A Violent Hour In Reverse.

I open my eyes really wide, as if that will help me see more clearly. As if that will help me see something new; something I wasn't seeing before. I don't see any more than before, though, maybe I even see less. I see an ending. It's hard to pinpoint the moment when something culminates but he is often so abrupt with ending things that it feels like a large china bowl has shattered all over the floor to signify the moment. He stops at the pinnacle and not on the way down, he stops five minutes after the moment all hope is lost, as if only to display the mercy I was forced to ask for. He stops before I've even caught up to the last of the torrent.

"It's okay," he said a moment ago, leaning down to kiss the side of my lip, "You can relax now, it's over."

Just a few minutes before that he was sitting atop my pelvis as I lay there holding my arms outstretched over my head, fighting every urge to flail my them around as he punched the insides. Each blow sent a shock of pain down my arm right to my index fingers, numbing them for just a second. Each time I jolted up, begging, asking him to hit me anywhere but there. He complied for a few blows, but he always returned back to the arms. I imagine it feels good to wield the power of fear over someone, it must, or else it wouldn't feel so good to be scared of him. It wouldn't feel so good to be compliant in terror. It wouldn't feel so good to fight every natural urge and just endure endlessly, and this has felt endless.

"Don't let me see the hope in your pretty little eyes," he said to me before he dragged me from the wall and pushed me onto our bed, "It just makes me want to crush it over again."

At that moment I was so relieved to feel the warm, softness of the bed against my back as opposed to the wall gently beating against my head as he stood four feet away and kicked me over and over. That felt like the worst of it then. It felt like the worst to hear the sound of my head knocking on the concrete as a voice in my head questioned if he even cared about me; cared about how many horrible  things he had already done to me and how exhausted I was by this relentless onslaught. It felt like it couldn't get worse than the punches on my arms and thighs as I tried to climb into a corner that never had any hiding space. That feels the worst. It feels the worst to try to run away and be constantly reminded you have no place to escape and you must stand there and bear your helplessness until mercy comes for you. It's loathsome but it makes me weak in the mind with the power of a religious frenzy. I thought it was the worst, it certainly sounded like it.

"It's a good thing you don't have to leave the house tomorrow," he said to me before turning my face into the wall, "Your face is inexplicable."

I could feel it. I could that uncomfortable swelling that makes you feel like your skin is ripping, I could feel my jaw sore on the right, swollen on the left. No one has every scared me of being slapped before. I've been slapped my entire life and with enthusiastic regularity for at least thirteen years. I've been slapped by a psychotic woman and an angry mad mad in uneven fits of rage, and while all other forms of physical violence might instill fear in me, facial abuse does not. Or did not. He strikes much worse than a mad man, often making me stop and question how a person can actually hit a face that hard. So much that I automatically flinch when there are hands around my face now. I guess we are all most comfortable in our areas of expertise. Give me a newspaper and I'll fix every little mistake in it, even the ones that weren't actually mistakes, give him a face, I guess. My poor little face that he picked up off the floor.

"Get up," he said stepping off my hair in what feels like an eternity ago, "Get against that wall, let me see your face."

I remember thinking it was better when he couldn't see my face. I'm less concerned with a blatant display of vulnerability and fear than I am with letting him see that little smile I can't help. That smile of joy that showed itself just a little when he walked with dirty shoes all over my skin, kicking every patch of dirt loose before adding another. Like notches of filth on my skin. The smile was fleeting, but the sentiment behind it is not, because nothing feels as good as being dirt and pain, and I know it. Every fibre of my being that intellectualizes these dirty things knows that it's about nothing more than the thrill of being knocked down and abused. There can be depth in a pin prick, but it's still just that. A prick. A tiny little patch of being. I give it up for the rush, for the thrill, and it makes me smile because the shallowness brings such joy. It brings such joy to be broken for a flush of the skin and a flutter of the heart.

"Much better on the floor," he said pulling my hair and pushing me down, "Much better when I can walk all over you."

I closed my eyes really hard. As if closing them would erase the inevitability of torrential violence. As if not seeing him, would erase the reality of us from my mind, as if not seeing would mean seeing less. It didn't, though, if anything I saw more clearly than ever. I saw a beginning. It's so hard to tell where things begin sometimes, but not with him. It's like the curtain rising in a theatre at an exact time each day but without announcement, you know its coming but it lulls you into safety with its silence. He starts five minutes before I relinquish my senses to relaxation and comfort. He starts before I've been able to convince myself that this violence is real.