Trigger warning: Familiar and Domestic abuse. Disclaimer, Victim shaming and abuser forgiveness is never ever justified. This submission is in no way saying a victim should sympathize their abuser, this is just from my perspective as someone who in my healing has often blamed myself and the situations my abusers were in as an excuse for the times they hurt me the most.
Sometimes I put myself in her shoes.
I’m a single mother working 9-5 with two mouths to feed and another on the way.
Unresolved trauma scars.
Unhealed wounds.
Prone to stress and carrying the weight of a volcanic temper.
Jumping on a ten year olds back and punching it repeatedly seems logical during a fit of rage.
I can feel the release of all the pent up pain and anguish being let out with every punch and vulgar term spewed at her.
I tell a child she doesn’t belong on this earth because I feel that I don’t.
And after a therapeutic session of beating a human punching bag, I realize the following minutes, hours or days become a clean slate.
Filled with ice cream and movies and sleeping in on Sundays.
And anytime I feel the pain of the world hit me a little too hard, I put that reality into her because I never learned differently.
I was a child who had a child.
Sometimes I put myself in his shoes.
Insecure.
Angry.
Jealous, possessive and in love.
Never fully understood.
Never heart broken.
Then betrayed by the only two people I trust.
What else is there to do but to hurt her.
If I see her bleed..
If I see her cry..
If I see her scared, she’ll know the way I feel on the inside.
She will feel the pain she caused.
I hit her again and again and again.
I’ll choke her just long enough to begin to see the light go out in her eyes.
I’ll spit at her and push her down and tell her she’s ugly, so she believes she’s less than.
And when I pick her back up from the ground and give her a smile, she’ll never hurt me again and she’ll never leave because she’ll never know her worth.
Unapologetically Surviving 