Dear Abuser …

Hey you… yeah YOU! The one who claimed to love me. The one who just called me a bitch because I forgot to set out a pair of socks with the clothes you wanted me to lay out for you. The one who is too damn lazy and controlling to even be responsible for his own medication.
I have news for you. A big surprise. I woke up! I’m not living in your dream anymore. I haven’t told you I’m awake. It’s MY secret for me. I’m waiting for the right time to tell you. I’m setting the stage.  I’m making plans for me and my children.
I’m still pretending to serve and obey because that’s what you expect of me. I don’t want you to know I finally see you for who you are.
I don’t hate you. I probably even still love you although it seems like you hate me. I recognize that you are broken too. You haven’t wakened to your disease as I now have to mine. You don’t realize the pain you inflict. You honestly think you are still trying to fix things. To make them better. But your “fix” breaks ME.
When things don’t go as you expect you easily get frustrated. That broken part of you doesn’t deal well with frustration. So you yell. Get mad. Get drunk. Throw things. Say things. Hurtful things. You hurt me. You hurt me with your words. With your actions. You hurt the people you claim to love. You hurt the people who try their best to love you as you demand.
Our best is never good enough. You have to make us feel second best or inferior to help you feel better about yourself.
We are human just like you. We have fragile bodies with feelings that are now easily hurt. We have lived in fear for our lives for a while now, just waiting for the day when your outburst becomes physically violent. So far it’s been angry words. Hurtful words. Physical actions just shy of actually physically touching, hurting, us. Some of us don’t even care if we live anymore. Death seems like a good answer to ending the pain you deal us every day.
NOT ME! I found hope. I’m finding my voice. I’m finding my strength. I’m finding ways to make new roads out of this hell I’m living in. I’m learning how to keep secrets from you too.
One day I’ll tell you my secrets. On that day you will see the spark of life in me that I’m hiding. You will see the flame you thought you extinguished flare up into a blazing fire. Twenty years of smoldering coals will roar up and threaten to consume you until YOU are the one cowering, just as your words and actions threatened to consume my life.
Dear abuser … I have a secret I can’t WAIT to share with you…