House Without A Home

“You’re my property. I own you, and I have government papers to prove it.”

These words I think about everyday.

I see her red, splotchy complexion. I hear her slurred words and dragging steps. I hear her slamming herself repeatedly into my bedroom door, BANG BANG BANG, consequently breaking the lock mechanism. I feel my bed shaking as she bursts in, clutching the door to keep herself upright. I can smell the sweat and oil on her face, and I can smell the alcohol.

I hear the names she calls me. The terrible things she says I am.

Lazy, selfish, stupid bitch. C***. A whole list of them.

All these things, they were normal. I didn’t go to school with bruises on my body. I wasn’t beaten, I wasn’t thrown around. I was threatened, but never did she lay a finger on me. So it wasn’t abuse, right?

Wrong.

Only when I was an adult did I realize that, hey! My normal meter is way off!

For two decades. Two decades of screaming. From infancy, when I was a baby in a crib and I cried at night, and she leaned inches away from my face and screamed as loud as she could, “Shut up, bitch!”

My aunt, begging to take care of me.

Her, saying no, because, “if I can’t sleep, then neither can she!”

Screaming in the middle of the night. Screaming when she was still drunk in the morning. That special growling voice she did just to scare me.

I wasn’t scared of it anymore, eventually. As you get older and interact with others who have a balanced normal meter, it tips you off that something at home might not be normal.

Not normal to tell your twelve-year-old, “You should feel lucky you’re not in Saudi Arabia as someone’s sex slave!”

Not normal to eat an apple for dinner. To only be cooked for when there was a man in the house. Not normal to have to ask for permission to eat food.

Not normal to be manipulated every single day.

“You don’t love me!”

Not normal to be chased around an apartment while you’re on the phone with 911, and she’s screaming into the receiver that you’re a lying bitch. And when she grabs onto you to pull you to the floor, you slip out of your cardigan and she crashes down with it, while you proceed to jump over her and run into your bedroom.

Not normal to be made the monster when you finally confront her. When 19 years of repression, depression, and hurt finally come out to tell her: you did this to me.

And, suddenly, she’s the one who made all the sacrifices in the world.

“...all the sacrifices I made for you...”

“...I had to be your taxi...”

“...stayed single for years so you wouldn’t get molested...”

“...had to drive you to your sports games...”

“...had to pay for your schooling and music...”

“...gave you food and shelter...”

The bare basic minimum is not a sacrifice. It is a responsibility.

This is not a narrative, but a message. A message for those who feel ashamed of their own existence.

A message to the parents who had their children when they were in no way responsible enough, financially stable enough, and emotionally intelligent enough to properly love their children in a healthy way: We are not the ones responsible for you. We should not have had to take care of you when we could barely take care of ourselves.

A message for those who don’t have the physical bruises to show how they have been hurt: You don’t have to be hit, have to be beaten, have to be sold to a faraway man (as she often told me), in order to be hurt. To be abused.

You are heard.