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.

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.

Choices

I didn't have a lot of choices growing up.  Not unless you count the way I wanted him. 

Painful or excruciating.

I didn't have much power either.  No amount of prayers, wishing, hoping, begging would change their minds. 

Not to say that I didn't try though.

I have a difficult time conveying just how strong my memories and flashbacks are.  I appear calm and collected to the passerby.  I have to.  But peer into my soul and you will see the claw marks of my pain. Scraping their way down into a collective pool of boundless grief and torment log jammed by the planks of fear and shame.

I long to turn myself inside out and bare my rotting scars.  To have someone besides myself witness what bubbles to the surface just long enough to be squelched again.  Power and a choice.  That is what I beg to find within those murky waters.

A choice to change.  A choice to pull the planks and let the stagnent flow.

The power to perservere.  The power to put them in their rightful place.  Forever.

Prolonging

I need a break.  A respite from my feelings.  I know that must sound strange assuming that most like to feel; it's how they know that they are alive.  Me, my feelings taunt me and remind me that I'm not dead.  Flashback after flashback invade my frazzled mind and body until my pounding heart is breaking in the wake of no relief.

How long have you felt depressed?

I don't remember not feeling depressed...

When was the last time you felt happy?

I have fleeting moments of happiness...

When did the abuse begin?

I don't remember not being abused...

I started seeing a new shrink and those were some of her questions and then some of my answers.  There was a rhythm to my replies which involved prolonged misery. 

I want to feel better so I go to a shrink.  I take medication.  I see my therapist.  I feel and it hurts like hell but I think that I am working hard and at some point it will pay off.  But then there is a lingering suspicion he knew that even after he was gone his evil would still haunt and hurt me.

What kind of person brings a child into this world and shapes her childish life to know nothing but confusion, pain and sadness?  Terror that she longs to stop even after you are gone.  I bet he's laughing now knowing that I'm still pleading with the hurt to end.