Entry #23
I must write this out no matter how painful the memory is. I can’t ever allow myself to bury this type of memory ever again.
Now I fully remember the time after I was sent away from my clan. I was well into my 10th solar cycle. Told to pass myself off as a male, I joined cousins on board their sandcrawler that travelled the territory surrounding Mos Espa. I never fit in. The boys sensed I wasn’t normal. And due to growing up around other females, I found myself gravitating toward seeking friendship amongst the other girls. Most wanted nothing to do with the weirdo though some tolerated me.
But this bothered the boys who didn’t want their sisters falling for the oddball. So on my 11th birthday, they set up a “surprise” and sent me out into the desert to find it. The “surprise” was a staged attack as they all dressed up as Tusken raiders and beat me to unconsciousness. I was dragged back to the sandcrawler, dumped in a small storeroom and the door was locked and blockaded. When I fully came to, I screamed to be let out and pounded on the door for hours at a time only stopping when the pain from my bloody hands and raw throat were too much to bear. I found out later that I was in that room for over a week.
Then the panic attacks started. I knew I had to do something so when the sandcrawler pulled into Mos Espa a few months later I escaped and ran away into the city never to see that sandcrawler again.
