H.e.a.r.t.
The vocalization of a panic attack.
Heart.
This may be something I have never experienced before.
I spring up in bed, and my blankets start to feel less like safety and more like sandpaper. Grasping for something, anything, to tell me that I am alive.
I writhe around, looking for an answer to this feeling. The weight in my chest is an anvil, gravity is cruel during this time because the convulsing continues but it hurts my joints to move even in the slightest.
The room goes dark and nothing but the single flicker of a pathetic TV movie and he's sitting there holding my hand. We do this a lot. His parents are watching a movie upstairs and he sits on my lap, sick way of binding me down. Then we talk about math. Math, of all things. When I don't answer correctly, I tense up. I black out for the next part but judging by the pain in my arm—I will have bruise there tomorrow. He used to blame it on me getting simple problems wrong, maybe it was less about the math and more about the fact that I couldn't solve his problems, he couldn't solve them either, but isn't always easier to lay blame?
The anvil that was once my heart has made a home in my bed. Now that I am laying completely still, I just want to make sure he's not here. The silence of the room is burning my ears to shreds but at least he's not here. I can relax.
The sick thing is, I miss him. He used to make me happy. Now we are "old friends," the kind that talk if our paths cross but we never stop and talk long, so that we can't get back to where we were. However, we can still be friends because we talk. Sure, but do either of us really listen?
I am not enough for him anymore. He's found drugs, other outlets, and I am sitting, waiting, long enough for those scars to fade. The desire to be needed grows with every step he takes away from me.
I am living a life I never thought I would come to. The stick and twisted desire to be abused. During that time he used me to express his anger and frustration in the world, but at least he would listen to me and talk about me for a while before the conversation turned to him.
Regardless of who I am to this young man, this "other half" I call it. Regardless of who I am to him, Jesus tells me I am valued and loved. Others tell me I am lovely. But tonight, with my anvil heart—I feel like I'm nothing.
About the Creator
Zoe Elizabeth
Creating to cope. I owe everything I am to those who support me, and the God I believe in.
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