Musings Of A Moth

It means silencing the muscles in the face when a man says something stupid.

Being a woman is fantasizing about beating a man to death who hurt your friend until it slowly drives you mad.

Being a woman is letting people hurt you over and over again and saying “it’s fine”.

Being a woman is crying in the car before you walk into the grocery store, your home and work and acting like it didn’t happen.

Being a woman is losing yourself trying to save others. Trying to save anyone but yourself.

The tension floats in the air, thick like the humid air on a Georgia summer evening.

I pinch my wrist, hold my breath and an awkward smile breaks my composure.

“Kidding” I whisper out like a child who’s been caught lying and I suddenly can’t meet there eyes.

You see even if you want to kill your self you’re not supposed to talk about it. It’s supposed to be kept hidden inside of you, kept secret like the weird uncle in the family who can’t go around schools.

Nobody really wants to know you want to kill yourself, it’s too heavy and real and the average person never has that thought cross there mind.

Killing myself has always felt to concrete. Too much of a final decision, something carved into stone that I can’t take back and so I don’t.

So when the therapist asks me if I ever think of killing my self and I jokingly say “not anymore then anyone else” and I’m met with the flat uncomfortable smile that tells me that was the wrong answer I instead say, “No”.

I have too much to live for, a son that would go back to his abusive father, a daughter who would grow up without a mother, a mother who would grow old without me and every sunset and sunrise from here until my heart gives out so I stay.

I remind myself the world is beautiful and I lay on my back in the grass and the breeze caresses my face as the leaves rustle and I am at peace.

The same peace I imagine dying feels like.

I smile again at my friend and apologize and say again this time with more certainty, “I’m not going to do it, I just needed to say it out loud because it’s eating a hole in my chest and no one knows” and that feels good to say out loud and there face softens and my heart stops racing and they take my hands in there’s and smile one of those soft I’m sorry smiles.

I lay in bed that night and flip the pages of the conversation over and over again.

If I ever lose this battle, I am sorry. The tears roll down my cheeks as I stare at the ceiling. My husband asleep next to me, never guessing for a moment I wanted to die.

I tried my best, I fought my demons and tried to see the beauty in life.

I close my eyes and remember the smell of my babies toes, their soft skin and coos. Holding out for one more day, one more month and one more year and then 10 more.

I’ve been thinking about killing my self but I won’t. Not today, not now. I put it back on the shelf and take a deep breath.

Too loud, too sensitive.

The hole in my chest growing and rotting.

I just wanted to be held even though I was heavy,

To not feel like a ghost, a sliver of myself.

An edible portion so that no one chokes on me.

How do I cut this out of me?

How do I cut this out of me?

How do I cut this out of me before it poisons everyone and everything around me?

If I cut deep enough and let it seep out will I finally be free of this?

I cannot outrun my shadow,

I cannot be someone else,

I cannot seem to stop crying.

I inherit the anger,

I inherit the shame and my mind is a prison, the bars made of all the reasons I hate myself.

I just wanted to be loved,

To be anyone’s first choice,

I just wanted to be loved.

If I kill my self will someone finally notice I am suffering.

My father is the dead bolt in my chest.

He is the devil on my shoulder and the rage in my blood.

He taught me everyone was expendable and forgettable.

My father taught me how to be ruthless, cold as ice a force to be reckoned with.

I’m sure he never imagined one day he would be someone I had to cut ties with. Forever regretting our harsh words and no contact.

I would forgive him if he asked…but he never will and so I sit like a little girl and weep when I think of him. My father never taught me to apologize and so I won’t. We will both take this stalemate to the grave, refusing to be the first one to cave.

All rage and teeth and blood.

I bite.

I have met you before, in many other a man.

Too small and too loud.

I am not afraid.

Listening to classical music and slowly falling into madness what about you?

I am not a creature of the night that was simply born. I am a fire that was set inside the heart of a woman scorned.

You would do well to not add tinder, to not fan the flames for heat.

The same fire that warms you; eats the forest.

I am a fire that was set, Burn.