“Never again,” Alyssa repeated over and over as she threw clothes into a garbage bag. She could only use her left hand since her right arm was in a cast having been broken in three places when Luke threw her against the wall last night. After going to the bar for a few drinks with the boys on the way home from work. After screaming why wasn’t dinner on the table when he walked in the door. After throwing the plate at the wall when she served it to him from the oven where she had been keeping it warm for him. After he blamed her for the mess and kicked a piece of china at her and told her to clean it up, now. After she went to bathroom to stop the bleeding where the china had cut her cheek. Then, he grabbed her arm for not doing what he told her to do when he told her to do it and threw her against the hall wall telling her to get in the kitchen and clean up the fucking mess, bitch. Then, she cleaned the mess with her left hand, her right arm dangling by her side while he fell asleep in front of the television. Then, she took her purse and walked out the back door. Then, she got in the car and drove to the hospital.

“Hey, Alyssa,” said Nurse Reines at emergency admissions.

“I think my arm’s broken,” Alyssa said without tears.

“Again?” said Nurse Reines, her eyes wide with both anger and resignation.

“Never again,” Alyssa replied.

Never again, I will lose control over my emotions over worthless provocations. I am definitely better than that. Even if I lose control, I will forgive myself. I accept myself and my shortcomings happily and wholeheartedly.

Half of one's problems are solved when one acknowledges them. Regrets, embarrassments, shame....are bullshit. Cut the crap and be happy.

"Never again"

I whisper to myself

as I walk away from

the pain

the frustration

the sadness

the tears

Like tossing garbage aside

like telling a long kept secret

like removing a painful growth

I leave you behind

You can't hurt me anymore

Jazzercise Class

"never again.",

was the promise i made to the stars,

as i downed another bottle of tears.

i drank to keep my heart light.

if it became too heavy, i might just sink.

i jumped too soon,

dived too deep,

and loved too much.

"never again."

i had so much faith,

so much trust,

so much weight,

but your shoulders never even lifted them.

"never again."

i wandered too far from my soul,

tried to take another body,

become another form.

"never again."

i'll puke regrets,

and cry dreams after.

Never again will I water down

who I am

to be accepted by someone.

Never again will I let another person’s version of me

that they’ve conjured up in their minds

effect who I really am

or strive to be.

Never again will I suppress

me.

Nev’r again~ will I have to worry about losing a battle. With this change & ability I now have a chance to defeat any foe(s).

For your own safety. Don’t try to face it. Once it’s awakened, nothing can stop the beast from attacking anything/anyone in its path!

#LaBête© vendredi, 11 octobre, 2019.

Never Again. Never again will I let someone else define who I am. For the first 19 years of my life, I lived off of the expectations and approval of those who are the most important in my life, thinking that that was how you earn their love. I was wrong. I quickly lost myself to the expectations, confused as to who I even was. Me, the one person that should know me the best, hardly knew any truth of myself at all. My joy and happiness in life started to dissipate.

So I reversed my life, slowly started to take things away, wanting to start over with a clean slate, or as much as a start over as you can get when you're 19. I filled my life with my interests and things that made me happy. I started to live my life based on my goals and my expectations, and I was succeeding and was beginning to love life again. And the amazing part is that the people who had had those original expectations for me, while it took some time for them to accept my changes, they still loved me and they were just as proud of me.

So never again will I allow my life to be run by others.

Never again.

My dad traveled for work all the time. He was gone between three and five days and nights a week. That's how being a pilot is. He'd started flying fifteen years before I was born, and he flew for another seventeen afterward.

I was a boyscout when I was a kid. I thought it was pretty fun, most of the time. I could make wooden cars, tie square knots, build fires, and camp. My troop's camping trips happened once or twice a year. I liked the trips, but I felt like a passenger along for the ride. I didn't put any work into planning them or working them into my schedule. It was just "We're going camping in a few weeks, don't forget!" and I'd forget until it was the morning to leave.

My dad didn't have full control over his work schedule. He turned in paperwork expressing preferences for certain days to work and days to be at home, but he never had the final say. I don't think he missed a single campout, but how much time did he spend praying that he'd get the right days off or dreading that he'd miss one?

Is now a good time to mention that I had three brothers? They didn't come on those campouts--except once or twice. My dad set time aside for he and I to have time away from everyone else, making our own bonds in special time independent of everyone else. Those boyscout adventures were rare days of father-son time instead of family time. Three other sons and a wife, and he dedicated entire weekends to me. I remember the campfires and the marshmallows and the tent-pitching and the hikes where you carried me on your shoulders and the cobbler.

Like most people, I was a teenager for a while. It didn't matter how nice my parents were or how much time they made for me, I didn't want to be around them. They didn't understand how much work school was or how annoying it was when they interrupted my afternoons of video games--those afternoons, I should mention, blended together into an unremarkable swath of indistinct memories. I wanted Dad to leave me alone, so I insulted him for things I didn't really care about. If I hurt him, I reasoned, he'd leave me alone.

"You weren't even here for half my childhood," I reminded him a few times. You'd think, that with all the times he'd mentioned wishing he could be at home, I would've realized that he didn't need reminding.

I'm sorry, Dad. I don't know if you remember me acting like I resented you for working all those hours to make enough money to give me a good life--a great life--but I didn't mean it. I wish I'd never tried to hurt you at all, especially not for a fabricated reason. Never again will I try to hurt you by exploiting how much you care about me.

I hope we can go camping again.