Heathens-Joshler

12

 [Trigger Warning: abuse/violence, blood mentions, death mention, alcohol mentions, mild gore]

Whimpering. Shaking. Clawing at my skin to try to climb out of it. I'm bleeding where I've been clawing at my skin. I can't get out of it. I'm trapped.

My head pounds. The world swims before my eyes. I taste blood.

The object is a belt. That's what's snapping against my back. My back is lying against the floor of my room, but I can still feel the belt. I'm all alone with no one to protect me, just like before. Just like always.

I hate him, for hurting me. And I hate myself, for being hurt. And I hate God, for letting this happen to me.

I don't want to think about it, but now that the scar has been ripped open again, it just keeps bleeding. It keeps staining anything else I try to think about until everything is drenched in it, soaked with it, the inside of my mind smells like it, the inside of my mouth tastes like it.

I scream, I cry, I tear off bandages and open wounds and bleed onto the white tile floor. But it's not making anything any better. I can't wake up. I'm not dreaming. I can't go to sleep, because I'm too awake, and my dreams are just as nightmarish as my waking life.

I remember now. I remember everything that used to be slurred together drunkenly, as slurred as his words used to be when he was wasted. It's bitter, too, like his voice was, the mean edge only sharpening with each drink. And I begged God to save me. But he never did.

I remember the day he died. I was curled up on the floor of the bathroom. I was bloodied and beaten and has scars all over my body. Some came from him. Some came from me, figuring I'd add onto the carnage I'd become.

I heard the door opening downstairs and I started sobbing. I begged God not to let it be him, even though I knew it would be. He'd been out all night, and I sort of thought he wouldn't come back, but I knew he had returned. He always did, eventually.

For once, God listened to me, though. Because the bathroom door opened, and I started whimpering and sobbing harder, terrified, lying in a small pool of my own blood, but it wasn't him. It was a woman.

For a second I thought it was my mom. I knew that that was impossible, that she was long gone, that she was dead. But I still thought that it might be her, for half a second.

My stinging, teary eyes focused on the woman. She was wearing a suit. Men stood behind her, men with guns. Cops, probably. The woman said something, but I wasn't listening.

Turns out, she was from Youth Protection.

When she saw me, she immediately called the ambulance. I faded in and out of consciousness, and the next thing I was more than a tiny bit aware of was the bright hospital ceiling.

I had an IV like the one I have now.

Apparently I have a pretty severe mental breakdown. It's almost a month before they let me see Josh again. I talk to Dr. Sorenson a lot, and eventually, I ease myself into telling her the truth, and she makes a wide variety of sympathetic faces at me as I stutter through telling her what I uncovered about my past. What I was forced to uncover.

About a month after my big freakout, Josh comes into my room. I'm just sitting there, staring at the blank wall. It's white. It doesn't look like it isn't white like it used to. Now, it's just white. I can't tell if that's a good thing or not.

Josh closes the door behind him in silence and pulls a chair up to my bed. He sits down without a word.

We sit like that for a long time, and the silence starts to feel more comfortable. I guess I forgive him. He was right. I'm already quite a bit healthier than I was before, I guess. I don't feel better, but at least this pain is more honest than the fake numbness I was feeling before.