You Are The Faith Inside Me

‘You are the faith inside me, no, don’t leave me to die here, help me survive here alone, don’t remember, remember. Put me to sleep evil angel.” – Evil Angel by Breaking Benjamin.

This is what you did to me.

This is how you broke me, hurt me, how you killed me.

This is how I kept on going, through the hurt, pain.

This is how I said ‘no’, how I put my foot down, said this was the last time.

This is what you did to me.

All I can ever remember doing is looking up at you, thinking: This is it, no going back now.

That’s what I thought every time: every time you’d come near me, every time I saw that glint in your eyes.

But that time, the last time, that was different. There was that glint, for sure. It was when I saw the light.

That shining, gleaming, bright light.

I remember clearly seeing that light and feeling a smile creep up on my face.

‘After all this time, I’m finally going to do it.’

My hands were tied behind my back, I remember that.

“Why are you smiling?” you’d demanded. I’d jumped out of my skin at the heat of your breath on my cheek. The pinch on my head as you pulled me up by the hair.

‘It’s going to be okay,’ one of them had assured me. One of the friends I had; they would help me through, they were like the angels on my shoulder.

‘Don’t do this. Don’t. Fight. Fight and carry on. You can do it,’ another one had yelled at me.

They’d been my saviours, all these years, helping me put up with it, hiding what you did to me.

‘Not anymore,’ I’d told myself. No. No more.

“I surrender,” I remember spitting at you.

A laugh. A hideous, haunting, evil laugh.

You’d told me something like ‘You’re going to wish you hadn’t have said that.’

That had tipped me over the edge. I inhaled and hurled spit in your face.

The shock on your face was all I remember seeing before the blow.

Smash!

Five sharp knuckles collided with my face. Your hands were always like iron, strong enough to do anything, which is why the punches always felt worse than they looked.

As the sharp stabbing pain subsided, my eyes locked with yours.

Those icy blue eyes held so much pain, so much regret, so many memories. I could melt in your eyes; they could hold a thousand promises, a thousand apologies. A thousand hurts.

“You finished?” I choked after the last blow. I ended up on the floor, coughing up blood, the iron too much to take in my mouth.

That made you even angrier. I could hear the voices, the friends telling me to just up and run, get out of there, not to push you. But I wasn’t going to listen to them anymore. I’d seen the light, and I was finally going to get it, finally going to be free.

The prayer, the first prayer I have ever said runs through my mind:

‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’

I had not realised I had been mumbling it aloud until I heard you. You smirked down at me, laughed at me, ridiculed my only way out of this mess, ridiculed my friends, the friends who were imaginary to you, but to me, very real.

That laugh. As I lay there on the floor, helpless, I remembered that laugh; when we first met, when we were happy. When we got married. All the good times were muddled in there somewhere, I could hear them, I could see them.

But not then, no, you were just seeing red. Blood red.

My blood.

That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? My blood. On the floor, on the knife, on you. You didn’t care if it hurt me, or eventually you, you didn’t care if it was wrong. In the end, that’s all you wanted, my end. My end and my blood; I could see you wanting it badly, smelling it, even tasting it.

“Take me away from here,” I whispered to the friends, the angels. Anyone who would listen, who could help.

“Say that again,” you’d yelled, raising the knife.

As you craned over me, the knife glinting into my eyes, I saw the light once again.