I hate how I love you still and always
I don’t know how else to be than this sort of broken strength.

There’s been so many times where people ask me what I am. And the answer is so complex that I go with the simplest answer possible. Since the beginning of consciousness I have used stories to escape my world.
My wild imagination was the best way, the only way, to escape constant abuse.
I met with one of my closest friends recently. She and I have the same birthdays which makes sense to me. We’re mirror images of each other with only age separating us. She’s from the same world where I come from, and we are abrasive, hurricane force women.
I told her details of what I went through that few have heard. My fingernails pick anxiously at my cuticles as I spoke. The words catch with my highly controlled breathing. My tongue is dry and sticks to the roof of my mouth like peanut butter.
“I hyper focused on the details when abuse happened. Sexual, physical, you just really notice the taste of Werthers Original candy. The feel of the worn carpet beneath your knees. The amount of curls within the pattern of it all..”
My voice fades as if I’m there in this moment. My emotions threaten to suffocate me and I repress them.
I suffered from being molested by those closest to me, but also strangers. It started when I was four, spanning out until I was in my twenties. This is part of the reason why I refer to myself as a special sort of fucked up.
My favorite people were my abusers.
That is seriously fucked up to admit that shit. I choke on these words as I admit this fact. I feel gross, disgusted with myself, to not just fully hate them for how they broke me. For how I said no, pushed them away, and they kept coming at me.
My friend comes to my sanity’s rescue. Fingers pull through shoulder length hair as I shudder. I move a hand to cradle my forehead and just breathe.
“Think about it, if you’re going to abuse someone you’ll be nice to them. You want it to keep going on and for them to be quiet about it. You want them to think it’s a game.”
She tells me this and my rationality grips onto it. It would make sense to keep them entangled with you. I still feel like there’s something twisted within me that they became my favorite people.
If I keep silent about what happened, if I never share my story, then others like me feel isolated. I know I was incredibly sheltered, thinking this was all normal but knowing deep down… it fucking wasn’t.
My friend, this woman I trust more than others, who gets me without pity looks at me. It isn’t a look of I wish I could fix you. Instead, it’s something where she pierces through me, giving me yet again another logical fact. She reminds me of my strength I refuse to see or acknowledge.
“I don’t know how you became good through all this. But you did, MD, and you are strong.”
The False Mask You Fell For
Everyone thinks I’m incredibly cocky. But, whenever someone gives me a compliment it makes me allergic. When a lady who knew me said I looked beautiful recently I tried to diffuse her compliment.
“I clean up alright,” I remember my jest I gave in return.
“You do look beautiful. Repeat after me MD, thank you.”
It makes me uncomfortable, and blows my mind why people would say something good about me. I was isolated most of my life, home schooling was some of the worst years of my life. Yet, these were also some of the best for the volunteer work I did.
I was kept under control by thinking I was lesser than what I was.
“You’re worthless, no one will ever put up with you. Take any man that deals with you and stay in the relationship, especially if they pay for everything.”
It was a common anthem, the soundtrack of my life. I think my mother loves me in her own twisted way. Her way of showing it is by having her chicks controlled and their flight wings clipped.
The Love I Can Never Escape
She’s still my favorite person even though she tells me she can, and will, hurt me worse than any other human being on this planet.
This woman knows the deepest recesses of my mind that terrify me. I think of myself as a pretty fearless human being. But, everyone has their triggers and she knows each and every single one embedded in my neurons.
As always, this woman is right.
When I was a kid the physical abuse was the worst. I was hit, okay, that happened here and there. I was in first and second grade, preschool even, when it happened.
There was a car door slammed on my thumb and it was broken. I remember my mother yelling at me and I still had my hand close to where the door was. The sound of the metal car door hitting soft, young flesh is unmistakable and sickening. I can still feel and hear it.
She told me that was what I got for making her angry, for being what I was. An abomination pretty much, a useless play thing she couldn’t stand. The crippling pain caused me to scream and I was told that I deserved it.
It’s here and there the instances. I was punched in the face on a car drive to see my brother’s game. Blood gushed down my face and I was told, yet again, if I had only listened I wouldn’t have been hurt.
I stopped the bleeding with one of my brother’s shirts pressed against my face. I remember the metallic taste of blood in my throat as I automatically tilted my head back. We still went to the game and I was a caked, bloody mess.
No one asked what had happened, or questioned me.
But, the physical doesn’t bother me as much as the mental. The mental scars are bits and pieces of my limbs being psychologically severed.
Invisible Scars of Mental Abuse
The abuse turned to mental once I was taller and stronger than her. She liked me a little better once I became a better play thing. This is how she likes to refer to people, whether they are efficient playmates to entertain her. To keep her from boredom and follow her direction without question.
What am I?
I don’t think you even want to know the answer to that question. I’m disassembled, in disrepair, with the broken bits glued together. But, there’s always seams in my patchwork. You just can never see them because I don’t let you in close enough to see the cracks.
People keep telling me I’m strong. I don’t know how else to be, I continue to breathe. So, I’ll make this world better than what it came to me as. I’ll show kindness in every way I can. I’ll fight the monster I can become, that lurks in my deepest recesses.
I will try not to become mean even though my mother gets especially excited when my tongue looks to cut others down.
God, but do I love her so. I will always feel this for her. That’s part of my problem, she is my weakness. But, all I know is to love this woman who molded me into this. Thank you for making me this kind of twisted, this kind of strong through the hell I’ve taken and gone back again.
I will never stop loving you.
