Coward

As a wife, the happiness that you once had believed was possible, being poured down the drain as you stare back at yourself in the mirror. Holding the ice pack to your eye and wiping the blood and tears from your face. The fear, hurt, and insecurities bringing on confusion and questions of "where you went wrong", "what you did to deserve this", and "how did you not see it coming." The fear that locks you into the relationship and keeps you held tightly to the very beast in which is devouring what is left of the rest of your hope, is enough to make you desire death daily once more. The screaming is only the beginning; just where it starts. It will only get worse from there. You've learned that first hand by now. So, the positive test in your hand looks best solved by a trip to the abortion clinic than adoption. Who could bear the abuse during pregnancy? And it would crush you if they "accidentally" did something to that precious, unborn baby. After three of them and the inability to use contraceptive, all you really feel like is a murderer yourself. Except, you are killing innocent children. What sucks even more is that you wanted every single one of them. You picture their faces and find yourself hating yourself because you couldn't protect them or yourself. You never even fight back. You're a coward.

You gave your other children away to save them too, but no one understood that. Whether it was to save them from you in your addiction or from the monsters that are killing you, you know it was the only way to save them at all. Left to pain, fear, rejection, abandonment, and the knowledge that your own children hate you because they just don't know the sacrifice you made for them. Who wants to live after that? After all of this? There is nothing worse than having to live inside someone you HATE! Someone who disgusts you because THEY did all of that to YOU! The mirror looks like a good instrument of death. You could break it and watch yourself die in it at the same time. But you don't want to die. You aren't the one responsible for what you had to do to survive or save the only ones that ever loved you unconditionally. You just want the pain to stop, and you don't understand. What did you ever do to deserve this? All you wanted was to be loved, to love someone else, to chase your dreams. How did it get like this? Are you ever going to find a way out?

Then you are woken up early to get dressed and get in the truck because "today is your day to die." You do as your told, sniveling like a child from fear and confusion. Watching them drive, you sit quietly crying under your breath in the passenger seat, doing your best not to upset them even more. You realize, this is it! You have no way out, and you are about to die. Literally. Your entire future is gone. Just like you have been begging for for decades.

That's when the truth of the matter hits you like a ton of bricks. You really want to live, and you are just going to let someone else take that life from you. You had never fought back before because they'd kill you. That and because you're a coward. Now you are going to die, but you don't want to die a coward. You think to yourself, "What does it matter if you piss them off enough to kill you if they're going to anyway?" So you take off your seatbelt and turn towards them. Wild-eyed and full of a fight you didn't know even existed inside of you, all the pain you have endured in life reminds you that there's nothing else that could possibly scare you or hurt you anymore than what already has. You aren't done living. Not yet! Spitting mad you find yourself screaming the fire of the "feed me, fuel me, or just kill me" that's been boiling your blood for some time now, and you say, "Why wait? If you're going to do it, let's do this now! You may get me in the end, but you are going to remember me for the rest of your life. I'm going to take an eye or something! I won't die a fucking coward!" They glance over at you and giggle under their breath, and you know it's over. Instead of commencing the beating, though, they do a u turn, and calmly state, "I don't think you'll die today." I know. That's the moment I heard my broken soul's battle cry.

That night as he lay in the hotel room bed, passed smooth out, I gathered my things as quietly as possible, and snuck out the door. Fear still ingrained in me that I might accidentally wake the beast, I left it cracked. Taking the keys with me, unlocking the truck, I grab a couple things, toss his keys on the seat, and lock the truck behind me. Then I run like hell to my friend's waiting vehicle. Her, her husband, and infant, tucked inside and armed with 9mm handguns. Leaving most of my life there, we pulled off. I slept for three consecutive days without eating, using the restroom, or waking to his voice on their machine.

In those three days, they'd had to change their number and locks on their doors, just in case. They erased all the messages so as not to traumatize me further, but they said he sounded pretty upset and that he was ranting about his black notebook. I kept thinking that I hope he never finds it as my stomach growled. Their mother offered to take me for ribs, and I went to change my clothes. That's when it occurred to me that I didn't have a lot of my stuff at all. Apparently, it was too dark or maybe I was just shaking so bad my eyes couldn't focus, but those weren't my bags. Inside of his duffle was that damn little black book. I began to shake and cry. I couldn't help but to look inside of it, though, I knew he was coming for me. After all, if I had to worry about looking over my shoulder for the remainder of my life behind a little black book, I needed to know why.

"Well, how about it?" That bastard had pictures of another family and himself clipped to the front page of some small-town news clipping dating just six days prior. I didn't want to know. I closed my eyes and placed the clipping aside. Underneath was another one of his stupid lottery tickets. "Heck, I could use some money right about now," I say out loud to myself. Checking that thing against the winning numbers printout didn't take long because he'd already circled the matching ones. It just happened to be every single one of them." Definitely coming for me, yep. I'm a broke, soon to be dead women." Life would let a jerk like that win the lottery, wouldn't it? I almost wanted to tear it into pieces. Until my eye caught the transaction information at the bottom. Printed ever so perfectly like little smiley faces in a row next to payment type were the last four digits of my debit card number. MINE! The lottery ticket was mine! I had just won twenty-thousand dollars because he was nice enough to use my debit card without my permission to purchase a lottery ticket six days ago with his other family. "Yep, I can live with that!"