I enjoy life, but life hurts and abuses me. I smile and laugh at the little things, while being degraded and yelled at. I smile every day because I forgive and forget, everyday I am mentally abused and given a new reason to cry. However, I can’t cry with my eyes so my heart hurts for me in exchange for my smile. I laugh and things seem to fade away and release me from my worries, but he knows exactly what to say to crush me.  Everyday I trade my pain for a genuine smile, I let myself forget, I let myself go on without letting it get to me, even though I remember every word. My memory is the one thing I try hardest to control, to filter, to edit. These things I hear, these things people say, if I were to remember them all I would have snapped a long time ago. However, there are those few days, when time moves slowly, when reality catches up and my corrections fade into the static. Images flash and blur with the words I can’t stand to hear. The accusations, the hurtful words meant only to tear me down, to tear away the smile I work so hard for. These are the days when everything blends together in a mesh of color and emotions. These are the days when I can’t help but look twice at the knife lying idle on the counter, when I can’t help but get lost in the blur of traffic as I contemplate just a slight swerve. When ropes cause my eyes to look to the skies for the perfect perch. The truth is I cannot ever hurt myself because it hurts my heart much more than it ever would my flesh. I don’t need physical pain to know these things are real.
Dawn breaks, everything is fixed and my smile is back, everything is alright now, no worries. I can’t cry because tears and smiles are not meant to linger together on the same face, so I embrace my smile and live quietly under the pressure. The torments will end, tomorrow with come and go, just like today. My heart will hurt, but it won’t last. I accept this lifestyle without questions, some call me a masochist, but really, I think I am just to forgiving. This is no love story, this is a family that has been broken and the one that finds peace in the simple joys in life, is the one that deserves to be tormented. Never has a hand been laid on me by them, but every word is just a reminder of what I really am in the reality of this world. I don’t much care for that reality, so I smile, to help me forget, to allow myself to believe they are lying, to try to keep my heart from breaking. I smile, because its the only thing they can never take from me, no matter how hard they try.
However, this lifestyle has taken its toll, not just on my mind, but my body as well. I am sick and my body is slowly decaying from the inside out, breaking down from the stress that I live every day. Doctors try to hide their surprise, but I know enough about medicine and the medical field in general to know that look. They try to shrug it off so as not to worry me, saying its not bad, trying to keep a cool, passive face. I know the images they are looking at are not normal, I see some of the things they see, I see the problems, the irregularities and I know what most of them mean. I try so hard to keep my mind clear, to pretend I have no idea, to live a lie in blissful ignorance, but its not nearly that simple.
Helpless, and unable to fix this, I wish for everything to just end, for things to no longer be,
I want to simply fade away….
3 comments
Do you think you would be helped by learning some assertiveness techniques Disheartened? If you can’t find the outlet of using words to defend yourself from the attacks, you are more likely to become ill from the physical strain on your body I would think…I guess it’s about setting healthy boundaries for what you can and can’t accept. It’s simply not OK to be abused, however forgiving a person you may be.Zx
So Interesting…sounds a lot like me..I try to b happy. .But there are too many memories..if they don’t invade my brain every hour..that’s a great day…everything just picks at my brain…it’s horrible..I too have tried to b in an altered state..trying not to care or b affected by others…very difficult…
@Louise50: I do try, I have a naturally loud personality, but every time I try to defend myself against the verbal abuse, it’s twisted around so everything is my fault, things are brought up in a different light where he passes all responsibility to me, so the error is mine alone. I am “disrespectful” when I speak out, I am “ungrateful” when try to ignore it and I am “selfish” when I try to fix things the “wrong way”. I’ve lived with it for years, and have gotten used to it, it wasn’t until recently that someone came to live with us for awhile, and left within a few weeks because she couldn’t take it anymore. That is when I realized the severity of my situation. I am a college student, so leaving is an impossibly expensive task, I am trapped here by people that don’t even want me around.
@candycane: I’ve been there, when I was younger. Every spare moment is a moment to long for my brain to remind me of everything. It gets better with time though, even though it feels like an eternity.