It’s so cliché for me to be. It sounds so familiar that you dare to ignore or throw it away like a broken doll. A letter written with red fingernails and a body with AIDS running through its veins, on a page that dares stay dry from the tears rolling down the cheeks of a girl hurt by the world and herself.
It’s so cliché for me to be touched by big dirty hands and listen to whispers of the devil at eight years old. Hands that left scars no cocoa butter could heal. And I hid myself from the world like it was my fault. I longed to open up like a flower in the morning to my mother but the fear that she may never believe me made me keep it a secret. Hushed! Like the winds that spoke to the flowers that morning.
My cheeks were attacked daily by the warm water falling from my eyes. I hated those hands; they were cold and scary and I hid myself from them but they always found me.
Then at 11 years old, another pair of hands found me, and although they touched my frail, once innocent and already scarred body once, they left a scar that only I can see. Hushed again! Because those hands . . . those cold toxic hands were the hands of a friend of a friend all too familiar to me, and I could not hurt her so I bore the hurt. And I couldn’t tell my mother because she was in her second year of hating me for telling the world her secret; not realising that it wasn’t intentional, but I had to share my pain with the world and have the world cry with me.
At nine years old my world further shattered the morning I saw her becoming one with someone who was also made from Adam’s rib. And with no explanation or apology, she repeated her actions daily, knowing that I was there. And my innocence was gone and I was now a whore to the world because I had seen and felt, and I was dirty like the broken doll of an orphan and only my tears could clean me, but I bathed in them too often and someone wanted to know why. I hushed in the beginning but the pain needed a voice of its own, and then the world was aware and bathed with me. And for that, she gave me scars as if I didn’t have enough and left bruises that we both can see. I stripped daily for her to adorn my body with pain. For when the world was crying with me they were laughing at her, and though I sinned not I was still punished.
Then the world dried itself whilst I still bathed; no one rescued me and I almost drowned. And the world that was closest to me dared not laugh or send me a life jacket because she was a mean matriarch. To live in pain for 14 years without peace is taking its toll on me.
The world is oblivious to the hurt that is my life because I face it with pink glittery lips and eyes that sparkle and the smile of ten beauty queens. For if I stop smiling, I will be forced to take a bath. And a mind filled with knowledge and a university education which still contemplates suicide, and the bitter taste of the poison I drank at ten years old still lingers on my tongue.
That’s so cliché of me, isn’t it? And another pair of hands found me at 17 but these were hands that I welcomed with open arms. His words were as sweet as oldies to my ears but his love as bitter as hemlock to my heart. I needed to feel wanted and I longed
to be loved.
I lay in his bed as naked as night, like a harlot and let him have his way with me whilst Shirley Reeves Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? played on repeat in my head. I got up from a bed that was made up with lies and hurt and deceit as pillows. I held my head down ashamed to face God for I had just submitted His image to a man that would later reject me, and despite feeling as insignificant as a priest in Gomorrah, I went back again and again because I was in love with him.
But how could that be when I wasn’t even in love with myself. He looked at me with eyes as piercing as light and saw directly into my soul. He knew that I would do anything for love, and I knew that he knew. I craved his love knowing that it was as artificial as the hair that lay limp on my forehead that he would gently sweep to a side to whisper those three words that killed me silently inside whenever I heard them.
His lips were luscious and his kisses soft. His hands would caress my insecure, vulnerable body, and one night I didn’t welcome them. Tears flowed as I screamed for my mother and God in that order; the one that I hated and the one that I loved. Neither came.
I didn’t drown. I kept afloat and the law rescued me. Living in a house with so many painful memories
is not easy. Insomnia taking over because your mind wouldn’t shut the hell up! Tempers flaring, egos emerging between a mother and daughter who genuinely hate each other. Two homo sapiens wishing the other didn’t exist.
Never knowing peace or tranquility, serenity, just to be. Happiness never experienced and kept, always for a moment never for long. Sizing up the wall when passing each other, lowered looks of scorn when in your heart of hearts you wished that she would love you. Sharing dreams and laughs with friends, coming home to a house without love. Lying alone at night wondering what it feels like to love and be loved by a mother. Until she sent me by my father.
A man who she controls and is one of the many dummies the mean ventriloquist owns. And I love him despite that. Until Friday when he held a hammer to my head threatening blunt force trauma. My cheeks had to defend themselves against the water escaping my eyes once more, because I thought living with him would have been my ticket to freedom, to the peace that I yearn.
I deceive the world with plastic smiles and laughing eyes, when behind them are hurt and sorrow. I long to have happiness and to be miles away from my past. How na?ve of me to believe that peace could ever be mine to own. Even if I have it for a moment, it always seems to elude my grasp.
The truth is clichés like me do not get second chances. We have to play the cards we’re dealt until the game is over. Packing in your hand means suicide, and there were numerous times I considered it, but faith is what keeps me in the game.
