My Father is in My Bones

When I was a child
I nearly killed the only friend I had.
I almost strangled the life out of her body
in broad daylight
on a public road.
And the most terrifying thing
wasn't that I nearly killed her--
it was, that when I finally let her go
and she screamed at me
to explain, to think, to understand
why I tried to force her contain me--
a girl who shared food
from my table
slept in my bed
played with me
spoke with me
trusted in me
I could not explain
why a benign denial of gaze
triggered--I'm not sure exactly what...
And I knew that, if I had killed her
I would have felt nothing.  Or cared.
Or at the most, I would have felt
glee?  But only faintly.
Mostly, I vividly remember feeling
blankness--
emptiness--
numbness--
not a sorrowful vacuum,
but a freedom, a liberty from feeling,
a thrill in the way her nails dug into my forearm--
that I felt nothing at all--
and a relief that I was truthful
for once in my life.

It wasn't until later--I'm not sure how much later--
that I realized
I finally understood
what drove my father to violence.
It was the same impetus that
made strangling this girl
as natural as breathing--
a natural reaction
to standing in the middle of
group of kids that I did not belong with--
present, but invisible, while
existing in a family I did not belong with, while
enduring a school filled with children
who told me I did not belong with.
She was supposed to fill all of that vacuum
because she had been strong enough to love me;
because she was the only one who had looked at me

she was supposed to be looking only at me.
I was starving, empty,
trying to ignore the
crippled
stunted
feral side of me,

just like my father,
who never recovered from the humiliation
of being abandoned with two boys,
by his beautiful first wife
who he tried to beat into loving him
in a strange land
speaking a strange language--
because even all of that could not fill
the chasm inside of him--
and then,

still despised by his second wife
capitalized upon by his first son,
merely tolerated by his second son,
reviled by his daughter,
a useless dotard in society
it's a wonder he didn't use his fury more--
perhaps he was gelded by age and disease--
but it was enough of a taste
for me to recognize the
birth of perverted power within me--

the waking of my father in my bones,
and how I could--
must--decide every moment of every day
to never give in to his nature--
a nature struggling to manifest itself
in my being,
for I could never extricate myself
from the blood I was born of
from the hate I was born into

my only option was to starve it
never give it air
never give it water
or exercise
to never underestimate
how little attention it needed to thrive--
just a drop of love,
a second of freedom,
for it to revive and strike and kill.

I live a life of unflagging self-discipline
of self-abhorrence
and self-flagellation
made easier to bear by shame
and fear and disgust,
chanting the mantra:
I will not be him.
I will not be him.
I will not
               be him.

It has been the only thing left--

my only unsettled account

even with the threat of death ticking towards me.
I was--
am
--too ashamed to ask for forgiveness.
What words can there be--
what can I say to her?
What is there to say
when I still do not understand myself?
How dare I burden my victim
with needing to forgive me?
How can I forgive myself?
Can I forgive myself?
Perhaps not,
for in doing so,
I would first have to forgive the parts of me
that are my father.

Ayo

There's a smile--the smile that other people
who have had to wear this smile, recognize, because
there's a masquerade that survivors like me are accustomed to--
more than a veneer, more than a charade.
It's the smile, and the hug, that is so convincing
that people are utterly confused when you suddenly perceive a threat
and pull stakes and vanish,
because they thought you loved them.
And you learn that you just leave a trail of
broken hearts in your wake,
so you learn to give just enough
and yet nothing at all--
and to be wonderful
and totally forgettable all in the same instance,
to control the damage you leave
when you leave.

This smile--
it is a mitigation of the panic that we--that I--
have learned to live with
all my life--
a mechanism to tamp down the instinct to run
a practised hand at masking the desperation that
crawled up from the bowels and wrapped around your heart
when home was a cage where a monster who was supposed to be your leader
supposed to be your protector
was waiting to take his misery out on you.

The worst thing was the lulls between,
when things were fine,
when there was peace, and the violence came so
few and far between that you could fool yourself into thinking
maybe that was the last time.
Maybe he changed--
just
maybe, this was love winning.  Finally.
I was enough.  He wanted me enough.  He loved me enough.
He valued me enough.
That I could lay down on the dog,
and he wouldn't kick me just so he could kick the dog.
That he would love me enough that he would stop
taking out his anger on those weaker--
that my body was enough--
that he loved my body enough--
to make him stop
the beating.

I was never enough.

And this house.
And my mother.
And none of it, was enough.
And I didn't have enough
money
or strength
or self-preservation
to leave.
So I stayed,
and made myself believe, in those lulls
that it was going to be okay,
and learned to smile--
I learned to smile so well
that to this day, my patients say
they love it when I work because I really smile
--I smile in a way that even my eyes smile.
Even if, that smile was placed on just before I tipped my face up to look at them.

So now, when you're grown and have found yourself
yet again
assaulted by a man,
when the panic finally set in
hours after the fact, it twists up through your gut
bubbling up the esophagus into
a manic smile and giggle
and your eyes--they twinkle--
even while you chew your lips to try to get the feeling
of his mouth off of yours,
and rinse your mouth in a medicine cup
as if water could ever sanitize the
viruses and bacteria that have transferred from his tongue to your teeth--don't swallow.
And you think, "You've infected me.  You.  Infected.  Me.
with insecurity
and self-doubt
and indignity
and victimhood
and fuck you
I was kind to you
and compassionate to you
and gave you time--my time
and my respect
and my inquisitive nature.

I know that you are here, by yourself
from a different country
immigrated just a few years ago
with no family
and no friends,
in a time when Trump tells us all immigrants are
here to get you and rape you and kill you and
steal your dignity from you
I chose to show you kindness,
and give you my story.  My compassion.
And I would have given more--
all you had to do
was ask--but instead
you decided
to take this mind and this body
that my friends--my real friends
my chosen family-- laboured for over a decade
to coax this feral soul into trusting
to be able to sleep and believe that her bed was a safe place,
to be able to walk without swivelling my head,
to be able to set aside a deep-seated mistrust of humans,
and that maybe kindness was just kindness,
and stop looking for the pitfalls and the tripwires
and the proverbial strings that be attached
just enough to connect
and love humanity
and maybe, just maybe allow herself to be loved
and to be touched
and maybe, after a decade from her last assault
finally be ready to let someone make love to her again

you decided to take what wasn't offered.
You decided to swing that pendulum back
into the opposite direction.

You tore apart all of that work.
You destroyed the labor of all of that love.
In less than a minute.

You make me cry three times in the fifteen minutes it takes
to drive from my home to my gym
because the though of my trainer touching me at all now
terrifies me, because I may hurt him
because I'm not in control.
Because I bit a friend for grappling with me within a year of my first assault,
and I had no idea I had done it.
Because I asked him to teach me to grapple
because I wanted to be able to cause damage.
And it is so easy, once you know how to hurt people
to slide into my father's shadow
and just...destroy everything, so that you're alone,
because being alone means no one can hurt you.
Because you turned me back into that ... mangey bitch
with the grin
that is more teeth than smile,
and eyes that flash
with hatred.
You did that, Ayo.
You."