I’ve written about the idea of being “broken” before. Now that I’ve got my storytelling mojo back, I don’t write as many poems as I used to (also HVN told me my poems suck, and I haven’t written one since). But “I will not break” is still one of my favorite writings.
In one of the angry posts I wrote (and subsequently deleted) a few weeks ago after I let rage get the best of me, I wrote something along the lines of “Every time one of you writes about wanting to break someone, I laugh at you.”
It went on to say “Fuck you. I won’t break.”
Like I said, I was angry. I sorted out the source of my anger, addressed it, and moved on to a kinder, gentler phi.
Earlier today I wrote about the only beating that ever made me cry. Was it the beating or the meaning behind it that brought forth those tears? I’d guess it has more to do with the latter. I loved him. Even as he was leaving me, he loved me. Hell, he was “doing it for my own good,” something I knew to be true then and still fought against.
By the end of those ten smacks with the cheeseboard I was a sniffling, bawling, wretched mess of a woman. In fact, I’d regressed to girl, and I clung to him, physically then, and emotionally over the next several months.
But I wasn’t broken. It wasn’t the worst I’d ever endured.
Try telling an 86 year-old woman that her son, the last surviving member of her nuclear family, didn’t wake up that morning. Try being the wife who had to stay strong that day for the sake of his teenage daughter, who was with me that morning and endured the whole ordeal by my side.
I’ll take 50 wooden paddles to the ass over ever having to experience that morning again.
I couldn’t call red that day. I couldn’t say a word and end that nightmare.
But with you, future partner, I can.
And that’s why you can’t break me. Not without violating my trust in the ugliest and most despicable of ways.
You want me to cry? I’ll tell you the secret. The only way you’ll get the tearful sobbing mess of a girl that’s clinging to your thighs as you stand above her with all the power:
Love me.
polyammering 