Woe Is Me

Truth Be Told...

Have you ever stared into the open, not at anything in particular, yet you feel this surge of emotion and you feel like you're just glad to be alive and human, with all the insecurities that you hold, all the least you appreciate what you already have? What if I were to tell you that the world shows you what you only want to see? What you see online, defines what the world is for you, you pretend like the conflict isn't happening around you, never notice that there are so many screwed up things that's going on without your acknowledgement, how erroneous the world is on its own, and the juxtaposition between the truth and the illusion it has chosen serve to you.

They say that knowing the truth always hurts, and facing the unknown is the greatest fear mankind has to face. What if the truth was before you this whole time, but you chose to ignore it? Help me, my friend, open your eyes and mind to what I may convey to you in these next few paragraphs, do not shower me with judgment, nor lectures of the views of your ideologies, for I do not care on what you think over my experience. The answers and messages I have conveyed is my own, and it is as honest as it would, and can be. It is only for you to care about any of those things. What I do care about though, is your opinion on such matter, and whether you are aware, or maybe not so toward the situations I will state the further the more you scroll through this post. I am always opened for discussions on this matter, the only requirement is that if you're open minded enough to see through my eyes as well.

I once had a friend. She was a year younger than I was, a really pretty girl. Her name I choose not to say, but I will call her Athena. She had always spoken to me each and every day, and we would talk about our favorite TV shows and boys. We were not much old, and dare I say that I wasn't as mature as I am now. No, we were kids. Children. We were sitting in elementary school, in fourth grade, to be exact. Why would a fourth grader be talking about boys? You ask. Let's just say we were two very very curious young girls, and we were always wondering how wonderful the world would seem if we were older. We would talk about college in Paris and getting married to our second grade crush—which at the time I did not have, so I had to roll with it and fake a crush, I ended up liking the guy through the rest of fourth grade, but I'll save that one story for another time. Yes, we were sitting there in the middle of the football field, and I was braiding my hair under my small fingers, as she was picking at her nail polish—we were allowed to use nail polish, it was a private school, so rules don't really tie you down much—

She was awfully quiet today, and her skirt was longer than it always is. Her skirt always were above her knees, and shorter by a few centimeters, and she had never worn our school vest before, never minding the rules. But today I found her wearing the school vest, a jacket around her small frame and her skirt below her knees, and she was hugging herself, while she just stared at the grass under our feet. I-- being the insensitive prick I was-- ranted about my day like nothing was wrong. She, on the other hand was quiet. So I thought she was hungry or something, right? I tapped her shoulder and she jolted under my touch. That was when I knew something was wrong. I sat up straight and asked her what's wrong. She started crying.

She told me, every day when she comes home from school, her mom would exit from her room reeking of something that she would describe—later I realized when I was older—as the smell of alcohol. She said her mom would start beating her up. She would hit her and pinch her, and this had been going on since she was in third grade, which was a year back from the present time then. Then she told me, that after her mom quit beating her up, she would take showers to cleanse herself from the pain, and she would have lunch after, like nothing happened. I winced at the story she chose to tell me, but I knew she wasn't finished with what she had to reveal, so I kept listening. She then revealed, that after lunch she would go to her room and do her homework, and submit the work to her dad before she goes for a nap. She would wake up in the middle of dusk, and if she were to have any answers wrong on her homework, her dad would hit her. Small hits, at first. A slap to the face, or a hit in the back of the head, ones she didn't mind much.

As she revealed more and more of the secrets lying behind her lips, left untold and waiting to spill, she started sobbing so frantically that I had to take her indoors to our 'secret hiding spot' which was the back of the library behind the last table. She calmed down then, and told me that these past few weeks, they've gotten worse. Her mom had been out on a trip with her grandparents, so the only ones at home were her dad and her maid, but her maid didn't really like minding other people's business, so she mainly keeps quiet about the fact that Athena is being abused by her mom and her dad left and right. She took a breath, face already as the jacket she had placed over her shoulders. She asked me, I remembered: "Do you think it's normal, to hate your own father so much—so much that you want nothing more than watch the alcohol poison him, the cigarettes choke him, and the kitchen knife jabbed into his flesh?" of course, then I answered, "After what he did to you?" I paused, pondering. "Yes, it's normal."

She told me that her dad was drunk that night, and Athena had gone to bed early, for she was scared if she was still awake at this hour, her dad would be mad at her so much. She told me—that he broke into her room that night, and dragged her out of bed by her hair. He beat her with his fists, and had her sprawled on the floor, telling—begging for him to stop. He started kicking her in the abdomen once, twice, and started to drag her once more by the hair toward the bathroom. She was screaming, helpless, and he suddenly yanked her wrist in such a grip, that I soon found she had bruises in the shape of the fingers circling her tiny, pale wrist. The next part, I cannot begin to state and tell you what happened. For it pains me. So much, too unbearable just even to remember and type this down. The thought of publishing this—albeit too late—was the only thought I could conjure to raise people's awareness of the fact that children get abused by their parents. Not even mental abuse, physical abuse, no matter what gender. The fact that sexual abuse, sexual harassment, rape—happens. It doesn't only happen in television crime drama, it doesn't only happen to people in America, it happens to the people closest to us, to our friends, our loved ones. How do you just ignore that? Claiming the world is beautiful when you're only looking at it with one eye opened.

I never saw Athena again. Soon after the end of fourth grade, she was transferred to another school. One far away from me. I only hope she's okay, I only hope my prayers—the prayers of a sanctimonious, irreligious person—reaches her, and blesses her with all the help she needs to live with the things she has experienced.

With this, concludeswhat I have to share with you. I hope it opens your eyes—even the smallestamount. And I hope the tears I shed typing this down means something to thepeople I love—to Athena. For I loved her.