out, kids struggle with their emotions, or at least the ones going through trauma and dealing with undiagnosed autism and ADHD do. He was all of those things, too, but those same traits were demonised within me. 

I remember being as careful as I could with the things that were precious to me before you. I wasn’t perfect with this care, I know I left things on the floor, I accidentally broke things or stained things, but I know I did my best. But you took these little mistakes, these growing pains, things I should be learning from, and you twisted them into deliberate and malicious acts. Forgetting to put a DVD back in its cover became a scratched disc and property damage. Forgetting to put some food in the bin became a health hazard because it could grow mould. 

Not cleaning my room was disrespectful to you. I didn’t clean my room so you wouldn’t come in at night. 

You would yell at me and hit me for doing these things, but when my brother did them, you helped him. You showed him the right way to do something, you were patient, and you were considerate, you cared about him and loved him. 

But not me. 

What made my brother different from me, that you could treat him like a human being, and me like an animal? Was it because he was younger, was it his intellectual disability, was it that you were around when our father barely was? Was it because I was able to see the evil within you, when my mother and brother couldn’t?

You drove a wedge between my brother and I, just the same as you did my mother and me. How do I reconcile that in his head, when he can barely comprehend the truth? We used to be inseparable before you, and now I don’t know if he’ll ever love me again. I will have to spend a lifetime making up for your misdeeds because he thinks I drove his father away. 

You taught my brother right from wrong, and I was wrong. 

Jordan 

✦✦✦

Dear Micah, 

We used to have a gorgeous backyard. I remember the garden, lovingly tended to by the previous owners, filled with flowers, a couple of trees, and the lamb’s ear plants that were a calming stim for me. I loved being out in that garden for the one year that we had it, I would lay in the grass in the sun and I would read, I would touch the lamb’s ears as I pet my cat, Gorgeous Rosie. I got her when I was six, and I loved her so much. 

And you tore that garden up. Laid down a giant concrete slab, and built a garage and filled it with your hoard of car parts. And then Rosie went missing. 

A lot of my things went missing. The toys and quilts that my Nanna handmade for me. Library books. A Playstation game that wasn’t even mine, lent to me by the first friend I’d made in years, and quickly lost because I couldn’t return the game to her. I didn’t know how to explain why I couldn’t. You threw them all out because you were punishing me. 

You have the name of an angel but you were more like the devil. 

In truth, you broke me. You took my soul and my will to live. You hated a child so much because they could see what you really were. 

For years after you left, I barely felt human. I didn’t have depression, I was depression. I was the shattered remains of the person that used to be Jordan. 

It finally started ending with you emptying that garage, which stood and reminded all of us of your presence like a festering wound for years. You left an old couch in the backyard that I used to love so much, and on it were the bones of my cat. 

I buried her with my new cat, Lionel, watching me from the porch. I told her I was sorry for not finding her, and that I loved her. 

When the garage was finally knocked down, and all that was left was the concrete slab, it felt like the wound was beginning to heal and scar over.

I was twenty when I started picking those pieces up and fixing myself, and I filled in those cracks with gold. The relationship between my brother and I will probably take a lifetime to fix, but I will put in the work, because he’s my brother, and I love him, even if he doesn’t love me back. 

I’m finally living the life that you didn’t want me to live. I will always have these scars, I will always have those memories, but they remind me of who I am and what I survived. 

I’m still here. 

Jordan