It

I'm not scared of It anymore.

It is not a mythical beast sent to conquer.

Don't get too close.  It might be the end of you.

You are too close to It's risk.  A sad statistic.

You are just like them.  It will snatch you soon.  He whispers this our one last time.

His familiar heaviness makes It real.  The forbidden rhythm numbs the pain. 

The only tears I cry are as his life drips with sticky shame.

Just like that.  They are gone.  It pulled them under.  Freshly gone; we are left. 

Like daggers he speaks.  I have you all.  To myself.  Just like we always wanted. 

Together; until It soils you too.

How might you do It?

Different than they.

Take my belt.  And when you do It.  Feel my final hands remove the life that only I could give.

I still have the belt.  Well worn.  A staple of my life. 

The gatekeeper of his piercing. 

The weapon fashioned making skin so raw.

Crammed away I hear It taunt.  It teases with It's destiny.

I remain after him but his hold lives on in leather form.

Too afraid to touch It.  His belt is my own It.  The last connection.

My pieces.  Myself.  We beg to throw It away.

That belt.  It.  His final grip.

I can only hope that courage wins to turn It over.  To will It gone.  Forever.

Until It is just a distant, formless it.

Questions

Is this the last time you are going to feel like this? 

Do you think you will feel better by the weekend?

Holy fuck.

How do I answer those kinds of questions?

I keep telling myself that this is hard on him.  I know it is. 

I know it is.  Because I've lived in a house with a ranting suicidal maniac.  But I'm not like that.

I'm just quiet.  Writing here these past few days is the most I have ever talked about feeling this bad.  But I have yet to scream and yell; throw things or make threats. 

At my mother's worst, she showed up on the door step of my apartment and slit her wrists.  She lived that time but it was fucked up to say the least.  It also made suicide real to me. 

A person.  Distress.  Blade.  Blood.  Tears.  Anguish.  In a way it began to desensitize me.

My sister.  I saw that through to completion.  It's hard to look at someone so beautiful with half their skull gone to relieve pressure without euthanizing a piece of your soul. 

Yesterday I went to the apartment where my mother slit her wrists.  I went to the door step without knowing what I was supposed to be looking for.  I stared for a minute and then I left.

I then drove to my sister's old townhouse.  Where she ended her own life.  I looked out the window of my car searching for a hint of lingering.  I didn't see her.  The porch had pretty pots full of pansies.  Someone who lives there is happy enough to care about flowers.  I pretended the flowers were for my sister instead.

I stopped short of going by my parent's house where my mother ultimately succeeded.  That was probably a good idea.  Lots of other bad things happened there too.

It is probably morbid to do these things.  I'm probably not supposed to even think about them.  And I bet writing this in black and white is even worse.  But I wanted to see what it felt like.  As if they had a disease that was catching.  And I want to know what makes me immune.

So to answer his first question; is this the last time I'm going to feel like this? 

Yes, has a certain finality to it.  And probably not the answer he really wants even if he doesn't realize it.

No.  Well, I don't want this to be the answer because I hate feeling like this.

I don't know is really the only answer I can give. 

I try to do the right things; I go to therapy, I see a shrink, I take my meds {mostly}, I write, and I would like to think that I am getting better at actually verbalizing what is in my head. 

So I don't know if all the right things add up to erasing suicidal thoughts forever.  My other thought is that I think far more people think about suicide than will admit to considering it as an out.  It's taboo right along with admitting to struggling with a mental illness.  But I can't be the only one.

I sincerely hope to push past this.  It's an exhausting way to live.  I just said that word again... hope.

And to answer his second question, sure.  Which falls under the category of if you ask a stupid question, you'll get a stupid answer.

I keep telling myself that this is hard for him.

Air

I think about suicide every day.

That's what I told my husband last night.  It's probably not the best way to qualify how I'm feeling right now but I needed him to understand that these struggles and thoughts are not out of the blue.

He did a stint in a mental hospital 10 years ago because he hit a bottom and had a plan and the materials to carry it out.  He called his mother and off he went to the hospital.  He stayed there 7 days, got on meds, had some therapy and straightened his thinking out.  He did outpatient therapy for three months afterwards and discontinued his meds 6 months after that.  And then he was all better.

So that's where he is coming from and he doesn't understand how I can feel like this all of a sudden when I'm on medication and already in therapy.  I tried explaining things to him and he still didn't get it.

Finally I was over trying to make him feel better because I hardly think this is the best time to have to explain my feelings.  They just are and they suck.  So that's when I blurted out what I think about every day.  He was shocked.  So I described it like this:

His depression was like a brown paper bag.   Sure, it gets a little dark sitting at the bottom of the bag but it's not stifling to exist in there either.  He eventually wanted a way out and he figured it out with some help.  He got out and the bag left in the wind. 

My depression on a good day is like living in a straight jacket.  I might be tied up but I can still walk and function in a limited way.  And because I've lived like this for so long, I've grown accustomed to it and I can even free a hand or an arm on a good day.  No, it's not pleasant to live like this so yes, I have thoughts of what it would be like to be free.  That seems pretty normal to me.

But when this hits it is like being thrown in a trunk and buried.  Still with the straight jacket on.  It's dark.  I can't move and the air begins to wane.  I twist and fight but then I feel panicked and then I really can't breathe.  So I get still and almost peaceful.  That's where I am right now.  That's also when I know that I need help.

That help doesn't include explaining the why's that support my feelings because those got buried along with the fucking trunk.  I'm still trapped and need that last bit of air to free myself.  Maybe then I can figure all this out.

Because it's a lot easier to breathe in just a straight jacket.

Joke

Hope doesn't always float.  Sometimes it drowns you instead.  I feel like shit.  The fuck-I-woke-up-again kind of shit feeling.

I despise people who throw these kinds of feelings around like they are nothing.  I grew up with a mother who threatened to kill herself at least once a week and it sucked.  And then my sister actually did.  And then my mother did too.  And all that really sucked.  So I don't write these things without carefully considering how I really feel.

But with all that being said, because I know how bad it hurts to remain on the living end, I feel stuck with no options.  And little hope.  What if this is all there is for me?  This vacillating between flat and the place I'm in now.  It hurts almost as deeply as the shit done to me that got me here in the first place.

When I wake up and it's disappointing, I know I'm not on the right track.  But when I wake up, take my daughter to school while thinking the whole time how everyone would be better off without me; that's when I know there is no faking my way out of this pit.

This morning I left for work without even drying my hair; I didn't feel safe alone and that scared the shit out of me.  All of my typical reasons for not hurting myself were not working and that's when I knew I had to say something.

I called my husband and made the other appropriate phone calls.  I promised to be safe.  And because I keep my promises I will do just that: be safe.

But what will "safe" cost me?  More disappointment... even more pain... devastated hope... an ever deepening loathe of my brokenness?  Or the worst; revealing just how weak I really am?  I hate this and how unjust it feels.  If someone lives through abuse isn't that enough?  That is the cruelest joke.

I'm so scared that this is as good as it gets.  I can tell myself to keep going.  To keep fighting.  To hope.  But I also have this nagging feeling that the joke is ultimately on me and I suddenly find myself very, very tired.  Sometimes all the self pep talks in the world aren't enough to make this spinning descent stop.

Just a huge joke that stupid, miserable people hold on to in an attempt to feel better.  What if that's all hope is?

What then?

Sleep

I am tired.  I live in a perpetual state of sleep deprivation.

get more sleep... that's the recommendation. 

Sure.  No problem.  As if I enjoy defying sleep patterns.  I don't stay up all night having a party by myself.  I stay awake because it's terrifying to sleep.

I close my eyes.  I feel my head on the pillow; my hands touch the sheets.  It's dark and my heart starts to pound.  The bed begins to spin.  My head screams and my chest aches as I wait.  Wait for nothing.  I am waiting for a dead man who lives on so vividly in my mind.  Wait for the night where he does not appear.

I know that a few hours a night isn't good.  It's also not good to sleep in the corner on the floor.  I do both with freakish mastery. 

I go through periods of time where I can tolerate sleeping in a bed.  But I can't stomach it right now.  So while my anxiety is racing, I wait for my husband to fall asleep.  And then I move.  Corners are safe.  And the floor isn't a bed.

Bad things happen on beds.

After a few hours of hard fought sleep my corner is awake as he approaches in the dark.  I stand and slip out of the room where my husband never wakes.  I turn on the lights as the dead man begins to fade.  He wishes me good night and with a wink he tells me he will see me soon.

I clean.  I read.  I write.  I draw.  I make my husband coffee and pretend that I haven't been up all night.  The early light melts the terror as dreadful relief lets me know another night has passed with a new day on the brink.

My eyes are clouding with that familiar ache.  A dark periphery is depression's single warning.  I fight to keep my eyes open; to keep my vision clear.  But heavy eyelids pull the sadness in as I contemplate the Sleep.

Normal

My husband asked yesterday if I ever thought I would be normal in regards to certain things.  I told him that I didn't know what normal looks like but that my goal is to be healthy.  He looked at me weird but he does that a lot when I actually get out of my head and talk.

Those certain things that he's referring to are my incredible sexual hang ups.  I came home from therapy the other night with a list of things that he cannot do and the reasons why.  He was told all of those things by my counselor before we got married so that we were hopefully on the same page.

Problem was, when he did any one of those things that bothered me, I never said anything to him. 

My counselor originally wrote the list as I talked about what things bothered me.  But I decided to I hand write it again so that he knew that it was coming from me.  I gave it to him and initially he looked surprised and confused.  Then he said that he needed some time and I was positive that he was really mad at me. 

Turns out that he was mad at himself for hurting me.  He thought those rules were my therapist's rules and not my own.  I confirmed that thinking when I never said anything when he did something that hurt me.

I won't get into the details of the list because it was awful to talk about and write.  But I think that what upset me the most was the fact that I had no good answers for why I let him do things that hurt, bother or upset me.  All I knew was that I was the same person with him that I have been in the past with all the other men and I felt so ashamed for that.

My EX-husband, among other things, had a rape fantasy.  So guess what he did every few months?  I still have a hard time walking into my own dark house even though it's not the same one he and I lived in together.  And forget about hiding around a corner to scare me.  That's a cardinal sin in our home and everyone knows it.

My father... my best bet was to look like I enjoyed it.  If I showed pain it only made it worse.  Same for his friends.  But then there were the times where I couldn't muster anything close to a look of pleasure because kids aren't made to do those kinds of things.  Those were the worst times.

My husband isn't anything close to being like the other men.  If I told them not to do something because it hurt me, they did that thing even more.  My husband isn't like that and I don't understand why I would think that of of him.  But I do. 

I also think that says more about my own condition than his state or that of our marriage.

Now I'm not going to lie.  I'm scared to death now that he knows the things that can hurt me and bother me the most.  I trust him but then I don't because really, I don't fully trust anyone.  I feel extremely vulnerable.  I don't know the things that could bring him to a mental stand-still or break him down yet he knows some of my deepest and exacting issues.

It's hard enough growing up the way I did.  But then I grow up and once again find myself in a disadvantaged position in my own marriage with the man that I love.  I hate that.

I guess the good thing is that he hasn't gone anywhere in 6 years.  And he's still here even after me bringing home a list of do's and don'ts.   So even though I don't know what normal is; I guess this might be our own normal.  He still doesn't understand my differentiation between normal and healthy and that's probably because healthy is normal to him.  I guess that makes sense for someone who isn't as fucked up as I am.

I feel childish in this thinking but it's what I want.  I don't care about normal but I want to be healthy.  Normal can mean so many different things but healthy seems like a much more concise goal.  I just read my last few sentences and I realized that I just said something that I want.  I don't ever do that so I'm hoping that is a step in the right direction of healthy.

Pills

Shut up.  Drink your milk.  Don't you gag.  Swallow all of it.  Open your mouth and let me see.

His fingers dig through my mouth.  Along one row of teeth and as he moves his finger across I do it.  I bite down on his two fingers as hard as I can.

Let go you little bitch.  Fuck.  Now.  Before I make you pay.

He has already made me pay.   I taste blood metallic on my tongue.  I'm hurting him and as long as I hang on with my teeth he can't hurt me all that bad. 

A rock in the form of a fist flies into my stomach.  All at once food, milk, blood, pills and fingers explode from my mouth.  Everything but his fingers land on him.

I pull back and shield my face.  I wait but nothing hits.  And then my hair is yanked up as a foot sweeps my own right off the floor.   My hair being held breaks my fall as I land face down in my own vomit.  With disgust he tells me to clean up the mess I've made. 

I know exactly what he means.

Put the pills to the side.

I do exactly what I'm told.  one pill... two pills... three and four.  In a row and I go back to cleaning.

The putrid smell is too much.  I gag again.  I feel a shoe squarely in the back of my head.  I scramble to the corner as I watch her clean.  My mess.

With a shoe promising a blow she finishes the milk and the dinner.  She reaches for the pills as he grabs her hair. 

The eyes waters as I fly to my feet.  Pick up the pills and give them to me. 
i drop them in his hand. he shovs them in my mowth and i cant breeth. the tast burns my tong.
chew them up
i hate him. i dont want his stoopid pills or the funee milk in my body. i see watt he puts in my cup and i no that my milk dosnt taste like that at scool. my hed dosnt feel bad at scool to.
i shak my hed to tell him no  an he cals me names. i beddr do watt he tells me to doo
i clos my teef an the pills tast grosss. the pills are difrent colurs an i wondur what they look lik all togthr an watt colur they mak. he tells me to not stop chewin and i do wat he sas. shhe wus stoopid not me
he sas they r posin an wil mak me die. she made me die cus she didnt swalow them lik a good girl. they tast so so grossss an yuk. im nevr takin a pilll agin. nevr evr evr
i am goin to find james to tel him we r gunna die. the pills r gunna kill us. by by lucy no mor pills for evr
i find james an he says its ok go to sleeep lucy so i go to sleeep

Lucy falls asleep but she does not die. I continue where she left off. The stomach hurts and we cannot get sick. He pulls me away and to their room. He puts me on the bed and I'm laying on the stomach that still hurts. No more pants. No more clothes. I hear his belt and I brace for the worst. It lands on the bed and I hear his zipper. Go put the kids to bed I tell Elliot. No one needs to know this happens to me.

James

Contrast

I had "the talk" with my daughter yesterday.  She's eight and has been asking a ton of questions over the past few months and I had a lot of catching up to do.

I have very much fallen down on the job... I have never called body parts anything.  At all.  I've never talked about normal functions of our bodies; especially what happens as we grow up.

I'm very uncomfortable with all of it.  However, it wasn't the discomfort that I dreaded the most.  I was so afraid that I would bring it up and it would reveal that something had happened to her.  That was my worst fear.

If someone had sat me down at eight, I probably could have told them more than they knew as an adult.  It would have been very clear that things were happening to me.  Not surprising though, nothing was ever explained to me.  It was demonstrated instead.

So when we started talking I was so relieved to hear that she knew virtually nothing other than a few details that she has picked up on from other kids and TV.  I used a book to explain everything; books are my cure-all for anything I don't know how to do.  Most of this topic, terms, body parts, etc are upsetting and can flood me with bad memories.  Thankfully the book kept me on track.

Everything was fine until she started asking me how old I was when I found out about all of this.  I didn't know how to answer her.  It had been such good conversations until then and I didn't want to taint her own memory with my garbage bags.  The best answer I knew to give was that I didn't remember.  We finished the conversation and went about our day.

I put on a smile for everyone but on the inside there was a deep and burning grief in the pit of my stomach that has yet to leave.  In trying to do the right things as a parent I often get blindsided by the very simple, very wrong actions of my parents.  And it hurts.

I would be lying if I said that I don't get jealous of my daughter at times.  I know that's a terrible thing to think let alone say but it makes me wonder what was so bad about me.  I want to do the best that I can by her yet my parents couldn't muster much more than not killing me. 

It's an intolerable contrast that I can't seem to wrap my mind around.

My daughter is a good kid with a kind heart.  She can also be very challenging.  But even at her worst I can't imagine doing what they did.  And that makes me wonder just how horrible I must have been.

My parents were bad people and I loved them.  I still do.  So how can my daughter be such a good person coming from such a bad person for a mother?

Another intolerable contrast except this one is one that I can't wrap my heart around.

Stupid

So much of my memory is in pieces.  I can remember the tiniest detail of some while other are hazy bits that are stronger to my senses than anything else. 

I can read a page and have a perfect picture of it in my mind.  But ask me what my favorite food is and I will have no way to answer that. 

I'm not really a stupid person but most of the time that is exactly how I feel.  That and embarrassed.

I wake up to find crayon colored pictures scattered all over the floor of my closet. 

I have clothes that I hate and have no idea where they came from. 

I come into conversations midstream desperately trying to figure out what I'm supposed to say.  My husband calls it my "no one's home look" where I stare off into nothing only to come back having no idea what's going on.

My husband calls me when I'm home alone and asks me what I'm doing... I have no idea because I haven't been around at all so I make up something dumb.  Like giving the dogs a bath for the third time in a week.

I have curly hair but I prefer it straightened.  Still others love to wear it curly and will do so whenever they have the chance.

I have to concentrate really hard to keep from referring to myself as we, us, our, etc... .

Each day I feel like I wake up watching a movie started in the middle that I've never seen before.  If I pay close enough attention I can figure out most of it but I always have this nagging feeling that I'm missing something.  Probably because I am.

As a kid I can see how this worked well.  I could wake up, brush my teeth and go to school and function having no memory of the hellish night before.

But now it just leaves me stupid.  Like when others decide that they don't want to take our medication.  They spit it out, hide it or now, they throw the bottles away. 

My choices to fix it: call my shrink and verify that I'm absolutely nuts; get new prescriptions filled that will cost me dearly because of how my insurance is set up; or go through the bitch of withdrawals until I can get them filled again at a normal cost.

I rarely cry but this one reduces me to tears.  It shouldn't be this hard to take care of myself.  I shouldn't have to be baby-sat, watched and followed up with.  I'm tired of being embarrassed and I'm tired of being stupid.  It shouldn't be this hard.

Madness

I find it easier to talk about my father than my mother.  His was such an overt evil that even when I lose myself to denial, I find my way back quickly with the jolt of a single memory.  Because they are all bad.

So much is made of the father/daughter and the mother/son relationship and how that connection shapes a person.  But what about the mother/daughter relationship?

My mother.  I believe that I was the beginning of the end for her.  During the holiday with my father's family I learned that I spent time in a mental hospital via my mother.  She was pregnant and they found her trying to abort me.  I'll spare the details but off to the loony bin she and I went.

How does something like that shape a daughter?  I have always known that she did not want me.  Even that she wished that I had never been born.  Once I was in this world; I forever connected her to him and she was trapped. 

That makes me sad for her.

His eyes were always black with rage, lust or something in between.  Her eyes danced with madness.

I have always bristled at the assertion that she was crazy.  It feels like an excuse for her.  But what it really is; it's terrifying.

I remember being in kindergarten waiting for her to pick me up.  I was almost always last because she was always late.  Fridays were the best though because I got my Weekly Reader hand out.  I would sit at the end of the hall and tear tiny pieces away and eat them.  A good day was when I only had the time to eat half of the back page.

It started as a good day when she picked me up.  The teacher called my name and I crammed my paper into my bag.  I always rushed down the hall but each time the doors opened I would slow as I approached her car.  I suppose I was trying to gauge her mood but really I just irritated her by being slow.

This day she leaned across the front seat to fling the passenger door open.  As the door creaked to let me in I saw her.  A gauzy pink robe.  Her naked belly bulging with my sister due in early June.  Curly hairs that I had to tear my eyes away from.

hurry up.  get in the car.  it's hotter than hell sitting around waiting on you.

None of this was spoken in her mean voice.  This was that scary sing song voice and when she picked me up like this it was the worst.  Mean; I knew what to expect.  Crazy; I couldn't anticipate a thing.

I scooted across the hot vinyl seat as I heard her say something about ice cream.  I wanted to tell her that I wasn't hungry but I did not want to be the one to pull her down in a crashing heap.

She wasn't dressed.  Not even close.  But as I stole a look I saw perfect make up and perfect hair.  These were the hardest days to figure out.  Depressed body.  Happy hair and face.

Steel blue eyeshadow surrounded her pale blue eyes.  Her pupil was the calm eye of the dancing hurricane whirling in her mind.  Music blaring.  Hot wind blowing my pigtails in my face.  She's singing as she lights a cigarette.  Between her legs is a pretty bottle hiding in brown paper.  Her robe is moving with the air and I can see the cuts and scars on her thighs.  Madness.

Baskin Robbins... 31 flavors... what kind of ice cream do you want?

we can't go in.  you don't have clothes.

Don't be silly... I can tie my robe... what do you want?

a clown cone.

I can remember thinking... clowns are scary but not as scary as you are.  Madness.

I sink down in the seat while she goes in.  Looking for something to do, I open the glove box and see her silver bottle.  I pull it out and screw the top off as I hear the sound of liquid.  I tip it back and my head follows.  It burns but I keep on drinking.

I finish it and put it back as quickly as I found it.  This isn't my first try.  I don't know what it is but I know that it makes me feel weird but better.  Calmer.  And warm.

I hear her yelling as she storms out of the shop.  The tie of her robe is trailing behind her.  There she is but not ashamed.  In one hand is my clown cone.  In the other is a cup of chocolate ice cream; her favorite.

I hate chocolate ice cream.

She gets in the car and practically throws my cone at me.  The white wrapper falls to the floor but I save the clown.  She is incensed.  As I lean down to pick up the paper I peek again at her naked belly and I see the baby moving.

Tried to do something nice for you... this is the thanks I get...

I whisper a thank you and she slaps me across my face.  I feel bad about eating the clown.  I'm scared to hurt his face.  It starts to melt and make a mess.  She grabs it and throws it out the window as the car weaves between the cars and lines around us. 

Pick your feet up... we are on a magic carpet... feel the hot desert wind... close your eyes to keep the sand out...

There is no sand but I feel really funny so I close my eyes.  I lay down on the vinyl seat; as close to her without touching her.  Hot ashes sprinkle on my cheek.  They sting but I am too tired to care.   But then hot fire touches and my scalp begins to burn.  I smell the burning flesh and hair and know that another circle will be hidden by my thick brown hair.

A single tear slips out as the madness of the speeding car rocks me to sleep.

I wake up in the dark with the stickiness of the ice cream still on my hands.  I'm still in the car.  My mom is gone.  I don't know where we are.  The windows are cracked but I can't get the door open.

I'm not worried about where she is.  I'm just scared of what will happen next.  I count my fingers to twenty over and over.  It's really dark now.

I open up the glove box but remember that I already drank the silver bottle.  I shut it.  I'm hungry.

I open my bag and find my Weekly Reader.  Half of the back page gone; that was a good day.  I start to tear pieces off and one by one I feel the tiny papers melt on my tongue.  I tear until there's nothing left to tear. 

It's a really bad day when I have the time to eat all my Weekly Reader.  Madness.

Blocks

Silence.  It sings when perfectly still.  With the constant banter in my mind it is hard to find a silent spot.  But when I do, I find the warmth in being all alone. 

Sleeping well evades me as I roam our home.  In the dark I am listening for that silent tune where there is no fear.  No screams.  No pain.  No awakened anguish.  These times when I'm all alone are few.  I cherish them and hope for the next time not so far away.

As a child I loved to be alone.  These were moments when I was safe.  I could play in my room for hours; always in a corner facing out but alone and content.   Even found in a closet, darkness and pieces of air could be a symphony.  The whispers of my friends were welcome but even they learned to listen to the music.

Much more pain and many more shattered friends later; the silence has all but disappeared.   Each chance to be alone I embrace.  I hope that in this time I will hear that peace I loved so much. 

But then the chatter starts and builds block upon block.  There is no safety in numbers as the distractions are so great.  Angry at the peace they have obstructed, I swing to topple those blocks.  But as they crash the sounds only grow more intense.  I stop and look at what I've done.  The damage I myself have created. 

I turn my back on them as if they have no voice.  But their tiny words pierce my mind.  I hold my head.  I pound with my fists.  I take a pill.  Nothing works to drown them out. 

In desperation I pick up a block and I see it for what it is.  A tiny piece of a careful wall constructed all around me.  Protection from the worst. 

I listen as the block begins to speak; not a scream yet not a whisper either.  I want to throw it back into the pile but instead I pick up another.  The more I listen, I realize what I always knew.

These blocks were once the safest corner in which I played.  And then he destroyed that protective angle in which I fit so perfectly.  Devastation as my childish hands picked up the bits and block by block a wall began to form.

A small stack of blocks behind me show a tiny bit of progress.  Many more blocks are scattered.  One block.  Two blocks.  Another and another.  Some are heavy.  Some are sharp and jagged.  Some are big; the cornerstones.  And then the tiniest of pieces; shattered as they bore the worst.

As I ask to listen their weight lessens.  And a painful yet simple I'm sorry smooths away their exposed rawness.  With that they are ready to find their spot in a new and wholly constructed wall.

And my strength is reinforced.

Joe

Burned, bruised and broken.  One split lip on top of another.  A line of bruises march up your back like a second spine. 

You cut your lip walking up some stairs.  The bruises come from childish horseplay. 

Nothing big.  Not for a tough kid.  Accidents happen because I'm clumsy.

Don't touch my neck.  Don't touch my shoulders.  Don't touch my back.  They all hurt but it's no big deal.

It's hidden why I can't sit down.  Why I wince as a blister pops when my shirt shifts just so.

Such a hot burn leaves such a cold bubble behind.  It's funny how that happens as if the fluid is the blister's way of saying sorry for hurting as it sizzled and later puffed with defiant pride.  A protective way to hide the tears.

As the liquid seeps on past my skin I straighten stiff to keep my uniform shirt from touching.  If I feel the coolness reach my waist I have a chance to hide the tears my ugly back always cries.

These are the tears that I do not have to cry.  They are locked within my skin reserved for burning.  Silent, secret sobs as my skin heaves with pain.

Bruises heal and skin always knits.  But my scars, they weep forever.

Jill

I see you so small.  Pink and purple hair screaming for attention.

Tiny flecks of glitter just enough to sparkle in his darkness.

A camera says that you are pretty.  He orders you to touch your shame.  Muffled threats I cannot hear but your fear speaks louder than a human word.

bad dad.  bad dad.  bad dad.

Purple spots behind the eyes as his hands wrap around my neck.  Orange rope takes their place as his hands move to hurt me.  Nearly falling asleep makes it better.  For him.  The excitement and the power are his to do as he wants.

A reminder of those special times.  A cold and stringent splash burns my nose and then my eyes.  Liquid to clean a dirty girl.  The faintest smell of dirt as I run my fingers along and catch a splinter of a forever home.  Buried with his scent forever lingering as more glitter runs away with every pour.

No more sparkle.  Just the dirt.

His suffocating smell calls out to Afraid.  If I wake I live another day in his darkness. If I die I am afraid.

Afraid no one will miss me. Afraid of a funeral with no flowers.

Afraid

I deal with fear nearly every single moment that I'm awake.  My past has left me a very fearful present.

I am also afraid and that feels very different.  To me, being afraid is the current not directly tied to my past. 

Just a side effect.

Afraid of being fragile.  Afraid of being pitied.  Afraid of being angry.  Afraid of being mean.  Afraid of losing my job.  Afraid of being abandoned.  Afraid of losing everything because I can never grip it tight enough.

I try to wrap my arms around Afraid because I cannot hold it all in my hands.  But then a tremor wiggles through my hand.  And then it works its way up my arm.  My shoulder shudders.  My head twitches.  The other shoulders rolls as my other hand is paralyzed.  I am limp and worthless to contain Afraid.

Afraid tells me that I'm doing this all wrong.  That I'm not healing right.  Good enough.  Fast enough. 

I am afraid of Afraid.

Broken

It happened again.  A complete and total meltdown in public.  Not even two weeks after the first occurrence.

Short of stuffing cotton in my nose; I don't know how to stop panicking at the first smell of a certain green bottle with a little gold horse on the front.

I tell myself it's not him.  I tell myself that I'm safe.  I tell myself to take deep breaths.  I touch something to remind my senses where I am.

Screaming.  Yelling.  Tears.  Sobs.  Strange and worried looks.

It's fucking embarrassing to be this broken.  Of course it's all his fault.  But he is not the one coming unglued in all the broken places.  So that must mean that it's my fault that I can't get just over it all.

This is a really good reason why you shouldn't fuck your daughter.

Injured

A little cut.  A little blood.  A little relief.  A screaming proof of the injured.

Burn the pads of fingertips with a graze of heat.  They lose the painful sensation of memory's touch. 

Touch reality and get burned.  Burn with a hot whisper and reality loses touch.

The swirls of unique prints become smooth.  Aptly numb to feel invisible with no identifying touch. 

A burnt sheen of skin just glossed enough as proof you are alive.

It doesn't last forever.  But long enough to freely move until the psychic pain resolves.  The subtle trick of the injured.

Thin lines of red promise a story beneath the scab.

Numb swirls go unnoticed because some stories should not be told.

Family

After Christmas we went to visit family.  My fathers two sisters and their families.

I agonized over going or not going.  I've lost so much of my family so I get a little weird about what I have left.  As the time got closer I really began to worry.  I didn't make the final decision until the morning we were due to leave.

I didn't spend a lot of time with them growing up.  The majority of holidays were spent with my mothers family.  I have fond memories of his sister just a few years younger than him.  She married a very nice man and they had two daughters.  I always watched in amazement at how they were with their dad.  They weren't scared of him and he was nice, but not too nice, to them.  And then their mom; she hugged them, spoke kindly to them, and it was obvious that she loved them.  I remember secretly wishing that they could be my parents.

His youngest sister; not so many good memories.  She, my father and I all look alike.  I have always despised looking like him and I'm pretty sure she hates it too.  She has always been a little on the crazy side.  But I also know and understand what is wrong with her. 

him.

We stayed with the oldest sister and stayed up late talking each night.  A lot of the conversations were nice but there were others that left me with the wind knocked out of me.  Her husband went to high school with my father and said that he was the meanest person he has ever known.  Because of that, combined with my mother, he didn't think I had a chance in hell to turn out even halfway OK.  Given that, they weren't surprised about my sister.

My aunt began the first night with an apology because they knew that things were going on but didn't say much or do anything about it. 

I told her that it was fine.  It's really not but what good does it do to cause her more distress over something that cannot be changed?

My uncle talked about walking in on my father with me.  He wasn't sure exactly what he saw but my father quickly told him that he was putting me to bed.  My uncle wondered how that was since I had been put to bed three hours before.  He never said anything.

My aunt told us about one conversation with my father.  She was concerned with how rough he was with my sister and me.  She made the observation that it looked like he was trying to raise little soldiers.  Robots would have been more accurate.  He got mad and they didn't see us again for three or four years.

There were other things too... my bruises, scars, behavior, strange fears, and just odd behavior in general.  I was not a typical kid.

I was also told how my father was sent to live with their grandparents because he kept hurting his sisters and their family pets.  He was sick from very early on.

I had little interaction with his other sister and that is probably best.  She's nice enough but she is also drunk most of the time and hasn't been the best of mothers to her own children.  She is on her third marriage after marrying two abusive creeps.

On one of the nights, her daughter approached me because she needed to ask some questions.  She told me some horrible things that her mother said to her about not wanting her when she was pregnant.  It all sounded very familiar but all I could tell her was that I was very sorry. 

Then she asked about her biological father.  She wanted to know if I remembered him messing with me or my sister.  The short answer was yes.  The longer answer was that my father found out and almost killed him.  And not for the right reasons either. We didn't see them for awhile and I never saw that uncle again.  He eventually terminated his rights to my cousin and her older brother.

She told me that her biological father abused her and that she was in counseling.  She said that she was making progress but she needed to hear it from someone else that he really was a monster.  Her mother has never been supportive of her and always dismissed it as she was imagining things, making things up, or just crazy.  That also sounded very familiar.

I also understood her need to hear the confirmation from something other than her own memory.  I have always held on to that tiny bit of denial that I was just crazy or imagined it happening.  I received that same confirmation on this trip.

Does it make me feel better? 

Not really.

I've lost the security I had in my tiny piece of denial.  In the past when I have really felt bad, I would make myself feel better by using that denial.  Now I don't have that safety net and that is frightening.  I am also forced to accept what happened and who they really were.

And then there is the obvious reason that none of this made me feel better. 

If they knew that things were going on. 

Witnessed things with their own eyes and ears. 

Knew what he was capable of. 

Knew that my mother was crazy too. 

Why the fuck didn't they do anything?!?

I get that they were scared and maybe even intimidated but shit, they have two daughters of their own.  Wouldn't they want someone to speak up if something had been happening to their girls??

It's always nice to reconnect with family over the holidays.  Especially the part when they tell you they knew that their brother, your father, was fucking you all along.

Fuck them.

Completed

My mothers sister killed herself in November.  I spent part of my Thanksgiving week traveling to view and claim her body.  Of all the horror I have witnessed; this was one of my more disturbing moments.  I went in alone and I still wish that I had not.

She is number three.  My sister.  My mother.  And now her.  They are a group of three while I am on the outside looking in.

I wish people would leave my life without forcing themselves, by their own hands, through that narrow tunnel of death.  Forced is never easy.  For the person dying or the one left behind.

I try not to imagine what their final moments might have been like.  I walk that fine edge of looking but then ripping my eyes away.  I want to know but at the final moment I turn away because I am not a part of their sacred group. 

I wander into another kind of group that is supposed to support people like myself.  Those left behind to answer all the questions that never have an answer.

There are six of us.  A group of six with little in common except a forcible death in our lives.

Completed suicide.  That's the phrase they use when introducing their loved one. 

When I think of the word completed, I think in terms of... completed 1st grade... completed a project... completed a task. 

Completing death?  Creepy.  And a nice way of dressing up the fact that there are some people who off themselves because things suck really bad for them.

The circle stops at my chair I say my name and rattle off my group of three.  The leader repeats back my group of three and it suddenly sounds so much worse.

The circle begins again as each describes how their loved one completed suicide.  There's that word again.

In graphic detail... three gunshots, a hanging and an overdose.  Blood... eyeballs bulging... vomit... brains and walls.  If completed didn't sound strange before it has certainly become the fucking understatement of the evening now.

The circle stops at me again and I stare.  I finally just say no thank you and the circle keeps on rolling down  the steep descent.

Now it's time for the grief and feelings.  The other five members have all lost their children.  I'm the only one who has lost a parent, sibling, and an aunt.  I tell myself that doesn't matter.  Grief is grief.  Feelings are feelings.

But as I listen to the parents grieve their children I am stunned as I hear their words.

... anything to take their place...

... I would have taken their pain...

... miss them so much...

I hear their words but hear my mother's louder as she wished aloud that it was me instead of my sister lying in that hospital bed.  And once again speaking her wishes once my sister passed away.  Quite the contrast.

I break out in a cold sweat.  I shiver as my stomach lurches.  My head is screaming as the voices gain momentum.  I try to gather a few feelings to speak but they are drowned out by the frantic pitch my mind is at.

It's once again my turn to share.  My heart is pounding and the room is spinning.  I know what comes next.  I grab my keys and excuse myself.  I get sick in the parking lot and then I drive away.  My head hasn't stopped screaming yet.

I completed my first attempt at a support group and that was the only time that evening that word was used correctly.

Intersect

I see him coming and there is no place for me to go.  The one way out is the way that he will walk in. 

I can smell him twenty feet away. 

Through glass. 

Through a door.

The room begins to spin and collapse around me.  I tell myself that it's not him; that would be impossible.  My mind.  My nose.  My body.  They all betray me.

He walks through my door.  I offer a simple handshake.  I hope that a brief touch will flood my shattered mind with the calm of reality. 

That's not him.  He means no harm.  And then my reassurance turns into frenzied questions.

A handshake turns into a hug.  Too much contact as his cologne seeps into my every sense.  Glass shatters as my mind spins in sync with the room.

A painful haze fills the room.  My vision narrows into a tiny point.  A push.  And then a shove.  Obscenities spewed propel me backwards as a corner of the room folds me in as protection.

My back slides down the wall as I crouch to hide my face.  The two walls meet and wrap their arms around me.   I rock as I listen for the silence.  The calm.

But instead as the haze lifts I hear the racking sobs of a wounded someone. 

Tears like razors spill into my protective hands.  They cut my hands as each one drops.  I shake and pound my head into the walls. 

Those sobs are mine and I can hardly breathe.  I squeeze my eyes so tight to stop the tears.  They subside but I do not open them afraid that the monster is still there.

A voice calls my name. 

Another warns not to touch me.

One eye opens.  And then the other.  I shiver as I see the worried faces.

No shards of glass.  No wounded hands.  His smell still lingers but he is gone.  The shrinking room has expanded to an endless space of shame. 

Another hand offers me a way out of my corner.  I brush away my tears but my face burns hot with shame. 

It has finally happened.  My past has found a way to intersect with my public life.