(no subject)
it's saturday and we're taking a day trip to nashville, the stiffness and rigidity of the week seems to be dissipating, at least in my mind, so I strip off the stained white t-shirt and torn leggings that have been my uniform in this miserable life. I shower, I painstakingly apply make-up, grey flowery tights, black baby doll dress that is maybe a touch too short but I am short and so I don't mind it, black leather boots with a 3 inch heel and gold and silver studs trailing delicately across the ankle. In the mirror I see who I used to be and I am pleased, I feel beautiful for the first time in months. In the mall women glare at me as they usually do and men linger on my passing frame. This never used to bother me, it bothers me now because the man standing next to me doesn't love me, he tells me in a detached way that I look like a stripper and maybe I should change. the hushed insults in front of the employees, the strained way we walk together and then it's the car and he's screaming again and beating the steering wheel with his fists, veins bulging out garishly against his dark skin. He is angry and it is my fault, because I am a slut, because he JUST CAN'T CONTROL HIMSELF AND IT MUST BE MY FAULT. I grew up with this kind of outrageous violence and so I disappear inside myself, I become despondent and rude, it is my survival instinct, it is the only way I cope. Now he's driving and swerving into oncoming traffic and laughing manically, we're going to die today, you don't want to be with me and I want to die and you don't deserve to live without me. His hand is at is mouth and his lips are surrounding his ring finger, and when he pulls his hand out his wedding ring is missing and he's swallowed it, he wants to die with it inside of him, how tragic, how very fucking Shakespearean romance of him. I tell him he's a child, he is a melodramatic child and he's becoming more like his psychotic father every day, and then his hands are off the wheel and around my wrists, and the skin is pinched and pulled and bruising quickly and the car is out of control and he's out of control and I'm staring blankly into his demonic eyes and I wonder how it came to this, I wonder how much a person must really fucking hate their existence to believe that this is love, to actually fear a life without a husband that verbally and physically abuses them on a daily basis in order to "break them" to "make them feel something". I grew up in the shadow of my beautiful mother, I grew up despising her weakness, her inability to function without a man's love. I promised myself I would never allow a man to destroy me the way that those disgusting men destroyed my mother. I've lost such important parts of myself to isaac, and I don't feel I will ever reclaim them.