Tribulation [h.s]

19

"If you were my little girl
I'd do whatever I could do
I'd run away and hide with you
I love that she's got daddy issues, and I do too"

-

There was a moment in time when I realized, on a carpeted floor bleeding out, that everything that was supposed to make me feel bad eventually became the only things that made me feel good.

That's when I realized I got sucked in.

All of the things that I was afraid of, everything that went against my morals and beliefs, became the things I did every day out of habit — without a second thought.

Without remorse.

I was a machine. I became everything he ever wanted until-

Well... He broke me, I guess. I was everything he ever wanted until he broke me.

After managing to move, I remember crawling through piled blood. Along the way, I realized that I had nothing left to show, nothing to show that I lived for a reason, that I had a purpose other than to hurt people.

I may have physically survived that night, but that realization is what killed me. It rotted me away from the inside out. That's why I really hate mirrors. I can see all of the rot consuming me.

I went so long, disconnected and detached from my emotions, I never realized the guilt I swam in or the remorse and self-hatred that wrapped, like a rusted barbed wire, around my throat. It hit me all at once and left me in ruins.

I'll spend forever amending the things I did to please him. He fucked me up so bad; I can't even say his name. He made me believe I was a toy to be controlled and used, and now that he's gone, I want to do everything right.

I want to be good. I want to love, laugh, and smile. I want a family of my own.

I want to be free, but he broke me, remember? How am I supposed to be or have any of that?

Recently, I've been thinking about this a lot. Then, I got around to thinking that maybe, I'm not meant to be or have all of that.

Maybe, this is how my life is supposed to turn out? For christ's sake, I mean- look at where I am right now! I'm back in the same fucking position I was in when I was eighteen. I'm just in a different chapter with new characters.

I won't lose sight of myself, though. Not again. I want to be a good person—not the person one walking into empty churches with blood on my hands, falling to my knees before an altar, and whispering all of that "Forgive me, father, for I have sinned" bullshit. I've done that too many times.

I never really cared about what happened to me. I always did what I had to do out of my love for others. Maggie gives me a reason to keep going. Julie does too. But, sometimes, my hopes of being a good person get squashed because life is ultimately survival. To live is to survive.

But that doesn't matter to me anymore. I don't matter. What matters is Maggie and Julie, and I'd walk through hell for them.

And if walking through hell entails dancing with the devil, so be it.

Harry knows nearly everything about me. I mean, somehow, he got ahold of my records. The only thing he doesn't know is what happened in those four months where I was forced to drop off the grid. Well, that and amongst other things... Regardless, he has too much on me.

Hopefully, all he has on me is the basics. There are sides of me no one has seen, especially Julie and Maggie. Hell, I hate those sides of me because I hate the person I am- used to be.