I was born to a man who didn’t want me.
But worse—he didn’t care.
Indifferent to knowing me,
to whether I was fed, warm, safe.
Indifferent to the fact that I even existed.
He saved his fire for my brother—
a boy raised on violence and praise,
taught that love was brutal,
that women are weak.
My mother—
she worked herself to exhaustion,
five jobs, five hundred worries,
no time for anything but keeping us alive.
She cared enough to try,
but survival doesn’t leave room for anything else.
I was was always alone.
Because they fucking hated me?
Like my father did,
like my brother did,
like every man after them.
They wanted me small.
Silent.
Grateful for the suffering they handed me.
They tried to kill every spark in me.
I should’ve known.
When the first man tore doors from their hinges,
drove 100 miles per hour just to watch me flinch.
Then came the biggest projection I ever invented—
Like i actually believed that shit in my chest.
i miscarried on the bathroom floor alone,
sobbing for the child that could have tethered me to him,
screaming like a wounded fucking animal bleeding out.
i died too that day,
realizing i was just another body to fill his emptiness,
replaced by literally fucking anyone.
He must have hated me too.
Or worse, he was always a hallucination.
So I ran.
Straight into the arms of a man I knew could destroy me.
I thought if I could create something whole,
it wouldn’t matter that I never had been.
And then I saw my own version of my father.
I had found him.
He took me from standing to flat on my back,
head against the wood,
pregnant.
his hands around my throat SQUEEZING,
his fist against my skull—again and again.
I carried his child and his rage at the same time,
eight months pregnant,
cleaning houses while hiding bruises,
a ghost of myself.
Days before our daughter was born,
he put me in the hospital.
Then totaled my car.
But the most hollowing act was:
Not when he threw me against the floor
Not when he punched me in the head.
Not even when he strangled me until I forgot how to breathe.
I knew when he spit in my fucking face.
Inches away, with our daughter still inside me.
Because to spit at something is to say:
You are nothing.
And if I was actually nothing,
then I was something that could be erased.
So I ran back to my father’s house,
a place where I was never a child
but still just a thing.
And it was just as brutal as I remember.
But there’s her.
And I would not let her know the childhood that I had run from.
So, I went home.
To the place I bought alone.
Just in case I needed to escape.
Not sure how I would survive,
but knowing I had to.
Because they fucking hated me.
They tried to kill me.
They tried to break me.
They tried to make me disappear.
But I am still here.
And my daughter?
She will never ask,
"Why does he fucking hate me?"
They tried to fucking kill me.
And they fucking failed.