To Love Again

Chapter 9

 Sometimes the worst place you can be is in your own head.

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Through bleary eyes, I watched as my father beat me senseless, yet again, while my mother and sister stood aside sneering at my limp form.    

      How pathetic. 

      Don’t they have better things to do with they’re lives? Like ending malnutrition for poor children? Or speaking up about deforestation?

      I get it. I get that I'm unneeded.

      Unwanted.

      Unloved.

      I get that I’m useless!

      I get that I’m a waste of space.

      I get that I was only kept in the household for my parents’ images.

      I get that I’m weak.

      Pathetic.

      And I get it, I only bring misfortune. 

      I get it.

      I’m a monster too, aren’t I?

      I killed him. The only one who ever looked at me with compassion in their eyes.

      I killed him.

      He died because of me.

      I’m a monster.

      I hate myself.

      Little by little, I lost consciousness, falling into the harsh rhythm of fists ramming into my bruised ribs and bottles of soju being broken over my head.

      I’d lost count of the amount of burns I had across my skin, from my father’s burning cigarettes. I’d lost count of the scars littered across my back from all the glass shards.

      I’d lost count of the little scars lining the inside of my wrists.

  

      The pain no longer burned. 

      It no longer stung and screamed. It no longer ached in agony.

      I couldn’t feel it anymore. 

      I was empty.

      Detached.

      The brunt force slamming my head into the floor no longer threw me into endless tears. 

      Why should I keep living if I feel nothing but emptiness? I asked myself.

      Why am I still here? 

      Because I was foolish.

      Foolish for thinking good things will ever come my way. For keeping my hopes up, only to get them crushed.

      

       I closed my eyes, letting the noise fade into the background and relaxed my tense muscles. My consciousness wandered further into the back of my head as the blackness enveloped me.