Getting over abuse is impossible

Because you don’t get over it. There is no over or under or skirting around it. You confront it or ignore it. Even if you run or hide, it’s always there, standing in front of you. Some days it’s lost in a fog called Time. Time shrouds it and makes it harder to see. Other days, the fog lifts and sun shines right on it and it glares, bright and painful to look at. Impossible to ignore.

Impossible to move past.

Some days abuse is like a hand around your throat. Squeezing so tight you think you’ll die. The breaths are hard to catch, the air evading your lungs. And your heart hammers to get free. It’s like everything inside you wants to be somewhere else, somewhere far away. Another kind of fog descends and you can get trapped there because it’s so thick. Impenetrable. Like a cage with no bars.

You want to be free of the abuse. You really, really do. You wish you could tip up your lips and say fuck it. I’m gonna be happy now. But it stands there in front of you and there’s no getting over it.

On the days that it’s distant and you can ignore it, you reach something close to happiness. But it isn’t real. Or maybe it’s not the happiness that’s bottled up and sold to you on TV. It’s some sort of joy derived from oblivion or ignorance. Of denial.

Abuse. What abuse? You ask this over and over. Maybe it wasn’t abuse. Maybe it was something else, something less. Something you can explain and water down and say wasn’t so bad after all. It happens to everyone. You’re not so special. Everyone’s parents hit them. Everyone’s parents shove them in a cold shower with their clothes on until they cool down. Everyone’s parents leave them in a car, alone, for hours while they hang out with their friends. Everyone’s parents force them to pray and sit and be silent and choke down their feelings and be happy all the time and behave and just don’t bother us and don’t be a kid and just do as I say. Everyone’s parents convince them that their word is law and nothing they say is a lie and even if it is a lie, everyone’s parents tell them to go along with it because it’s embarrassing when they’re called out for lying in front of their friends.

Everyone’s parents do it. It must be okay.

But years later you sit in that fog and it starts to clear and you wake up and stare at the thing that’s been hiding in plain sight, the thing that glares and hurts your eyes and makes you want to close them forever. And you could. You could close your eyes. But instead you choose to open them. You choose to stare at it and after some time you recognize it. It’s like staring at the sun. Pure, blinding pain. Confusion. But it’s there and it’s not going away. There is no away. You can’t tuck away abuse in a little box and put a bow on top. It doesn’t fit the box.

It barely fits you.

It tells you that it wasn’t normal.

Parents don’t do that. It whispers to you. The truth. Parents don’t laugh when you cry and take pictures as hot tears burn your cheeks and the rage and sadness and humiliation is recorded and preserved forever. They don’t tell you that an evil spirit lives in you. They don’t tell you that what you want is of the devil and the only way to be happy is to listen to them.

The abuse tells you this. It screams this. And you want to cover your ears but there’s none of that there. You cannot lift a finger to make it stop. It never stops.

The abuse gets bigger and bigger, brighter. An incandescent furnace that burns you.

It burns and burns and burns

And finally you scream too. You scream at everyone, unleashing the rage. Because what you feel isn’t sadness. It is pure, undiluted anger. You hate so passionately. You starve for justice. You want to rake your nails down the skin of the world and draw blood. You want to see them all as wrecked as you feel.

Because they stole from you. They stole everything. Your childhood. Your innocence. Your ability to feel things without guilt. Your ability to cry without feeling humiliated. You can’t trust anyone because the ones that you could trust, the ones that you should have been able to trust, betrayed you.

So there is no getting over abuse. Because abuse is part of you. It’s like a tattoo on your skin, forever reminding you of what was done, what was taken. It hurt like hell and maybe the pain is gone but there was pain

So much pain

and the memory of the pain can hurt just as much.