What Hurts The Most

What Hurts The Most1

So I guess you could say it started when I turned the all so "sweet sixteen". The walls around me went tumbling down and my emotions came pouring out on single pieces of paper. Before I tell you what I did I think I should tell you why; and it started with the most horrible choices a girl like me should never have had to consider. 2

I did it to feel something, something rather than nothing. I don't think I really understood what was going on at the time and I was confused. So pain ended up being the only path left for me to choose. It was because of my father, you see. He got house arrest for 6 months and I had to have supervised visits every time I went to see him for now on, because he practically raped someone I used to know as my step sister. To this day I have never asked him why he did it. Words like manipulator, pervert, and monster floated around in my head as my mother told me that day. I felt like taking the knife off of the kitchen table and stabbing myself to just make it all go away. I hoped that it would all be a bad dream and that it would turn out to not be real. My mother was trying to explain that it was tough love, that promises were never carved in stone. I then started tuning her out, I could see her lips moving, but I could hear nothing but the wind in my ears from the open window behind me. My brother acted like nothing had even happened, like it was no big deal, that it was just "foreplay" he said, as if he really knew what it meant. 3

Everything was going all wrong and the man I thought I loved had ruined my life. I wanted to think of it as a mistake somehow, that he didn't really do it, but I knew otherwise. To make things worse over the years my mother was finding ways to turn me against him. Saying that she wasn't the "bad guy" even though she was making all of my decisions for me. A quote comes to mind from a book I once read when I think of this: "How do you tell the good guys from the bad if none of them are wearing hats?". So it them came to a point where I was stuck in the middle, and it was much more serious this time. The issue came up as a statement against my father. Both of them fighting back and forth, and sending messages through me to each other. My predicament went like this: If I made the statement against him and told the court about the visit with my father; that I was unsupervised with him for a period of time during the summer, my mother would be happy with me, but my father would face jail time and well...he wouldn't be happy with me at all. If I didn't make the statement my mother would be mad at me, and my father would get away scott-free and not get what he really deserved, but he would be happy. 4

Either way someone was going to get hurt and I could never imagine sending my own father away behind bars. I ended up not making the statement. That of course didn't go over well on the other side of things and long story short I got a door slammed in my face. It was after that, that I started doing more growing up. And the more I grew up the more I started to think. I thought about everything that happened and everything that was still happening. For days, months, and years I cried. I cried for the girl who got abused, tortured and taunted by my father and I cried for myself and the emptiness inside. Then the more tears that came out the more I cut, scratched, sucked, bled and violated my arm. It came to a point that all I thought about was the pain. I never wanted to commit suicide or get back at anyone by self mutilating my wrists. All I knew was that I was mad, mad of the fact that I was too young to stop what was going on, and mad for not seeing any of the signs when it was all happening around me. I know it wasn't my fault but a part of me deep down inside can't help but think it was. 5

I hope you understand what I mean when I say that in the end, what hurts the most was the love, that over so many years, there was none. Even now my father does not truly know me and never has he really tried. As for the girl I was talking about, she has grown to be a woman, and a beautiful one at that. We may never know all the reasons why but there comes a point in ones life when maybe, just maybe in the end that's not the question we should be asking ourselves.