Didn't Deserve What She Got

A Story by Elisa

A innocent young girl faces the world's cruelty

She runs to him,
The safety of his arms’ embrace,
Flings herself into them as if they could shelter her from the world.
I weep for that little girl.

Years trickle by,
The little girl grows older,
She was still so young.
Still needing a mother,
All mothers want to protect their children.
The daughters face had changed,
Around her eye,

Colors of purple and blue were called to the surface.
The mother wants whats best for her,

The mother lets go,
Tells her to run.
And the little girl runs to the only place she thinks,
Will shelter her from the storm.

No one could prepare the girl for what was yet to come
Such cruelty, she never knew could exist.
For she was such an innocent one.
Words;
Words more painful than the blow of the fist.
Spat at her,
Ugly.
Stupid.
Fat.
Worthless.
Every day, another blow, another bruise, another crack.
The girl heard the words loud and clear.
They stuck to her mind.
Mutating it, until it was unrecognizable.
All she could think about, all she could comprehend.
Those words.
She felt like she was about to break.

Rocks;
Rocks, crushing what was left of her ignorance.
Every stone hitting her body as it did her heart.
But the bruises outside were only temporary;
The ones within would never heal.

Friends,
Friends of which she had few,
They always wore a smile,
It was a good disguise.
Knives had been inserted in a place that would not kill the girl;
For the one who had placed him there still deeply cared about the girl.
The pain was unintentional; but she felt it every day.
Soon the agony became unbearable,
The friends removed the knives with ease,
Blood spewed out of the open wounds.
The blood made it hard to see.
But when the bleeding finally lessened,
Her friends smiles; had turned to savage grins.
For the girl realized her blood wasn’t blood at all,
The Truth had spewed out of her.
She looked up,
And saw her friends were no longer there,
Cruelty stood there savagely grinning in her face.
The girl had been too trusting,
She thought the friends were only trying to help.
But she should’ve been able to peer into them and see cruelty’s grim facade,
Staring right back at her.

Trust,
was the most painful thing the girl had lost.
Everything the girl had told her friends,
Every word that came from her mouth a cry for help,
A cry for sympathy.
Every word.
Entered back into her heart on the knives thrown back at her,
By the friends,
As if they never helped at all.
They never cared that she was bleeding out right in front of them,
They fooled her.
She would never make that mistake again.
For they only took the knives out,
So they could make the wounds deeper.

And thrown back at the poor girl.

She was no longer blind to what this world is,
For the first time,
With clear eyes she saw all the cruelty.
But the cruelty wasn’t done with her.

Tears;

Tears streaming down the girl’s face.
The girl wanted to keep to keep leading a life of bliss,
Believing that the world is good and that everything happens for a reason.
What was seen, couldn’t be unseen.
Her friends tried to help her,
And as friends do.
She took a swing attempting to make her blind once more,
Her vision was blurred, she was not blinded.
And as her vision came back to focus.
She saw that it was no friend at all,
How could she have been so blind,
After all the cruelty she had seen.
How could she have missed what was right in front of her eyes?
Maybe she had been blind all along.
For what stood before her wasn’t a friend at all.

She ran to them,
The safety of their arms’ embrace.
But what she felt was no longer safety,
It was their fists to her face.
Words turned to blades,
Slicing up her arms.
But what she felt was not pain,
It was some sick sense of victory,
That if the girl stepped outside of herself,
And joined the forces against her,
That she would longer be losing.
She would at last be a victor.
But this was not the case,
She would continue losing until cruelty had, had it’s way.

Father,

Father.
Where are you?
Why have you locked yourself inside that room?
The girl receives no answer.
Daddy, are you in there?
Finally the door opens, and he appears in a rage.
The words he says do not register.
For the impact of the marble windowsill, hitting her back overwhelmed all her senses.
His grip on her tightened with violent force.
The girl closes her eyes, she does not want to view her father this way.
She looked up and her father was gone.
No where to be seen.
She sits down in front of the TV,
February 14th, 1994.
A woman and a man dance across the screen,
The love between them sparkles.
Like a scene from a fairytale,

Happy,
They seem happy.
She wishes it could go on forever.
Her daze is broken by
Screaming,
Screaming.
Daggers, pretending to be words,
Fly across the room and hit the woman in the chest.
In the heart
She is falling apart.
The girl looks closely and recognizes the figures,
Battling on the screen,
Mom and Dad,
Husband and Wife.
She looks beside her and sees her brother.
The father’s violent hands reach out and grab him.
And now he is doing the dance with them.
It isn’t a dance at all actually,
Mother and son are slowly fading away,
Happiness is being sucked out by the father.
Delusions replace the happiness that once lived in their minds.
Suddenly the tape cuts.
The father walks off the screen.
Falling too her knees the mother’s heart is broken,
Children,
Her children weren’t meant to live this way.
Her brother stands firm.

The TV turns black,
and then turns back on.
It’s an old video.
The date at the bottom says,
December 31st 2000.
The pictures move by on the screen.
The parents appear.
You can see the brother,
He is playing with packages.
Their wrapping is festive,
It suggests there is something to celebrate.
Suddenly a little girl runs onto the scene.
She has short golden brown hair.
Noises of joy and excitement fill the air.
It’s the little girl’s birthday.
Her face lights up and expands into a big smile,
Then once again,
Black.

Music starts playing,
The musical instrument that tears through the silence is an out of tune guitar.
The person singing is tone deaf,
But the words cling so full of heart,
Happy Birthday,
To you,
Happy Birthday…
She recognizes the voice screeching out of the darkness
But before she has time to think,
A car appears on the TV screen.
The man from the clips before,
Is getting out of a car.
Words,
Words ring out,
and fill the room.
They become louder,
And louder.
Screams.
A woman walks onto a screen,
it’s the mother.
She marches towards the man aggressively.
He pushes her onto the ground.
She cries.
She calls for help.
A second woman appears on the scene.

He runs to her,
The safety of her arms’ embrace,
He has made his choice,
For she is not the one who has given him a present that cannot be returned,
Nor destroyed,
It will always exist no matter in what form.
His children.

The girl realizes the man is a stranger to her,
He is no longer a father to her.
To her the man she sees,
is no man at all,
All she sees is a lost little boy.
No man would abuse their wife,
No man would abuse their son.
The lost boy has found another child,
To help him guide his way.
And one can only hope that’s the path he belongs on,
Because on that path he will stay.

The TV lights up,
As the picture moves along across the screen,
She realizes that it is the end of the scene,
From which the father took his exit,
And began on his path towards a different fate.
The mother is a pile of regret,
and weeping sorrows.
The Brother still stands strong.
Like Father,
Like Son.
The girl takes a look at her brother,
and realizes he is sick.
They assumed that the scars that the beatings had left had healed.

No one bothered to look inside.
Inside the sickness was boiling.
About to explode.
A pot of violence mixed jealousy,
Was cooking inside of the brother.
The brothers eyes,
Blue shimmering pools of injustice,
Filled the screen.
The eyes told the story that words could.
He felt like cruelty had dealt an incorrect card.

For the girl had mostly escaped her father’s wrath,
He was not so lucky.
But the hands that grabbed her throat weren’t his.
She closed her eyes
For violence is taught.
It had been taught to the father.
His fist stuck into her upper body.
And to his grandfather.
She felt pain on her face.
It wasn’t his fault.
If he had been raised differently,
If cruelty hadn’t reached the first person,
If it hadn’t started,
If she hadn’t provoked him.
Who’s fault was it?
Who’s hands were around her throat?
You might as well have placed them there yourself,
Echoed through the room.

Out of a dark corner,
The mother emerged.
As she got closer,
The girl realized her words seemed to be filled with the fear of loosing someone else.
But the echo was still the same.
You might as well have placed them there yourself,
You might as well have placed them there yourself.
Those words devoured her mind.
Suddenly something warm splattered across her face.
Blood.
Blood.
He has sliced his arms open.
A dreadful scream filled the air.
It can only be described as the sound of a mother dying inside.
For the realization that she could loose her child in that instant.
Her son.
The cry continues,
It feels like it will never end.
When will it end?
Sirens,
Sirens cover the sound of her mother’s dreadful crying.
But they only take him away for a while.

The girl has to escape, but she sees none.
She was tired of running but no one knew.
Sleep was all she wanted to do,
Tomorrow, was a dread.
Instead of opportunities,
She woke up to a pain in her chest,
Build up of all the pain,
All the pain that never went away.
She was tired of running but no one knew.
But lying down is harder than you think,

when you’ve been running for so long.

Her legs just wouldn’t stop moving
The mother tells the daughter to run,
Away
Trying to shield her from the images that go on in that house.
Her home.
She runs,
Through the cold winter air.
She runs down the middle of the street,
But she can’t outrun the cruelty.

When the girl returns home,
Her mother is different.
The woman standing there is a stranger.

The girl closes her eyes,
And begins to weep.
Hoping this will lure her mother out of the being who stands in front of her.
She opens her eyes
And is slapped across the face with the mark her father had left on her mother.
The pain she had suffered through with her brother,
Her mother would never be the same.
She closes her eyes once more.
A christmas tree comes into her mind,
Memory,
This is a memory.
She recalls all of the presents underneath the tree,
Her father is on his toes,
Trying the star on the very top of the tree.
She sees herself,
She's smiling.
She hears laughter.

But suddenly the tree becomes bare,
Laughter is replaced with the sound of yelling.
The room is empty,
Besides one figure,
slowly moving about.
Not able to put the star on top of the tree,
Its her.
She gives up, and puts all the decorations in the box.
Tears flow down her cheeks.
The room is now bare,
The sad song of a child having had to grow up to soon,
Fills the air.
Weeping.
Outside the windows are other houses,
With christmas glimmering in all different colors..
She tears her eyes open,
A mirror is hanging across from her,
But the girl who stares back,
Is not her.
It is the little girl.
The little girl who ran to her father after her first day of kindergarten,
Cause she was scared.
And his arms’ embrace made her feel safe.

The woman I am, Sliced open her wrist to try and come close to evening out the pain on the inside.
Bleeding wrists,
Substituted the tears that would no longer flow from my eyes.
Eyes that have cried enough tears for a lifetime.
To this day, the scars on my arm are a shameful symbol of weakness.
There is no way to put this elegantly,
Attention seemed to give people happiness,
The first time I attempted suicide was for attention.
I took a bottle of pills.

I don’t know what was worse,
How badly I felt about stooping to that level.
How sickly I looked.
Or How bad I felt.
The second time followed the domestic violence,
I tied a noose around my neck,
Determined that this pain would be my last.
It snapped.
Thats one of my biggest secrets
Pills,
Pills were what I tried next.
They made me physically feel as bad, as I did emotionally.
Memories I wanted to forget, went away with every handful.
I tried to loose weight,
Beautiful
Skinny,
All the things I felt I could never be,
I thought would come true.
I never will believe I’m any of those things,
for fat and ugly have been engraved in my mind as the truth.
Now I’m just trying to get by

I was that little girl.
I was that little girl.
But that little girl, I am no longer.
I have seen and experienced too many horrible things.
I want to be what that little girl could have become.
I want all the actions to be undone.
The words to be taken back.

But that’s never going to happen

She runs to him,
The safety of his arms’ embrace,
He scoops her up,
Holds her as tightly as he can so that no one will ever hurt her.
He sets her down