For anyone who has ever been bullied into silence…
The other day
Someone close to me asked me
To recall the heartache
of a past-pain that hasn’t
completely healed yet,
And it caused me physical pain
As it all came back to me,
That you really thought it was okay
To tear me down
And use me
Against myself
For your satisfaction,
To suppress your own inner pain,
You thought you were really tough, didn’t you,
Can’t believe I once thought I loved you,
Every time you beat me down
By telling me
That I was to blame
For all the bad things
that went on,
That I got in the way,
That I took up too much space,
You normalised emotional trauma
with careless rage,
You broke a guitar
that was given to you
Bet they don’t even know
that you smashed it
In a frustrated state,
Broken lamps,
And remote controls,
In the bedroom,
In the garage,
In the car,
On the street,
and so many more places,
All the many beats
Of my heart
That you broke,
That nobody ever saw,
So entrenched in the masquerade,
That when I tried to raise my voice,
Many months before I left,
They all –
You all – laughed,
As if the truth that
I finally coughed up
was just a childish joke,
To be squandered
and neglected,
Well, that wasn’t
a very hopeful landscape
for revealing the hidden trauma,
So don’t ask the absent air why
I didn’t speak up,
Were you really so confounded by how long it took me to leave?
And society counts me
as one of the lucky ones,
To break free
Partially unscathed,
And it’s true,
Here I am,
And it’s only occasionally that
The excruciating flashbacks creep up on me,
But I’m safe;
I’m worlds away from you.
And it’s only,
Only because of the humanity of a select few,
Who pulled me out of the deepest darkest blue,
And took me in off the street
At 3 o’clock in the morning,
and offerred me a bed
After you pushed me out your door,
With nowhere to run to
On the other side of the world,
With no ticket out
And no plans for the road
but expected me to have it all figured out
and be out of your town
as fast as I was off your lawn.
Absolutely wonderful. xxx
LikeLike