The Way I See It

The Way I See It1

The last thing I want is to turn this into some sort of rant on my beliefs, religions, emotions or whatever. This is just the way I see it. 2

The way I see it pain comes from the people around you. Although everyone does, no-one should hurt for other people, they hurt enough for themselves. A lot of the people who are abusive and depressed or whatever are hurting from a parent or someone they know/knew. So if people didn’t hurt for other people, then there wouldn’t be as much abuse or rape. I'm not saying it would stop, I’m saying it would decrease because most people do it from the hurt other people experienced or the hurt other people inflicted on them...I don’t know if that makes sense, but that’s the way I see it. 3

Okay, so there’s this girl. She has brown hair, brown eyes and is tall and pretty. There’s your mental image. Now imagine this, scars on her arms, bruises on her stomach, eyes permanently tired, lip split. The scars on her arms are from self-mutilation at her nothing life, the bruises on her stomach are from the painful rape her step-brother inflicts on her whenever he feels like it. Her tired eyes are because of her nightmares that keep her up all night. Her lip is split from her dad who got a little too drunk one night. And that’s only the physical pain, her emotional pain runs deeper. As well as scars on her body, she has scars on her soul. 4

Now lets trace this back, her stepbrother is a loser. At school he is a 'nerd' and gets insulted and teased. It seems never-ending for him, as do his crushes on the 'popular' girls, so needless too say he has been rejected a lot. That makes this boy upset, feels alone. He just wants a girlfriend, he wants to be loved. He feels deprived of love, as his parents split up, his dad has moved away and his mum; well she doesn’t really pay that much attention to him, with a new husband and all. So everyday when he gets home, he rapes his stepsister. She doesn’t fight anymore. He pretends it’s that 'popular' girl. He suddenly feels like he is loved, he has this girlfriend that he created from his imagination and his stepsister’s body. 5

Her nightmares come every time she closes her eyes. They usually embody someone abusing or raping her, or her running and going nowhere. Unfortunately these are a side affect of all the abuse that’s happened in her life. As long as that continues so will the nightmares, and so will her tired eyes.6

Her dad has a drinking problem. He used to get teased when he was a teenager, because he was shorter, skinnier and weaker than the 'tough' guys. He used to drink to get drunk, but then he started to drink to forget. He would drink to forget the names and then drink to forget his school, his family, everything. This got into a drinking problem. He started being abusive, and taking out his anger at these guys, to anyone who was near him. When his wife left him with nothing, he started drinking again. Drinking to forget. But it didn’t work anymore, he couldn’t forget, and when he drank, everyone was her. Everywhere he looked there was his wife. He can’t take it and now he lashes out at her. His daughter reminds him so much of his wife, he can’t control himself. He is so mad at his wife and the resemblance between her and his daughter scare him. Scare him into hurting her. 7

Her mutilation started by helping her replace emotional pain with physical pain. Now its just to bleed, its to punish herself. She has convinced herself its her fault. Everything is her fault. Her life is her fault.8

Now if we could rewind time, make no-one tease her stepbrother because he is a little different. Make him accepted in his school. If her dad got accepted in school, or his friends had encouraged him not to drink. If his wife hadn’t just left, but had talked to him, left him some money. If her stepbrother's mum payed attention to him every once in awhile. if he felt accepted and loved, he wouldn’t of used his stepsisters body. If her father felt accepted in his youth or he felt that his wife didn’t just abandon him, maybe he would of had the motivation to stop drinking, and he wouldn’t beat her. If she wasn’t raped or abused, maybe she would of never started cutting. Maybe her nightmares would stop if there was nothing else to fill them. But you can’t turn back time and fix her life. And that’s sad. But if you accept people, or just be a good person, perhaps you will stop another little girl from being hit or beaten or raped. You might even save someone’s life. That’s just the way I see it.9