Domestic Violence

With eyes unfiltered, how could you ever expect me to just forget?

The teeth of your words chewed through my ribcage, the trembling trench of my hands, when a life ends, what does that look like exactly? Help me to remember. 
We all have different reasons for forgetting how to breathe. Mine, was him. Every secret, every solitude, every nervous prayer, was based around him. When my heart was broken by him, I planted seeds in the cracks and prayed for rain. I am now time zones away from the person I was, the day before I left him.

What Does the Face of Domestic Violence look like?

What exactly does the face of domestic violence look like? like the girl next door, like you, like me. It looks like the pretty girl sitting next to you on the train sipping Starbucks coffee and looking beautifully leggy in her high heels. You know, the one you're "oh so envious of", the one with her pretty life apparently "oh so together".....until.....she gets home from work and closes the front door behind her. That's what the face of Domestic Violence looks like....like you.....like me.....something you never witness or see, because it is always a hidden shameful secret behind a closed door. Let us all open our doors!

What does the Act of Domestic Violence look and feel like?

What does domestic violence look like exactly? It looks like a killer grip on your wrist when he is angry. A chokehold that pins you up against a wall. A coffee cup thrown across the room, aiming for your head, but landing instead against the wall with coffee dripping down the cabinet walls. It looks like the dinner (and the plate) strewn across the kitchen table and landing on the floor. It looks like every Christmas Eve, when you are up all night, putting together all the children’s toys yourself, because you didn’t do him a favor and  “just die” like he had asked you to. It looks like hard slaps, and rough words, clenched fists and broken bones. It is apologies that never stop, and a glazed over effect in your eyes. It is bruises that turn from blue and black to green. It is all the bullying that keeps building and building and building and building......until, finally, one day it explodes against the walls of your home, and all that is left, is you in the rubble.

Thursday, July 17, 2014

another / pain / domestic violence / bullying

I usually post  a runner's excerpt on Tuesdays, Thursday and Saturdays, however, today I am making an excuse to throw that rule curbside. Domestic Violence needs yet another yelp from my corner, in case, someone out there is the guarded "me" I once was......get help, get out...

I enter easily into another's pain, a trait I can only attribute not to some outstanding moral fiber, but rather to my adult life, which has trained my mind and soul to inhabit the skin of another in a way that little else can. I remember the scene now, as if it were yesterday, as he brandished the coffee mug, hurling it across the room into the sink, leaving cup smashed and coffee dripping down the kitchen wall. The vision still sears in my head, as heavy fists hurled against the grey doorframe of the bathroom. I'm sure I cried. I remember shaking my head and asking no - one in particular, why? 

As I write this I turn around and see on my shelf the faded scrapbook that contains the tattered "I'm sorry, it won't happen again," notes, tucked into a nearby shabby box are the ones that didn't fit into the scrapbook. And, together, they make me wonder, would he ever have stopped at all, if I had not been the one to stop it, by finally leaving? To finally end the trail of "I'm sorry, and this will be the last time, I promise "... a trail of notes that seemed to continue connecting like the cars of a locomotive that went on forever. Like every other bit of my life, it has affected me for the rest of my life. It is only now that I have begun to stand still with my own memories, re - visiting a time in my life that is on a constant loop in some recess of my brain. Not that I obsess. It is just that the past is a big part of the present...sometimes memories brightly flare up; sometimes they quietly recede to the background.