#313 — Dead or Alive | FROM MY LIFE | INTRODUCTION TO A FICTIONALIZED SERIES

A Story Of Grooming, Gaslighting And Abuse

Would it erase the trauma if he said he was sorry?

I’m in a room full of people, but I don’t know why I’m here. Julie says she’s going to a fair, and when she mentions the name of the venue, I instantly say: “I’m going with Julie.”

I don’t know who I’m saying this to.

At the venue, Fran joins us.

We walk across the lawn towards open tents, where we follow the route of tables covered with local produce and secondhand items. At the fourth table, I heard the voice and my head jerked up.

There he was: Fred.

Handsome as ever, his beautiful blue eyes fixed on the man in front of him. He smiles, then talks. For no reason at all, I grab my phone and snap several pictures of him.

A shiver runs down my spine, my body rigid with fear.

“He still scares me,” I whisper.

Fran rests her hand on my arm, stopping me. I turn to look at her. She’s beautiful, her skin smooth and every strand of her stunning chocolate-brown shoulder-length hair in place. A warm smile spreads across when she speaks her venomous words.

“It’s not Fred, Annie, it’s you. It’s all in your head.”

“In my head?” I snap. “If it never happened, why does he still scare me? F’sake, Fran, I’ve been living abroad for twenty-nine years and he still scares me to death.”

Suddenly, I’m alone, somewhere in a room and looking at the picture on my phone. There’s only one, despite remembering taking more. On it, Fred has his back turned to me.

If only he said he was sorry, I think, then maybe I can leave the trauma behind.

Then I wake up.

It was a Friday evening that I looked through my planning for the week ahead, and pinpointed which articles I still had to write. This was one of them. That night, I had the dream above.

Fred and Fran — not their real names — were a couple I’d been involved with in 1994. I left South Africa because I fled from him, Fred.

That was twenty-nine years ago — a fact which is there in my dream.

Something which isn’t true, is Fran’s looks. Her face always had an unhealthy complexion because of too much drinking. The alcohol helped her to cope with her abusive husband — not an excuse, just a fact. She was far too thin, and her mousy-blond hair always hung listlessly down her shoulders. No one ever would’ve described her as beautiful.

My fear for Fred is real. The trauma is real.

He groomed me. He gaslighted me. Abused me.

It was only many years later that I learned the terms grooming and gaslighting.

The morning after the dream, I lay in bed wondering: would it really help if he said he was sorry for what he did to me?

I first wrote this story in 1995/6 to get all those thoughts and memories out of my head. No, it wasn’t a conscious decision to do it to heal. I just had this intense need to get the story on paper.

All of it.

About ten years later, I returned to it.

I’ve always viewed what happened in 1994 as one of the biggest mistakes of my life.

In the ten years from penning to editing the story, I thought about that mistake a lot. I tried to understand the reason. What led me to it? Where had my common sense go? Why did my sense of self abandon me? Had I even had a proper self-awareness before this?

To understand how I got there, I wrote about remarkable (abusive) sexual moments earlier in my life, and those became part of the story.

In 2007, I completed the editing of the story. Throughout the process of editing, I relived every horrible moment. In 2008, I self-published the story as a book.

Fast-forward some years to October 2019, and I decided sharing the story on my blog is what I wanted to do.

Once again, I edited it, and once again, stress gripped my body.

Before my last serial story — Thirteen Years — finished, I knew the next serial would be the story of 1994. The moment I started editing those first chapters, the disturbing dreams started again.

Maybe one day I will be able to think of those nine-and-a-half months without shivers running down my spine.

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Marie A. Rebelle is the owner of Serial Stories, editor of Tantalizing Tales and Teaser Tales, writer of fact and fiction, sometimes transgressive, sometimes erotic, and always about life. Likes to share, and treats everyone with the respect they deserve. Previously top writer in Short Stories, Fiction & LGBTQ. Proudly part of The Cocktail Club.

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