Reckoner

Four days in a women's shelter, and I don't know how many more to come. I sleep on a top bunk in a room with eight other women, all traumatized, all dealing with their shit. In the next room over there's a few rooms containing mothers and their children. I have moments alone, but my mind is in this weird state where that doesn't seem to do anything. I have to sleep with ear plugs in otherwise the snoring and whispering and arguing and YELLING would keep me up all night. I'm sick of hearing women make their children cry, I'm sick of the fighting that seems right out of ninth grade between women in their thirties and forties. People keep deciding I'm their new special friend, and I don't know how to tell them that they annoy the hell out of me. I won't, at least for the time being. Sharing a room again is hard enough, I wouldn't want to add tension especially with people who don't seem to know how to deal with their shit. I feel like the smartest person in the room sometimes, or the least dumb. I've had the urge over the past couple days to break things and rip them to shreds and scream obscenities in people's faces while I hurt them.
But I don't. I clench my jaw or chew my lip and dig my nails into my pants. I make up fantasy worlds where I'm crazy enough to hurt someone horribly and not even care. When I was a teenager, I used to actively try to make myself crazy enough to do that. I wanted to kill people in horrible, violent ways where they would be in excruciating pain until they finally died. I didn't want to care. Oh god I tried so hard not to. I tried to think of them as things and take away all their humanity, or tell myself that they were nasty enough to deserve it. But it just didn't fucking work. When it comes right down to it, I care. I care a fuck of a lot. I don't want anyone to be in pain or unhappy. It breaks my heart to see them hurt so badly. Maybe that's why I get so mad.
My dad keeps finding his way into my dreams, in disgusting, stomach-churning ways. Though the dreams themselves aren't nearly as bad as they used to be. He isn't tackling me out of nowhere and forcing me to fuck him or grinding his dick into me anymore. He's just there, and we're talking, or I'm defending him against something, but I always feel gross and wrong and it's always my fault that I feel that way. I find that I need to trust myself more and more because the dreams aren't as bad. I no longer have an active reminder of how terrible he was to me, so I have to remind myself. It's difficult. I have the urge to just write all of it off as something I created to make myself unhappy or get attention from people. The old stuff.
Recently, I made what I view to be a huge mistake, but when I really look at it, there was no other way I would have reacted. I got in bed with someone and we touched. Things happened. The first time, it edged on great, but I was on drugs and part of me wasn't getting through to the rest. The second time I was fully sober, and the knot of fear and disgust never left my stomach. It just grew and grew to the point that I was frozen again. I couldn't say "stop". I tried, I tried so hard to enjoy myself and forget that I was terrified, but that soon changed into just trying to survive. It traumatized me. I would think about his hands on me and want so badly to throw up. I would think about it and it would make me shake and berate myself for letting it happen. I felt so disgusting all the time, it never went away, not even when I slept. It felt like I was being raped but instigating things and involving myself. For days afterward, his hands never left my body. There were now two people in my mind, touching me and hurting me. Soon, the feeling faded. I still feel bad for letting it happen. I don't know if I'll ever be able to even look at the person again. It's getting hard to think. My mind is getting clogged with guilt. Oh my fucking god it's all my fault.