Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 102929 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102929 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
My eyebrow didn’t just nick. It cut in half with this familiar steady and pulsing ache, this throbbing that beat directly into my right eye, where I was suddenly blind.
By fear.
By hate.
By blood.
“Get up!” he roared, looming from what sounded like above me.
Instinctively, my fingers reached for my face as I tasted the metallic blood in my mouth. With the back of my shaky hand, I tried to wipe away the blood gushing down my eye and cheek, but it was no use. I’d need stitches.
“I said…” he impatiently stressed through a clenched jaw into my ear from above me. “Get the fuck up!”
Since I knew it never ended here, I lifted my arms to guard my face while trying to scramble to my feet, but between the blood in my eye and the disorientation of trying to find my bearings and balance, I couldn’t get up fast enough for him.
The whooshing sound of his combat boot whizzing through the air was the only warning I had before an explosive shock wave rocked through my core from one of his brutal kicks to my stomach.
“Ooofff,” I loudly groaned while my whole body seized up on me.
My breath was violently ripped out of my lungs with such force that I instantly sucked in the air that wasn’t there. I gasped, fighting for my next breath. The wind completely knocked me over.
I hit the ground harder than before, rolling onto the filthy floor that always smelled like stale cigarettes. Yet right now I couldn’t smell a thing. The irony was not lost on me. Except for the frantic hammering of my heart, my world went utterly silent. I couldn’t draw a breath, no matter how badly my body begged for it. I was a fish out of water, flopping around with an imaginary hook on my lip.
But I didn’t grit my teeth in terror.
I didn’t shed a tear in defeat.
I didn’t even beg for mercy.
I never did.
Making it easier for my survival instincts to overcome, I watched way too many kids get the shit beat out of them, and defeat never did them any good either. This was a sick game of cat and mouse, and through the years, my mind learned how to protect itself.
I didn’t know what it was at first… how I was able to dissociate so easily. I didn’t even know it was an actual thing, a defense mechanism I’d been using for as long as I could remember. I just figured it was a natural reaction to the suffering that occurred all around me at any given point in time.
It wasn’t until a group home kid shared with me that a therapist once told him our minds had the power to seek shelter within ourselves.
It was called self-preservation.
A fight or flight or freeze response.
Our way of coping.
The best way I could describe it was having a bizarre, unsettling out-of-body experience. Like I could physically see the situation I was in from outside of myself, through an outsider’s perspective, I guess. Sometimes I’d see myself from below, other times I’d see myself from above, then there were moments like these when I couldn’t see anything at all.
When my mind would become my gaze, and my feet represented the only way I could escape. Except it wasn’t me. At least not conscious me. My feet always fled on their own, chasing safety, which was far from the outside world, but it was the only choice I ever had, and that day wasn’t any different.
This wasn’t the first time I experienced abuse, and deep down, I was fully aware that it wouldn’t be the last I’d live through.
In the haze of my flight response, time seemed to stall for me, and one right after the other, my feet pushed off the ground. Within seconds, my heavy footsteps echoed off the nicotine-stained walls and through the thick, infested air that breathlessly clung to my chest like a vise.
My stagnant breaths lulled the pounding of my heart as I heard him snap from behind me, “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
This wasn’t my fault.
It was never my fault.
It was their own rage driven by the booze, or it was the drugs inflicting pain despite the numbness they endlessly pursued, day after day, night after night.
I wasn’t the problem.
I was just there.
And that was all that mattered.
It was the only motive they needed. Whether it stemmed from the resentment of their lives or the bitterness of their pasts or maybe even their own trauma they once endured.
None of it mattered because hurt people hurt people, and I learned that very early on.
At the end of their self-destructive days, the only therapy they ever sought came in the form of adding yet another emotional or physical scar to whoever the person was closest to.