Don’t Think About Him
Content warning: Descriptions of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse
Don’t think about him, don’t think about him. They tell me not to think about him. They tell me that thinking about him gives him power. Thinking about him makes him important. Thinking about him must mean I’m not over him, that I somehow still want him, that I somehow still miss him. Don’t think about him, don’t think about him, don’t think about him. Why do you still think about him?
It’s Christmas now and I try frantically to make Christmas fun. My mother is a Christmas monster. Since Dad died, she takes on Christmas like it’s a Leviathan. She claims she does it for me, but last year, when I was too busy thinking about him to get out from my bed, last year when her back hurt too much to put up the lights outside or finish the ornaments on the Christmas tree — she holed herself up in her own room and cried. My brother found her under her covers sniffling.
I never got over that gloomy Christmas Day, and when it turned 2017, I was determined not to think about him. I didn’t want to think about how he’d raped me. I’d been able to think of myself as something other than a rape victim, back when he’d just grow extremely angry and shout at me for hours and hours when I didn’t want him. Then after a day of shouting, he’d cry, say he was sorry, and then try again. If I resisted, the cycle…
