Katy bravely shares her story.
**May be triggering**

  

THERE WAS A LITTLE GIRL AGED 5 YEARS AND 9 MONTHS

By

Katy

Katy's mummy was in hospital having another baby. In the middle of the night her daddy woke her and told her she had a new baby brother. She felt very special because he did not wake her brother and sisters to tell them the news.

Katy asked her daddy if she could go to the toilet. In the dark hallway her daddy asked her if she'd like to sleep in his bed with him. She stopped feeling special. She was confused because she did not want to sleep with him but did not know why. It was no different from sleeping with mummy, was it?

Katy did not answer her daddy but found herself in his bed anyway. When she realised where she was she felt sick. She felt even sicker when she turned over and put her back to her daddy because he reached across and put his hand somewhere she did not want it to be. Katy does not remember what happened next.

Next morning Katy woke up in her own bed. She felt different from her brother and sisters as they played.

Mummy came home from hospital and daddy took a photograph of the whole family grouped around the new baby. In the photograph Katy looked strange. Her face all red and sweaty, her expression glazed. Katy's mummy said that Katy had jealousy written all over her face. But Katy was not feeling jealous.

Mummy says she cannot find the photograph. Katy knows where it is.

Katy had to sleep with all the dolls and teddies in her bed so there was no room for anyone else. She had to spread her arms and legs out so no one else could get in. she had to have her covers tucked in really tight. She twisted her legs tightly around each other so no one could open them.

But still she woke up in the night with him there again. Smelling of beer. It was hot and uncomfortable.

Katy said 'don't don't' and tried to cry to make him stop. But she could not cry properly. She made a whimpering noise and could not stop. When she said she needed the toilet, he went with her. He did not let her go back to bed alone.

In Katy's bed daddy told her they have a secret. He asked her about things she wanted and she told him because she thought she might be given them. Katy badly wanted a walking talking doll. She always told her daddy but she never got one.

When daddy finished in katy's bed he messed it right up. The sheets all tangled up and pulled out. In the morning Katy's mummy would say 'what have you done to this bed? You can make it yourself'. Katy begged for clean sheets but mummy did not give them to her and she did not help make the bed either. Katy was small and weak and could not pull her bed out from the wall to make it. She hated it. 

Katy was not safe with him around even in the day. Mummy left her alone with him even when she knew how badly Katy wanted to go with her. Daddy said 'look at that' and then he lifted Katy up to look out of the window. He always lifted her with his hand in the wrong place. It was horrible.

One day katy's mummy said katy had wet her knickers, but katy did not remember wetting them, Katy's mummy put a pair of red knickers on a plate on the coffee table. Katy's special pink handled knife and fork were either side of the plate. Her mummy and daddy and brother and sisters all sat around the table. It was very quiet, katy's daddy told everyone that as Katy was such a dirty girl she would have to eat her knickers. Katy was angry because she knew she had not wet her knickers and she knew that people did not eat knickers. He kept saying 'eat them, eat them'. So she picked up her knife and fork and tried to cut up the knickers even though she knew she would not be able to. Katy has never remembered what happened next.

Katy felt quite powerful after she had been made to put up with him. She felt as if she could do anything she liked and he could not do anything about it. She was wrong.

At christmas time Katy said a lot of prayers, she asked jesus not to let her daddy spoil christmas. But he always did. Sometimes Katy felt happy but most of the time she felt dread. She felt as if she was different from other girls. She thought they were odd because they used to talk about their daddys. She could not understand how they could sit on their daddys laps and hug and kiss them. Katy thought that other girls liked that horrible thing that daddys do to their little girls.  

THE EATER OF THE BROKEN FRIED EGG

By Katy

Beware the woman who is the eater of the broken fried egg. 

There are many about, in doctors surgeries, in hospital beds, you might even be living next door to one. She lives in different places across the country, from the shabby rented flat to a huge new, detached designer home. She can always be found waiting outside the school gates; she is always early to pick up her children. 

She is easily identifiable by her sheer invisibility. Her slumped shoulders rounded with the Hell of her life. Lank in hair and demeanour, the results of symbolically and sometimes literally having had her head flushed down the lavoratory pan.

Her dull, shadowed eyes are washed out from too many tears from physical and verbal abuse, and too many sleepless nights of waiting and wondering who he is with and what is going to happen to her next.

Every time she opens her mouth to speak he tells her that she is crazy, she sometimes thinks that she is too. She doesn’t say very much, she’s afraid that you’ll think she’s crazy too. 

She might be terribly overweight, she has an emptiness inside her that no amount of food can fill. N the other hand she might be dreadfully underweight, her tummy too tied up in knots to accept much. Too many broken fried eggs and the sausage that got dropped on the floor, wouldn’t you lose your appetite too?

She doesn’t wear make-up, smart clothes or get her hair done anymore. She doesn’t see the point. She really believes that everyone else is more attractive, nicer, better company, better Mothers. Why else would her man have needed to cheat on her with other woman and be so cruel. 

She’s forgotten about the woman she that was, who was good enough to attract him in the first place, she doesn’t blame him for making her into the shadow that she has become, she blames herself, naturally, because she loves him. 

Love. The thing that makes the world go around, that every song was ever written is about. Love is something that woman can do without.

Love is similar to your bank account, you cannot keep withdrawing and never crediting any and still expect to receive more, especially when you are considerably overdrawn.

If she doesn’t die first, the eater of the broken fried egg will eventually close the account. 

She will regain for herself that battered and bruised, stupid heart. She will guard it jealously, vow to protect it as a child, never, never put it in that predicament again. She will love again, Oh yes, she has to survive, but apart from her children it will be the only person who will never let her down never hurt her. She knows the best and deepest love comes from a patched up heart. Beware, she will love herself. 

Oh, what liberation when she finallt reaches this realisation. To know that it is not only incredibly easy to be this selfish but so very vital. 

She grasps greedily with both hands at life, shrugging off the cloak of depression that has so disfigured her, easy as slipping off her new smart shoes.

With her new found love will come a sparkle to her eye, a smile to her mouth, a spring to her step. For probably the first time in her life she is free.

Freer than you in your secure and happy relationships. She has faced and fought all of your doubts and fears, she who has feared and suffered all is secure in the certain knowledge that nothing, or no one can hurt her, only she has the power to do that.

Whether she leaves her abuser or not she will embark on a new and enviable life, even if she lacks monetary or materially, she has everything that she has ever wanted, peace of mind and contentment.

She will certainly repay her abuser hundredfold. He will watch the butterfly emerge from the chrysalis, with a flutter of her beautiful wings she will stir useless and redundant love and respect into his mean heart. But no matter what he does or promises he’ll never touch her again, so cocooned is she in self confidence. 

Beware the eater of the broken fried egg, she is the strongest person I know. 

END