My heart falls forward, ribs buckling,
knees dropping to the ground in unison.
–
The sky looks thin and precarious from above.
Behind that great blue curtain, the puppeteer plucks his strings.
–
The sun tears at my flesh. Sweat slips into my tears,
I rub my eyes with a jet black sleeve.
–
Grass pokes at my fingertips like an accunpurist’s needles.
I peel back layers of earth but you are much too deep.
My dad died shortly after I received the news of his illness. The Skype conversation we had before his death was an eye opener. Several of my relatives were present during the chat, relatives I haven’t seen since I was a child/teenager. Relatives who had no idea about the abuse and who believed that my husband forbade me from contact with my father because that was the excuse my father gave to explain away my absence. It was also the excuse he used to anesthetize himself when I confronted him about the abuse in my 20s. My father asked me why I had never let him meet his granddaughter. I never told him I had a child and I can only surmise a relative found out and passed the news along to him. I explained that in light of the events of my childhood I felt it was unsafe. He denied the abuse, said everything that happened was imaginary. If my entire childhood was imaginary does that mean I am a magical entity? At the end of the conversation he added that I looked old. The conversation proved to me once and for all that I had made the right choice in ending contact. My father hadn’t changed and his inability to take responsibility for his actions even at the last possible moment, without risk of any legal repercussions proved that he would never change in such a way as to make a relationship with him possible/healthy. He sexualized everything I did as a child, he reminded me at every possible moment that a woman’s purpose is to fulfill a man’s sexual desires, and he body shammed me relentlessly. Even his compliments were a form of emotional manipulation. He didn’t always shame me for how I currently looked but how I would look in the future and how that future me was going to be undesirable to men. My dad was just an asshole and I know people hate speaking ill of the dead but I spent so many years trying to euphemize his behavior and I won’t do that anymore. He was awful to the women in his life and he was proud of it. He felt entitled to women’s bodies and he objectified every single woman he met. For many years I saw my value only in my desirability to men and so a vast majority of my encounters with men came from a place of intense shame. Just today I skimmed through celebrity news titles (which I almost never do) and it was much of the same bullshit. Men raping women and women posing for sexy pictures. I am just done with it. I am done with a culture that says boys aren’t allowed to have feelings. I am done with a culture that tries to beat men straight. I am done with a culture that believes alcohol or a short dress is a legitimate excuse for rape. I am done with a culture that doesn’t even talk about all the boys getting sexually abused. I am done with a culture that promotes rape and enforces gender stereotypes.
If I had any advice to give to society it would be: Stop raising your kids to be assholes in order to protect them from bigger assholes. The world doesn’t need more assholes, period.
That concludes my rant for the time being. I don’t have any intentions of leaving WordPress I am just processing some things.
Guide: Revenge is only a delusion. What has been done cannot be reversed, least of all with violence. Are you beast or man? Choose or be consumed.
Grieving Man: I mean not only to bruise his flesh but to splinter his psyche. I am entitled to blood.
Guide: Nothing entitles a man to murder. You will only rob the world of the man she loved.
Grieving Man: I will relish his death, this is my justice.
Guide: And who granted you this boon? This burden? Only fools play God. What you speak of is madness. Your grief is justified but your grief does not justify your current course of action.
Grieving Man: The moment of her death flashes before my eyes even as we speak. My heart brims with rage. I am only a man weak from suffering.
Guide: Then let her story serve as a warning, a reminder than one death does not erase another. Will you bathe her legacy in blood? Will you peel the soul from your body and crush hers with the weight of your sins?
Grieving Man: I have nothing left, my future is blank. I would that my heart too were blank.
Guide: Then you could never have loved her. Is that the world you wish to create? In such a world you could very well have killed her. Tell me would you knowingly become the object of your revenge?
–
Since I don’t usually write stories I don’t have much opportunity to write dialogue. When I saw the words though the scenario just made sense.
mindlovemisery 