boktjejernamedstil

I'm a child filled with Hunger; a hunger to be loved.

I'm the remainings of a smile, the echo of a laughter.

Once in my childhood my second name was vitality,

fate has now doomed me to be a mistress to the misery.

I'm fifteen and I'm enslaved to self-destruction.

The razorblades are my only friends and

burning myself with cigarettes gives me a peace of mind nothing else ever will.

People say I'm broken and I can not be fixed, but they don't know me,

they don't know who I am.

I'm a survivor -

surely they did not know.

My name is Corinna and this is my story.

*

His hand hits me across my chin.

I feel the iron taste after blood in my mouth but I can not feel the pain I know is there. I put my focus on breathing deep and regular.

"He is not for real. You are a bird and it's only you and your white wings here", I repeat it to myself but it does not convince my head. He is frightening, his blue eyes stares back at me with nothing in them. He unbuckle his belt and I lay down at the torn mattress in the basement. I pull up my sweater and my shirt exposing my bruised skin. When the belt hits my back it stings enough to make my eyes tear up but the sound the belt makes when it collides with my skin is ever worse. I cover my ears with my hands trying to shut out the sound.

When did he begin? Why did he begin? Will it ever end?

All the questions ends up as a jumble like a storm in my head as I notice the salt taste of tears on my lips. I feel my lips twitch. I fooled myself for a second thinking I was numb to the pain. I'm so stupid thinking I had finally been spared the pain. I hear his footsteps on the stairs and I know he is finished for tonight. I can finally pull down my shirt and sweater to curl up in my mattress and rest my weary soul for a moment.

I don't pull down my clothes because if I move as much as an inch I groan with pain. I lay with my arms lifeless on my sides, my face gazing upon the wall. This grey old wall that I have stared at so much that I would not be surprised if my gaze would leave burn marks.

"How, Corinna, how did it end up like this? What did you do wrong, stupid girl?" I'm not completely sure if I ask the silence surrounding me or myself. I smiled when I remembered my grandmother. She was strict but I know she was the only one who ever loved me. As much as I feel like smiling when I hear her voice call me 'lass' again, just as much does it make me want to bawl my eyes out. I realise it must have been around the old woman's death that he hit me for the first time. Grandmother left an impressing amount of money in my name when she died, money supposed to secure my future in College. He though, had other plans, he somehow got hold on the money and bought pint after pint in the only bar there is in our neighbourhood. I was home alone and on that time I slept on the kitchen couch therefore I heard him when he got home. My mother, his wife, had died when I was born but he was not my father. I was just something he had to take care of whether he liked it or not.

It was in the middle of a sombre night when he shouted at me to get the hell up. He pulled my arm and I wanted to ask what I had done wrong but his moonstruck expression hindered me. He forced me down the basement for the first time ever, and I remember I was crying and begging since I was death scared of the dark basement. He screamed at me, telling me to shut up.

"I'm so tired of taking care of a child who is not even mine!", he roared.

I became temporally mute when his fist landed on my fragile five year old body. I was chocked; he had never hit me before.

I must have done something horrible wrong if he beats me, I resonated. I was telling myself how it was my fault; this is only using solid strict discipline. I always tried to do the right things after the incident, whenever he was in the same room it felt like I was walking on nails. I was so frightened to do wrong. It happened that he beat me only once in a while at first, but soon the monthly beatings became daily. He burned me with a frying pan on my back when I was seven, I had shouted so loudly that our neighbours called the police. He covered up all my bruises with accidents as he fed the officer a cock-and-bull story and I nodded silently but consent by his side. After the kind eyed officer left I was pushed down by the stairs of the basement and everything went dark.

People asks me why I retain everything if it hurts me, I want to give an explanation but I know they would not understand. People tell me it is over, he is locked away in jail somewhere far away and for God's sake I'm safe now.

No one but me knows that he is visiting me every time I close my eyes. He never left. I still hear my cries for help and sometimes I still cover my ears to shut out the sound of his belt whipping my skin red. I eat even when I'm full because I never know when the food will disappear. When my adoptive parents gives me money I worship it as a Goddess. I hurt myself physically when the hurt inside me threatens to swallow me whole. This is what they call safety; this they said was moving on.

In my heart I understand they are right, but the memories are proving me wrong.

The past is not yet my past; I still live in the basement. I'm still a victim of poverty and

I'm still hurt.

I wrote down this to leave the past where it belongs:

in my past.

*

I was a cry for help,

never leaving the throat.

I was barely alive when

I said I was fine.

I'm no longer the echo of a laughter,

I'm the delight in a smile.