The Eyes of a Child

I walked out of the door to my temporary home in Scotland with nothing in my pockets but one cigarette and a lighter. I wouldn't need more than that, I figured. I didn't have more than that.

I walked the short mile to an ancient graveyard where I sat on the church steps for an hour or two, praying somebody would find me and take me inside, to tell me I would be okay and that life was worth living. Tears were shed. They soaked into the beautiful red stone steps and disappeared into the cold. I wanted to do the same. Nobody came for me.

I sat there all alone on the front steps for hours. Finally I moved to the back of the church where I found a spot in the grass and talked. The only body around was one far beneath the earth I sat on. The headstone was dated back to the 1700's, but that didn't matter. I needed a friend, and he was the only one around at the time.

I had been ruthlessly tortured for months, used as nothing more than a pit bull for dog fights. The man I knew for seven years took only seven days to start abusing me once he got me there. I was nothing. I was garbage. I shouldn't have been alive. I should be in a box under the grass beside my friend in the abandoned, forgotten church yard. I was a coward. I didn't deserve to live if I couldn't stand up for myself and break away from my imprisonment. If I made him mad again, he might just take care of that for me. I'd already been starved so that I'd be worth more and be more desirable to his "friends." I'd lost my dignity, my self- worth, my will to live, and seventy eight pounds in four months.

Nobody was coming to rescue me. There would be no miracle. There was no Suicide Hotline in Scotland that I was aware of, and they wouldn't have been able to help me anyway. Nobody would save me. This wasn't a movie. Nobody cared. Nobody reached out. Nobody told me it would be okay. Nobody stood beside me when I needed it. Nobody. I stood and wandered the graveyard another minute before continuing on my way.

At last, I trudged my way to the train tracks. I knew when I left that morning it would be my ultimate destination. It would be a fast ending to a miserable existence. I would die immediately upon impact, my body never having the time to send pain signals to my brain. Lights out, like a snap of the fingers. Or neck.

I sat beside the train tracks, my feet dangling from the platform. I pulled out my cigarette and my lighter. Lit it. Inhaled. Slowly the smoke curled up from my lips and escaped into the air, just as my spirit would in another five minutes, as long as the train was on time. It would be my last cigarette.

Things were eerily quiet while the thoughts in my head buzzed like a hornets nest. The world around me was growing increasingly dark as my tunnel vision focused on listening for the train. It startled me when a kindly soul with his young child approached and asked me for a light. I offered him my lighter and even told him he could keep it. The offer surprised me when I gave it. That lighter was a small round lighter with the flag of Scotland on it and it fit so perfectly into the palm of my hand.

He insisted he give it back when he was finished, as he would have no further use for it. He was going to quit smoking. I wanted to tell him I would have no further use for it either, but he didn't ask. Who was I to tell my troubles to a man who only wanted a light? He didn't know me. He didn't care about me. I couldn't make him care about me. He had a child to think about.

The child. I had to wait until the child was gone. I wouldn't dare end my life with a child watching. I'd lost my innocence at such a painfully young age. I would never intentionally scar another innocent mind, regardless of how different the circumstances were. He looked to be about four - the age when my world broke and never found a way to heal.

He looked at me, and it seemed as though he was more looking through me. He looked to innocent and unbroken, yet wise beyond his years. Somehow that child knew what nobody else did. He knew I was hurting and didn't know what to do about it. For a moment he looked sad, and as adults tend to do, I faked my joy to try to change his moment of sadness. I couldn't let him see that deeply into who I was. He couldn't know who I was. Nobody did. Not even myself. He smiled back at me and turned to follow after his father once more.

I heard the clack-clacking of my unhappy ending down the rails. She was coming for me. Coming to end me. Coming to put me out of my misery. I glanced back at the child, who continued to look back over his shoulder at me. The train marched on. My heart pounded. The child stared. My eyes grew wide. So did his. Again, that wisdom of men reached out to me from that small vessel of a child. The train continued. That rhythmic beat marched up with words that seemed to float in from nowhere.

The train advanced. The boy just stared. My mind, it reeled. My heart, it ached. The train. It's Coming. The boy. He blinked. My heart. It broke. I cried out in pain.

A sad and haunting poem formed in my mind. The words flowed and I had nowhere to write them down. It would be the last thing I would ever write, I thought for a moment. Then the boy blinked again, looked up at his father pleadingly, and tugged at his father's sleeve before pointing toward me and signing some message to his father. I didn't need to understand British Sign Language to know what he said. The child read sign language. I read people. His father's body language said it all as he turned to look back at me.

I got up and ran as hard as I could. It was several seconds before I discovered that I was running away from the train, and back toward my prison. It took many long months before I finally found a safe way to escape, and then I was pursued and attacked over the internet for years. Photos and videos of my abuse were spread like wildfire on pornography websites. He continued to exploit me and I continued to fight back the only way I knew how. In 2019 I learned how to speak up for myself after learning only the year before that I had been a victim of human trafficking at thirty-one years old. I look back on that day now with fondness from a dark place. I wanted to die, but I needed to live. My story wasn't done yet. Somehow, that kid knew it. I call him "Michael," even though I'll never know his real name. Michael saved my life.

Today I opened up the desk drawer that still holds the small round lighter with the flag of Scotland on it. I'd had it before I ever moved to Scotland and it was one of the few remnants of a time before the abuse began. He'd given it to me before we were engaged to be married. Back then I thought I'd found my happy ending. He was a police officer in Scotland. I'd be safe with him, I believed. I couldn't have been more wrong.

The memory, stuffed in the back of a dark drawer, never really gone but never really seen, looks back at me. It's filled with sadness and sorrow for what might have been, the life I'd given up for that dream, and the acknowledgment that I finally have a life worth living speaking out against these things. It was one of the hardest battles of my life, but that lighter, the events, and that man - they lost the war.

I escaped the fate he had for me, and created my own. He is now only a footnote in the story of my life.

(This is a true story from my life.)

Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-273-8255

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

National Human Trafficking Hotline

24/7 Confidential 1-888-373-7888

https://humantraffickinghotline.org/