"A Reflection from The Mirrored Poet"
People ask me why I’m so relentless, so completely unyielding when it comes to the abuse of women and children. They think it’s just an academic stance or a political opinion. It’s not. My conviction was paid for in blood and absolute terror, and it’s time I tell you exactly why I stand where I stand.
September 27, 2004. It was a Monday. And boy, was it a Monday. That date isn't just a point on a calendar; it is branded onto the back of my eyelids. To this very second, over two decades later, I cannot look at or smell an avocado without my stomach violently turning. The sensory trauma doesn't just fade because time passes.
I had just turned sixteen. I was a child. I was completely alone, drowning in a volatile, abusive house, and I had absolutely nobody to turn to. A teacher at my school, a man named Simms... He saw my isolation. He didn't see a student to protect... he saw an easy target. He played the part of a savior. He welcomed me, made me feel safe, always had the best snacks. We got close, like friends. At least, that’s the lie I let myself believe. I feel a sickening wave of disgust in my own skin just remembering how much I trusted him, how stupidly blind I was.
That Monday, I fell asleep in his class. The night before had been a nightmare... my parents screaming about money, my dad violently throwing a full trash can into my bedroom because I’d fallen asleep doing my homework and forgot to take it out. I was exhausted, bruised, and broken. When the bell rang, Mr. Simms told me to stay and sleep. I thought it was kindness. But when I woke up, the air felt different. I opened my eyes, and he was standing right next to my face, masturbating.
Before I could even process the horror, he grabbed a handful of my hair, yanked my head back, and shoved his member into my face. He smeared his old, rotting, salt-onion-avocado-smelling sack and sausage all over my nose, my cheek, my skin. He was a pig of a man... monstrous in size, putrid in smell, and completely rotten in behavior. I fought with everything my sixteen-year-old body had, pulling away until he slammed my head violently into the desk. I hit the floor, crawled backward in pure panic, and tore out the door.
I ran. I ran until my lungs burned, throwing myself into a portable bathroom. I was frantically scrubbing my face, gagging, vomiting, desperately trying to wash the smell of him and his violence off my skin. And then, the world went black. Simms ambushed me from behind. One hit, then a second. My head was slammed brutally into the porcelain sink. I ran again on pure adrenaline until I collapsed. The next thing I remember was waking up in a ditch a mile and a half down the road, staring up at a pastor and paramedics hovering over me.
But the nightmare didn't stop in that ditch. In the weeks that followed, the sheer terror broke my body down from the inside out. My nervous system was so shattered that I started having a hard time holding my bowels in combination with my lactose allergy. Was not a good time.
Imagine being sixteen, "surviving" the assault, to just lose control of your own body. And instead of comfort, instead of safety, that physical breakdown just became an excuse for my dad to inflict even more abuse upon me at home.
I am safe now. I survived it all. But I am angry... not a chaotic, screaming anger, but a cold, sharp, focused resentment.
Predators don't act on blind animal instinct; they calculate, they plan, and they count on the fact that the world will look the other way. I carry the disgust of what was done to me, but I have turned that disgust into a shield. I share this because true mercy cannot be wasted on monsters.
We need a system of justice that protects the innocent at all costs... because nobody should ever have to wash the smell of a predator off their face while the world does nothing.