#writngprompt

My thoughts might mean nothing to most people, but to me, they are all I have. It's funny. I have always been a journal keeper, but the day my parents took my tie-dye best friend away that all changed. I remember the day I walked in to my bedroom to see my thin mattress pad askew. When I think about that day, my heart still both sinks and races.

   I knew that I had never really had any privacy, any safe place in a home where my every move was under a microscope. The slightest slip up was an intentional attack to my family because I was such a wicked child. I knew that my words and my actions belonged to my parents. There was no way I could defend myself with those. I could do everything exactly as they wished and still get everything twisted. My thoughts, however, my journal... I always thought that, at least. they belonged to me. That small journal, that tiny bit of me, THAT was mine. At Church, at school, in my home, I was who everyone expected me to be. I said what was expected of me or I said nothing at all. In my journal, though, I was finally me. I could write what I was really feeling. I could trust someone with my secrets. I could breathe for a minute. I didn't have to censor my feelings, I could be honest about my pain. THEY couldn't tell me who I was.

   Until the day they could. I remember being so excited to escape back into my room. I wanted to be left alone, just like every day. That was all I ever wanted, to be left alone. At least if I was alone, I wouldn't piss anyone off. No one had a reason to hurt me. I would get to my room, pull my bright little journal out from its hiding place, and vent. I would sit there and listen to my siblings laughing at whatever tv show was on. I would hold my breathe at every creak of a floorboard, praying that no one was looking for me. I could always tell who was coming and what mood they were in just by those creaks in the floorboard. When it sounded like everyone was safely occupied, I could finally begin. I knew the potential cost of being honest, but in my mind, I couldn't lose. I thought my hiding place was foolproof. I thought I was safe. In my house, complacency was dangerous. The moment I truly felt safe was the moment the rug would get pulled out from under me. Just as it was that day.

    I ran up the stairs, two at a time. The dishes were done, my sister and brothers were in the living room settled into a show. My parents had excused themselves after dinner, saying they were tired and headed to bed. I was in the clear. I opened the door I shared with my sister and immediately my stomach dropped to the floor. I knew how bad it was in milliseconds. I will never get the image of my father sitting on the bed, my mother leaning against our dresser arms folded with a look of disgust and rage in her face. The drawers of the little white dresser were half closed, clothing sticking out, clearly ruffled through. My dad had my journal in his hands, open and reading, my pillows on the floor. The oddness of this image still sticks with me. The brightness of my little journal against the darkness of the tunnel vision that started to set in. If you have ever been so afraid that your senses seem to change, you know what I mean. your heart beats into your ears, your vision gets better and worse all at the same time, everything seems to move in slow-motion.

   I wrote about everything in there. I wrote about the times they hit me, the time my dad threw my metal office chair at me, the time my mom held my face to our kitchen counter, yanking me by my hair, telling me i missed some crumbs. I wrote about when they forbade me from youth group because I was an embarrassment, because no one would like me and everyone would think I was weird. I wrote about the time my mom gave me a bloody nose by jabbing me in the face, or the time she shoved her fingers in my mouth, under my tongue, dug her nails in and pulled me around. I wrote about how much I hated them, about how I wished I would have died all of the times I "should" have because it would have been better than living the way I was. I wrote that I truly hated my mom most of all, because she worked at our church but was the meanest, bitchiest, scariest, most abusive person at home. This, specifically was the page they were reading as I walked in. "I really hate my mom. I can't help it, I hate her."

   I was terrified. At 13 I was still so small, I was under 5 feet and weighed 90 lbs soaking wet. I had a tendency to shake like a Chihuahua. I still do I suppose. I remember thinking that my parents were giants. My mom was 5'9 and very, very large. My dad was 5'11 and also pretty big. it was always so terrifying when one would loom over me, puffed up, seeming to take up all of the space in a room. 

     The rest is a blur, though I remember is getting told that I could no longer have my journal, that it was a privilege that I was no longer allowed to have. my mother slapped me across the face, and stormed out of the room calling me a "wicked little bitch" and my dad, still holding my journal told me that I was a disappointment, ungrateful, to clean my room, apologize to my mom and that I would be getting room inspections regularly to make sure that I wasn't keeping a journal anymore. (one of these inspections was when they found my secret "runaway from home" fund that I hid under a loose corner of carpet, more than a year later.) That was the day I found out that even my thought and feelings were under control of my parents.  The next time I had a journal was college, and I have struggled to keep one ever since.

   That is why I will write. I own my thoughts. I own my feelings. I have the RIGHT to express myself safely and I will not let them take that from me. I write for my 13 year old self. I write to make sense of my childhood. I write to know myself. I write because they can't control this part of me anymore.