Love & Distortion

I keep remembering what it feels like to be trapped in a room, hands clenched around your throat, kicking, squirming, eyes wide with terror. No breath escaping as the hand that are supposed to love you clamp down hard and painfully over your mouth. Now wondering if this is my last moment before consciousness fades.

Stop fighting.

Surrender.

Trapped.

Survival says “fight back!”

Then fear seizes you and the images flash of what happens when you fight back.

Haunted eyes search for escape. No way out. You’d have to be fast. Then what? Too cold to run to “nowhere.”

Eyes now fill with tears and the worst feeling of all, helplessness, settles in; collapsing you into a small fragile ball on rumpled sheets.

Little by little the soul begins to fade.

Resentment builds in the hidden place.

“One day I’ll get out,” you silently vow, but soon that voice becomes a whimper. Soon you have no words to describe what is happening inside of you and the only stories you remember are the ones he told you at least a thousand and one times.

All day he talks and you want to make it stop. His voice. The voice of lies. You know this is wrong. Your soul does anyway as it tears and claws at your body. Escape or explode.

But somehow you manage to bury it a little deeper and tomorrow will be a better day so you forget again. It’s easy forgetting now. Memories fade.

The truth is frightening. The truth is becoming distorted. Hidden bruises, nights of terror, confusion, lies- so many lies, he’s talking again. You pray he doesn’t buy another drink. You try to distract him. It doesn’t work.

Now comes the careful task of walking on eggshells, but your feet are bleeding from caution and your ears can take no more lies.

Please remember you are strong. Please remember you are loved. Think! Think! Think!

You must escape.

You will escape.

Because you are not the words he has said to you and you are not the knot of fear that now sits almost permanently in the pit of your stomach.

You are loved. You are a warrior. You are infinite possibilities.

Freedom now seems a distant dream, but it’s closer than you think. Damn the lies.

Escape.

T.A.J.