What a Girl Goes Through

I look at you and I don’t want to. I look at you and my eyes water with regret. I look at you and my mind clouds with anger and bitterness. I just want to yell louder and louder. Loud enough to knock the pictures off the wall. Loud enough to make you cower and shrink. Loud enough to see the regret in your eyes. The fear. If I yell loud enough the things I’ve been trying to tell you might make it past your thick skull and your closed ears. If I yell loud enough the thoughts will leave my mind and haunt you instead. If I yell loud enough I might scare you. That’s what I want.

I look at you and I want to hurt you. I want to hurt you the way you hurt me. I want you to realize how it still affects me and it still makes me angry. It makes my teeth clench and my fists tight. It makes my face red and I just want to hit you. If I hit you maybe it would become real to you. If I hit you maybe it would spark a thought that you’ve done something bigger than you realized. Bigger than yourself and your selfish needs. If I hit you maybe your excuses would dissolve and the truth would appear. You were a monster to me. If only you realize how intense it was. How disgustingly forceful you became. If only you see yourself the way that I see you. That’s what I want.

I sit and stare at the picture of you. My face mutating into silent sobs I feel that I have to hide. Tears stream down my face not at you. Not at what you did. But how you made me feel. I was nothing. I was nothing for a whole year and I pretended to like it for you. I took it day after day because I thought I was helping you. You let me believe that’s what love looked like. A horrifying image of manipulation and toxicity. I was less than nothing. I was something less than nothing because to you I was a prize. To you I was relief at the end of the day. To you I was sex. I was objective. I was less than a person. It didn’t matter how many times I said no or told you to stop, I was confused and you collected me into your game. I was a game. I was a game you played because you knew you would win. I wasn’t ever there to be more than that. You know it. And you knew it then, too.

Not only was I treated as nothing, but I felt nothing. I felt nothing for a lot longer than just a year. I felt nothing for so long. What you did didn’t bother me as much as the way you left me. You played me up for two years telling me I needed you and if I didn’t do these things I didn’t love you. You exploited the worst parts of me and used me to get what you wanted. My lack of character was exposed as you made me look like a naive little sucker. I never pushed it and in return you pushed me. You didn’t even want anything pure or good. You wanted dirt. I was dirt. I felt nothing. I don’t think you realize how long I sat awake in my bed staring at the ceiling wishing for pain because that’s more than what I felt. I didn’t wish for good things because I wasn’t brave enough. I didn’t believe good things could come without inherently bad things to follow. Maybe I was right. I sat awake with no tears streaming down my face, no frown on my lips, no furrow in my brow. No smile, no laughter, no moving at all, actually. Silence as I thought, my mind never stopping.

I sat there, picking away at myself for three years. During the nights, I laid on my back wondering why I wasn’t enough. Not for you, but for myself. For the people I needed to be enough for. Why wasn’t I enough? How did I let it go so far? How could I forget my dignity? My character? My own choices weren’t mine. I laid and I picked. I picked myself apart. Every single thing you loved me for was ugly. Every single thing I once was proud of was disgusting. My face and my body, my eating habits, my tears, my pleasures, and my music. It all became lost. I had no passion for anything. I had no strength to heal. I had no motivation to be a functioning person. And still I would ask myself at night: Why wasn’t I enough?

I don’t yell at you and I don’t hit you. I wish I could. I’m still not enough. I don’t have enough character in me to do those things even though that’s what I’ve dreamed about doing. Once I see you again, maybe. I am not going to seek you out, though. I don’t want anything to do with you. I desperately want to forget about you. The mere thought of you makes me need to be stronger. Makes me want to inhale the hate and revenge, and exhale the tired girl I used to be. I’m not sure if strength will be hitting you the next time I see you, or if strength be holding back my fist.