Shackles

Here I am at the same crossroads from all those years ago. Watching when you punched me on this very spot. Now I am back in the house that’s poisoned with your memory. As I walk through the old, dismantled kitchen into the blank extension, all I see is when you pulled a knife on me in front of all our friends. All I see are the things you made of me. Are you the reason my heart beats like a broken flickering light? Are you the reason I do not dare go out at night? You swept me up the day we met with I love yous and stolen kisses; little did I know you would destroy me with throws on the ground and thankful near misses.  

I was 14. It was a Saturday when you waltzed into my life in tow with a good friend of mine. There was a force of nature about you, a feeling that disappointing you was a truly foolish thing to do. Truthfully, I sank quite comfortably into your soft green eyes. As far as I knew at 14, I loved you. What a sad fool I was. We had been together only a week the first time you laid a hand on me. As if a film on an old VHS, my torturous memories play on repeat. I had dared to share a word with David, my aforementioned good friend, about Catfish and the Bottlemen while you decided it was more. You always decided it was more. You struck me harder than anyone else ever had and gripped my arms so tightly your nails embedded a pattern of cuts. I submissively apologised while David pleaded for you to calm down. Bless David. My truest friend. Eventually you calmed, and in that familiar intoxicating way, a beam of light and almost dangerous happiness would come upon you as if I had fallen right into the clutches of your cleverly laid-out trap. Oh, the childish chaos that followed us around; I should’ve known it wouldn’t last. 

 

3 months later, we were laughing with our friends, and there you go again, deciding there’s more in a word than there ever had been. I utter to Josh about whether to go to the corner shop for a drink or not. A cloud so thick comes over you, so thick in fact that your anger engulfed the park. A park that once was a beautiful painting of oaky oranges, gorgeous greens and peony pinks was now steeped in sinister greyness as the wind seemed to swirl in a fiery aggression. You flung me up over your shoulder and threw me to the hard ground before storming away while your little friends scurried behind you, leaving me with nothing but the now haunting park. I was desperately alone. We never seemed to resolve these things; maybe it was my fault because I was too afraid to bring it up. The next time I saw you, I just kept sweet, as they say a good woman should. No matter how sweet I would keep, it was never enough.  

 

Nevertheless, I stayed. I stayed because you needed someone to talk through the ever-present pain of your father’s absence. I stayed because after all the times you beat down my spirit and my ribs, the dribs and drabs of affection you’d embed inside insults when you’d say, “No one will ever love you like I do.” Were more than enough to satisfy my dwindling hopeful heart. I had fallen so deeply through the wormhole of your twisted adoration. If I’m honest, all these years later, I still feel myself clawing up this muddied, wretched tunnel of torture. You have trapped me here. You have trapped me eight years in the past, forever reliving all these moments and, most of all, that one faithless day. 

 

I was 15. We had been together, in a childish on-and-off sort of way, for 8 months. There we were, on that rotting damp bench. Among only the silent, dark for miles field. Too far for anyone to hear. I pleaded, “No, please don’t. Kyle, I don’t want to. Can we stop? Please!” You stole what you wanted, just as you always had. I begged some more, “Please, Kyle, my mum is picking me up. She’ll be waiting now.” I tried desperately to keep buttons done up and push you away. But you continued. Tears ran down my face while you took your satisfaction. An emptiness came over me. I felt my soul extricate itself from my now dirtied body. You didn’t just steal my freedom; you stole me. I died that day, never to return again. Though I may have moved on and gotten better, I am still clawing up your muddied, wretched tunnel of torture, in desperate search of my soul. 

 

It is a Saturday; I am 23 years old now. Though the thought of Kyle comes in and out of my mind amongst the other monsters of my past, my days don’t directly pertain to him. But there’s a lull across most moments. I live outside of myself, watching as I flirt with men I don’t like and fawn over ones I don’t know. I feel myself romanticise lust in my fantasy, though the idea of genuine intimacy terrifies the fibres of my bones. I can list off my history of tumultuous terror to any Tom, Dick or Harry, but I stay distant. I lay distant. Questions circulate on an endless course through my head. Who am I without the baggage that I hide in corners of my mind? Could I ever love honestly? Or am I destined to sprint toward these lies I tell myself until my dying day? Meanwhile, I wait for a bus at the crossroads of my misspent youth. As all these memories flood my mind, the children walk to their bus stop with innocent eye to eye wide smiles, and I wonder if I looked as pure at their age, if I looked so excited to be alive, or if you could see the scars that burrowed deep inside.