I Fell in Love with Hope(94)

You’d grab me. Nothing else. You’d just grab my arm. You’d watch your hand practically swallow it. Then, after a moment, you’d laugh, let it go, ruffle my hair, and tell me I should eat more.

You liked seeing the fear in my eyes. You liked the momentary high it gave you–knowing that you could break the bone in two and there wouldn’t be a thing I could do about it. You liked that no matter what I did, it was all in your hands. You were the one who decided what was right and wrong and you had the power to shape me into whatever you wanted me to be…

Or maybe that was in my head.

Maybe you were just being playful, so I kept on trying to please you. I kept on closing my eyes at night and asking God to forgive me.

But there were things I couldn’t change for you, parts of me you could not alter to your liking.

You’d say things…

Neo, eat some more. I can see your bones through your shirt.

You should build some muscle, you’ve got sticks for arms.

Neo, don’t make that face, you look like a girl.

Looks like you won’t be riding any roller coasters anytime soon.

Don’t be pouty, I’m just teasing you.

You have hips like a woman, you know that?

I became keenly in tune with the pitch of my voice and the size of my body. I felt guilty for being too short, too skinny, too feminine.

I hated myself.

My loneliness festered. It ate me. I was a patch of soil, a feeding ground for weeds of shame to grow and flourish till I turned to nothing.

I wanted to kill myself before that happened.

At nine years old, I dreamt of falling asleep in mom’s arms when you were away on a trip and never waking up. Maybe, I would meet God, I thought. Then, he would tell me I was forgiven. That I didn’t need to be hit or frightened anymore. I dreamt of taking mom with me too.

The next morning, I planned to walk into the road and let the bus run me over. I kept imagining myself flattened on the road, my skull cracked open, blood and brain oozing from my head.

But when I sat down, I found something. A book that’d been left at the bus stop. It had Great Expectations written on the front. I stole it without thought. The words were too difficult for me to make out, but I tried anyway. The road could wait.

My teacher saw these struggling attempts and gave me other books to start with that would be easier. I was determined to read the book, so I took her advice and read all the easier ones first.

That’s when I fell in love with stories.

Stories gave me an out, a loophole in life’s weaving.

It turns out I didn’t have to be me. I could be anyone. I learned to live through pages, ink, and writing. I guess I have you to thank for that. Without the shame and the loneliness, I would’ve never found my raison d’être.

Mom encouraged me while you were away on your business trips. She read to me before bed and gave me a pencil and a notebook whenever I asked.

The shame and loneliness slowly began to wilt. I shed them like skin on paper, and I wrote till I became good at it.

I think this bothered you too. Because I became less reliant on you. I became consumed, intensely avoidant of reality through literature. I began to learn and formulate opinions that weren’t yours.

I started becoming someone.

Neo, come spend some time outside with me.

Don’t you have any friends you want to play with?

Put the pen down, c’mon.

Don’t buy that book, it’ll put poison in your head.

Neo! Put that stuff away. Let’s go.

Don’t read that gay shit. Fucking hell.

Give that to me! Where did you get this!? What kind of faggot gave you this!? Tell me!

One night, I came home from school with a smile on my face. A boy sat next to me on the bus and called me pretty. He kissed my cheek and told me to keep it a secret and I felt something so new: Butterflies in my stomach, jitters, the good kind, an excitement that could not be stolen.

Or so I thought.

I wrote a story about the boy and me and you ripped it out of my hands and read it in full.

Then you took off your belt and whipped me with it. You locked me in the closet for over a day and a half. Mom cried, screaming at you to let me out. Finally, when you left, she ran upstairs. You’d hit her too. Her lip was split and she couldn’t open one of her eyes. She let me out and collected me in her arms. I’d pissed myself and I was shaking, but mom didn’t care. She hugged me and apologized.

She bathed me, washed my clothes, and in an oddly intimate way, we patched each other up. I dabbed her lip with a cotton ball and she put ointment on the lashes.

I’m glad you weren’t there to apologize. It’s your apologies that were the cruelest. Because you meant them. You knew you were hurting us every time, and you continued to do it anyway.

I know you remember these moments, dad.

But I want you to relive them.

I want you to know that your wife and your son found each other in the wake of your violence. I want you to know that even after that night, I still didn’t hate you.

I chose to pretend that the bruises, the hitting, the yelling, those were all just fever dreams. What was real was the kindness.

I held onto the memory I have as a baby, to the smiles, you shared with me, to the jokes we made together, to the times you’d pick me up and make airplane noises, to the goodnight kisses, to the movies we watched together, and every bump in a road.