To those who understand

Imagine yourself in your bed: plain face, no make up to cover the damp streaks under your eyes of last night after your father walked out of the room re-doing his belt and zipping up his pants. Imagine yourself when you were curled up in a ball in your closet, hugging your knees closer to you every time you heard your mother scream because she didn't open your legs like you are forced to do; you're next and you know it, you pray to God that maybe just this one night your father will skip your room but that prayer will fail you once again. 

You're fifteen, your birthday is next week, you're reminded of this every night as your father whispers into your ear while he pushes your head into the pillows "You're becoming more of a woman every day". Next week is also Father's day and your friends and teachers aren't asking you why there are scars on your wrists and bruises on your arms but rather what you'll be doing to appreciate all the hard work your father does for your family. They don't know about last year when you gave him a poem you wrote and he threw it in the trash with his beer can because "only babies write poems for their fathers, and you're a woman". You have been since you were eight and he came into your room one night with the scent of vodka and your mother's blood on his lips, whispering to your twitching body after the rape "you're a woman now". 

You weren't allowed to cry because "you're a woman" and "no woman has the right to cry when a man gives her sex". So instead you trapped yourself inside your own body; emotionless, thoughtless, indifferent to the outside world. The few times that you stepped outside of that windowless box everything still seemed black. Your thoughts were consumed only by the obscenity of a parent, your own father on top of you in a drunken frenzy, forcing his way into you even when it made you scream; all you thought of was your porcelain body being defaced by its own creator. Red is all you could think. Your feelings were the only thing that changed when you stepped outside that box. 

It was a feeling that stemmed from the middle of your battered chest and pulsed up through your spine to the backs of your ears creeping up your scalp. It caused your arms to go numb and limp and made every step require all of your energy. It felt as though you were falling but you honestly didn't care where you were going to land.

But that's not the sad part about it. The sad part is that you sort of enjoyed that feeling. It was the only other feeling besides the sweaty weight of your father bearing down on you. It was hope. It was hope because that was the only other true and pure feeling besides fear and love, but love had become and unknown enigma that your heart wouldn't ever be able to feel again. It let you know that you were still human contrary to the seven years of your father telling you otherwise. It was the only friend you had because all of the other people claiming that title didn't say a word to you, didn't glance at the cuts, didn't read the story etched into your face a thousand times shouting out for help. They didn't even recognize the small bump forming in your stomach and growing bigger every week soon to be cut out of you by your father using a wire hanger and some rum. You didn't have any other family to help you because your mother knew your father would beat her and your uncle only ever watched with amusement on his face and excitement in his pants. The teachers of your catholic school would only ever call you a liar and order you not to speak of it ever again as it would give them a bad name. That feeling was the only thing that you could fall onto. It was the only one that gave you the courage to do what you are about to do now...

"Depression" is going to be the only known reason of why you jumped off the freeway overpass into the path of a semi-truck. Your story will never be told; the nights that you attempted to retaliate and ended up getting your hair pulled out will never be spoken of; your father will cry for the loss of his daughter and people will be sympathetic for that rapist, sympathetic for that monster. 

But you'll be free. 

It took seven years but you'll finally be free. 

You won't thank God for being free, you'll only thank that tiny voice in your head that gave you the spark of courage to change things for yourself. 

People will be mad at you, calling you selfish for taking away their friend as though they owned you too.

Others will be sorry for you, you weren't even sixteen and "you had a whole life ahead of you". Little did they know that your life and four other innocent ones were taken from you all at the hands of your father.

So you're not sorry, nor sad, and least of all regretful that you did what you did. Now he can't harm you anymore, no one can...

Some lives are worth living.

Some worth giving so that others may be protected.

And some worth taking in order to stop the constant pain felt

every 

f*****g

day.

Author's Note

I'm not looking for any professional-styled critiques here I just enjoy writing but any mundane comments are welcome.