Thato Mokgoane poetically opens up about her sexual abuse, attempted suicide, fears and trauma.
This is my story..
I am terrified, I am so terrified that I even dream about it.
I worry about my daughter.
I am here and all these wounds are open.
I dream about how I could ever protect my daughter.
I am getting flashbacks.
I remember, I would be in the bathroom, and he would come in and close the door, sometimes I would lock the door, but he would find a way to open the door.
You know, I worry about my son, what if he gets to be like that to someone else?
We don’t know how they get to be like that. Where you get to violate someone so much that I had three attempted suicides. I drank Jik, Handy Andy, pills, I tried hanging myself, and I even ran away from home. Not that I really wanted to kill myself, but it felt like the only way to numb the pain. I wanted to escape this thing I was feeling. Sometimes I would get beaten up so bad for no reason, those incidents lived in me. I remember in 1990, I had just started high school, and my body was developing into a woman. I remember being told by elderly women that once you had started your periods you were going to fall pregnant. But the boy convinced me otherwise. I really don’t know what it is like to have a boyfriend, nor have I experienced a first sexual encounter lovingly. Forced sexual encounters made me hate intercourse.
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June 2023 | Collective Action Magazine
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