The Lesson You've Become

1

People are puzzles. Including me. Throughout my life, I've been told I'm a very confusing person. I always found that an insult, I thought I had everything sorted out. If you find me confusing, you are the one with something wrong, not me.
I lived a very puzzling life. I was abused when I was a child, physically and mentally. I was abused by my manager, but I don't want him to get all the credit. It was the whole entertainment that caused the pain I felt.

When I was in court, sitting there as he sat a row ahead of me and anxiously stared at the judge while he heard the testimonies of the other plenty of girls he has abused as they told in full detail all the things he put them through. The things he put us through. What could I say? Nothing.
Once the word "Guilty" left her mouth, and she hit the gavel down onto her podium, I heard yells. The yells were angry. Sad. Relieved. Confused. Excited.

Half of the yells I heard were from the other people, while other half were from me. But I didn't open my mouth. My mind yelled at me for feeling happy and my mind yelled at me for feeling angry. He never kept me in check, yet I still get that occasional feeling that he did. That's from when I found pleasure in being underweight. He kept me underweight. I shouldn't be mad, I know it.

He was thrown into that little cell with other bastards twice his size. They've probably eaten him by now. The movies say that prison food sucks, I guess that applies for all prison food.
I grew to join a band with my German friends and became the keyboardist with the lack of keyboard skills I got from one of the extracurriculars I was thrown into. It worked, I suppose? It was all a bit new to me, but the vocalist was somehow skinnier than I was and it pissed me off a little. Then I realized how tall he is. I'm still a bit pissed.
I was never used to the environment with a bunch of teenage boys fucking around and finding out, playing around with their instrumental talent and having fun making that music. I'm not saying I never had fun in my whole life, but not every single day like they did. They always called me boring for not having as much fun as they would, but I slightly agreed. I just didn't know how to do it, what to do.
So they taught me. They didn't even know what I went through, they didn't know about the court hearing, they didn't even know about my manager. They just taught me how to have fun, "from scratch". How did they do that? I don't even remember. I focused on the fun.

They'd take my hand and they'd run around this beach with the sand fading grey and the sky casting grey as well. The clouds covered the sun and it didn't ever look like an ideal beach day, but they had the most fun that way. No one else was out, so it was just us running around this ominous environment and digging our feet.
we'd throw sand at each other and whenever it got into our eyes we'd just rinse it out with the bottled water the convenience store clerk always gave to us. Everyone would see us as some stupid mischievous friend group that steal from stores and throw our leftovers at random people, ring people's doorbells and run off before they could see who it was, and chase pigeons down the street. We didn't do that. We just enjoyed life.
They helped me enjoy life. They made life a little better, in a sense-- Like, what would have happened?

They were just naturally fun to be around. They knew how to have fun. No drugs involved.
They had opened a new door to my life that I always thought I wouldn't be ready to go through. I saw life as something scary, like I would end up dead whether it's self inflicted or not. There would always be someone behind my death.
It turned out it's the opposite. There are people that are the reason I'm still alive, still walking. I didn't want to live, everyone knew that. Everyone except these four boys. How was it that they managed to make me happier? They didn't even know how to pronounce my name correctly. Their butchered pronunciation of "Mi-Yeon" somehow felt more homely than when it came out of my parents, or my manager.
Maybe it's that they did everything right except pronounce my name, and everyone else pronounced my name right but did everything else wrong.

They didn't know just how much they improved my life. I think it's because their own lives weren't sorted out either, and I always wonder if I did anything to help them.
When I was younger, I always focused on what I could do to please other people, and I didn't think of myself unless I was told to. It always ended in them being happy, me being happy, then me turning to my own workload not knowing that to do. To this day, there's a lot of things I don't know what to do. People think I've fully recovered from the things I've been put through, but inside, I still see myself as a child and I know other people see me as a child too.
Often, abuse cases are overlooked. I've been told to forgive my manager, as he was old and I was young, and we should all respect our elders. Even if they abuse fourteen year olds mentally, physically and sexually. My manager has left me with silicone skin I can rip through and peel through so I can see if I can grow it to be prettier, but I never could. Silicone doesn't grow back, it stays ripped until you eventually throw it away. You don't know how many times I tried to.

But to this day, scars still linger. Physical or mental, I can still feel the pain I felt when I was still a little girl. I would say the only person I had was myself, but that wasn't true. I was against myself as well. I hated myself just as much as other people hated me. Punishments I gave myself are punishments I'd never give to other people. I always hated the idea of being a Mother, because if I saw a mini version of myself, I might just go insane.
But at the same time, all the credit I can give goes to the girl I once saw when I looked in the mirror. She's lived through a life you can't even call a "life". If she were to try any harder to get rid of the body she functioned with, I wouldn't be here.
The memories I hold will always be the kind of memories I wish I could let go of, but that would just be letting go of the memories of the fourteen year old girl who did her best to function with a body she despised.

The people I despised were the same people I was told to love. That must be why it felt like I could never love properly, it always felt forced. I tend to run away from people I love sometimes.
I felt the most sincere desire to be close to the people meant to protect me, even if they did the complete opposite. Now it's the opposite-- I want to be farthest from the people meant to protect me
even if they want to. They can, I just won't know.
Like a mouse to a cat
Like a chick to a cobra
Like a sister to a sister
Like a daughter to a Mother
I was good at avoiding people.
I was just not good at avoiding getting hurt.