You Made Me Stronger

By

There are a million reasons I have hate in my heart. All of them revolve, encompass you. Your flesh and bone existence makes me squirm. It reminds me of the pain I’ve had to bear since childhood. The way men used me. The way they considered me “too stupid” to see through their glass veneers and fake facades.

Always wanting people to see a charlatan presented as an omnipotent good-hearted citizen.

We see through you. Every little girl eventually sees through the mirror. We see the hooks stuck into walls. The only pieces that keep the mirror decoratively hanging. The same hooks you put in my mouth with lies.

Hook. Line. Sinker. 

When I let you touch me, my stomach is churning with vile-tasting bile, filled with hate. I don’t hope the best for you. I don’t want to see you find your peace. I don’t want to know everything worked out well in your life. I only want to forget how you stole 16 years, an entire decade lasting beyond my twenties. I am a flushed fish, constantly swirling with self-doubt.

How I believed I would never be anything.
How I sobbed on hardwood floors, begging you.
How I hated myself because you hated me.
How I let you dictate my happiness.
How I believed only your opinion.

There is a place where a girl becomes a woman. You pushed me there. You knocked me off the cliff and forced me to learn to fly. Hard. Fast. I opened wings I didn’t know exist. I had to believe everything you said is a lie.

Because it is a lie. They were always false testimonies.

There is a reckoning day. Mine came because of you. My day happened as a result of loving you. Would I trade a day of unhappiness for the person I am now?

No.

You made me find my strength. You made me fight for something. You made me stop begging. I got up off the hardwood floors. I wiped 16 years worth of heartache off my heart and the baseboards covering my soul’s exterior.

And for that, I say, “Thank you.”

I’m proud of every inch which had to be built from the ugliness in a funhouse reflection you kept trying to show me. You may have hooked me, but I threw myself back into the world. Today, tomorrow, and every day afterward I will hold up my own mirror.

Thank you.

I never knew such resilience resided in me.