I Wish I Had the Courage

I was in and out of my usual 3 a.m. fog. I still don’t sleep. MSNBC was talking about him. I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t thought about him in a while. He led me to believe I was exploring my deepest desires. That the key to true freedom was exploring my sexuality as perverse as it could be. He thought he was the reincarnation of Einstein, only smarter. Brilliant and beautiful and free. He took every shred of decency and dignity in my soul and broke me down to the point where I questioned if my child would be better off if I left this world as to not hurt her anymore.

I was such a disappointment as a human being, a woman, and a mother. I was pathetic and disgusting. The only purpose for me on this earth was to MAYBE, if I was lucky, provide him with minimal sexual pleasure. I was to watch other woman please him. I was to please them for him, if I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity. I was beaten bound, imprisoned, strangled unconscious, kicked, and dragged around on a leash. Being humiliated was a privilege. He was my boss, my landlord, my only friend, my therapist, my boyfriend. I was his receptacle and if I was lucky, his slave.

I was a better person to have known him. His spirit seemed free and dark. He knows who he is and he’s proud. Worse part is he broke me. Broke my spirit. Turned me into a pathetic, useless, scared drunken fool. I went from him to the strangler. I was strangled unconscious every night. When I would feel the tingle of consciousness creeping back into my eyes and body, I would blink in clarity to see him standing at the end of the room staring at me, deciding whether to run or continue drinking and smoking his garbage. When he saw I was alive he’d leave and I look around to find the windows nailed shut and the door handles removed. After I learned how to pry out nails, he bought a screw gun. I deserved it though. I chose him, I thought I could help him. After all Dr. Strangelove was the one who was helping me. A drunken haze where dawn and dusk were the same yesterday was the same as today or tomorrow. Days and months and hours and minutes and weeks. It didn’t matter. It was all the same.

Then I dreamed about the smoke in the middle of the buildings.