and you live through it anyway

Imagine being sold-off, or pimped-out, at the age of 20 months, to the custody of someone who views you as nothing but a thing, property, less sentient than the family dog.

Imagine being alienated and made the pariah by those who’d pimped you out, mocked for every difference from the herd, every accomplishment derided as a failure, every thought, word, deed, feeling diminished to the point of pure nothingness.

Imagine being taught that “love” means that someone owns you, that your only value is in the orgasms of others, in the pure venal joy that they get from manipulating you to their amusement, in mocking you with a greek chorus of their “equals.”

And you live through it anyway.

Imagine trying to kill yourself when you’re five years old. But they catch you in the act and blow it off as just another example of your “clumsiness.” All that you want is OUT, is escape, is freedom from slavery, and yet they can’t let it be SEEN that you want to die. They don’t care if you ever “get better” or become “something” in your life, all that matters is how you reflect upon THEM. And no matter how hard you work, how much you actually do accomplish, no matter what you might amount to, to the outside world, it means nothing, is nothing, has no value, because it is not “of THEM.”

Imagine trying to kill yourself seven more times in your lifetime, and always failing, and once, you LET them catch you, because you are so desperate for help, for compassion, for something resembling “love” --- and in return, they imprison you, throw you to the winds of municipal fates.

And you live through it anyway.

Imagine stumbling through your life alone, always alone, no matter the size of the class or the crowd or the audience, always, always alone. The few ones whose love you could really, actually FEEL are stolen away, because THEY have stolen the power of life and death and control over those whom you love, and they make damned sure that you can’t keep them in your life. You would give anything to have taken that bullet, to have died of that cancer, in their stead, because their lives bear so much more worth than yours. And you can’t.

And you live through it anyway.

Not only are you punished, every fucking day of your life, for the rest of your life, for escaping the bonds of slavery but not escaping THEM, for all of your failures to escape them, punished BY THEM, mocked, derided, humiliated in every way that sadists can imagine. They’ve already taken away every *thing* that your loved ones left for you, they’ve already destroyed what they couldn’t steal, and it’s still never enough for them. There will never be enough, for you are the one “sinner,” the one who “betrayed” THEM by trying to BE, by trying to be FREE. You are nothing but an inconvenience, an oft-times servant, less than human and more than a mere debt --- you are the object of all of their failures, their flaws, their weaknesses and hatred, you are the black hole into which they dump all of their evil. You cling to the two little creatures who still truly love you, because they are the only “family” that you’ll ever have, and THEY can even use THAT against you.

And you live through it anyway.

And then THEY give you a big box of sleeping pills as a “gift,” and then three days later, move your abuser into the prison that they built for one who had truly loved you, the one that they made SURE that she died --- they give it to him, to him and his skank du jour, and rub it through your face, not just in, but THROUGH, until the grains of dirt and crime and blood are ground into your very brain tissue. As if their hints were ever subtle. As if they have ever told anything resembling the truth, but all the while, their deeds, their motives, are nothing but plain, bald-open, wide and glaring for all of the world to see. But still, no one looks. No one cares. No one notices, because, after all, it’s just another crazy, fucked-up bitch, and obviously, she WANTS to be that way, or she’d fall in line and be obedient and take the pills and erase herself in pursuit of the almighty dollar. She’s achieved, in THEIR words, what she’s always wanted, to be NOTHING and to still get paid for it.

And you live through it anyway.

But you don’t want to.

You stick around for the responsibilities, the connections that you’ve forged, for the commitment of friendships, but what’s the point?

You’ll never escape THEM. You’ll never be enough to be able to escape, and no matter the kind words and generous offers of others, you know that you’ll never really get out.

You sacrifice the affection and love of those two little creatures who love you so much, who trust you to always protect them, even when you can’t be there to protect them from THEM, from HIM, from others --- you fail them in every sense of the word, and you can’t even explain it to them, if they understand, if they could care, you still can’t fix that, either.

They have thrown away entire human beings, in favor of their own greed and pleasures, they have taken away what few have ever really known and loved you, and they could do the same to those little creatures if they saw “fit.” And you live with that guilt, that shame, that failure, every day of your fucking life, knowing that you’ll never be able to make it up to those two huge-hearted little creatures who truly love you. They forgive you every day, but you know that as you try to withdraw from the set-up, the ambush, the trap, that those little critters only know that you’re not there like you used to be, that you’re not there enough, that you’re not loving them like they’re accustomed to, and all that they know is that they miss you, and you can’t fix that.

And you live through it anyway.

You lose sleep because of the abuse and assaults on others nearby, the flashbacks come back and come back and come back and nobody can stop it and even fewer care. You’re surrounded by ignorance and illiteracy and THAT’S HOW THEY WANT IT. You could be homeless, a vagrant, live in a truck, but you can’t physically do it anymore. You’re not a kid anymore. You get weaker and weaker and less able to defend yourself and provide for yourself and improvise a life for yourself, every fucking day. Because that’s how they want it. What you want is nothing but a dream, a fantasy, a waste of everyone else’s time, what you want is nothing but to parasite, to bleed others for your own comfort, greed, waste, whatever. You are nothing to anyone, you are a charity case to some, a loser to most, a waste of bandwidth to most. And it’s all just confirming what THEY have always said, what THEY have always begrudged you, what THEY said that you would never become.

And they rub it through your fucking face with laughter and smug self-assurance that their ignorance, their recidivism, their fucktardedness is, indeed, “right.” That they had every right to pimp you out, that they had every right to beat you down every day of your life, that they really are the Ward & June Cleaver motherfuckers that THEIR drugs allow them to lie into what they fancy is a “reality.” And they just keep getting away with it. They will always get away with it. They always have, and nobody’s going to stop them now. Even the one or the two who try to sympathize from within the “club” of their favor, they don’t give enough of a fuck to even listen. They were able to escape, so why should they care that you didn’t? That you fucked up your life, over and over again and that it’s “your fault” that you can’t escape now? That doesn’t pay their rent, why should they be “put out” on your behalf? Why should they care if you are welcome in their lives, or welcomed ANYWHERE, that’s not their problem. They just do what they’ve got to do to get ahead, to get out, to get away with whatever, YOU are not THEIR problem.

And you live through it anyway.

Car wrecks that should’ve gotten you out, don’t. Just kill off the one thing that you did have --- the brain that made you the object of their derision. Drug overdoses don’t get you out --- just kill off more of your brain. Drinking, smoking, weed, pills, sex, even with the lowest forms of life on earth who try to kill you themselves --- still doesn’t get you out.

You make friends, you lose friends, people get sick of you, they get sick of the unending failures, the lack of “success,” the lack of “results” of their investments, whether of time or money or food or books or Pez… People get tired of someone who can’t be fixed, or won’t be fixed the way that the rest of “the world” gets “fixed.” They leave, you leave them, you lose either way. Your heart, or what you thought that you had a right to have, this heart thing, this illusion of emotion, this myth of “love” --- it’s nothing more than a passive-aggressive joke to them now, and they just keep on walking.

And you live through it anyway, when all you want to do is curl up and die and you can’t.

And as many times as you’ve tried to die, all that you remember is the humiliation of failure, of the damage that you’ve done to the beloved, by your own “selfish” acts of destruction, and you can’t even “succeed” at THAT. You almost wish that there was a Courtney Love in your life, to pull the trigger that you can’t reach, but you can’t even get THAT right.

You numb the physical pain, you numb the mental agony, there’s no heart or soul or emotions left to kill, they’ve been gone so long. So all that you are is a shell, an automaton, a joke, and you can’t even stumble through a day without being mocked (might as well be back in grade school or junior high or high school or kindergarten), without being reviled and treated as less than human by those who fancy themselves “better.” You can’t even leave the cell where they’ve imprisoned you, without pain, without shame, without humiliation.

And you fucking live through it any fucking way.

And you hate it.

And you can’t even fix THAT.