Impossible

I know that I am impossible to love.  I drive everyone away in my life because I am stupid, a burden, riddled with complexes; because I carry so much baggage from my past mistakes, because whenever I try to think, I just fuck everything up, because no matter how hard I think I am trying, I am never actually getting anywhere.  I just keep digging my own grave deeper, and deeper, and deeper.

I hate myself, and I'm not surprised that everyone else does, too.

Every day, I make mistakes.  I usually repeat the same mistakes again and again.  It's like I just can't think straight about anything.  Even though I always wish I could just calculate my moves more carefully, and actually achieve anything, I never manage to get anywhere but down.  I can't even manage to pull together enough brain power in a single sitting to get one straight thought across clearly without every idea being riddled with flaws, inconsistencies and stupidity.

I have done nothing in life but bring everyone else down around me.  It's no wonder my parents gave up and let me go when I kept fucking up as a teenager.  There's a point when nothing can be done to help a person.  I am impossible to help because I am too stupid to keep anything good going long enough before I fuck it right back up.  I am impossible to help because no matter what, I keep making bad decisions.

Nobody wants to keep a burdensome, useless piece of crap around.

I spent a decade of my life being abused and tormented on a regular, always hearing the question, "Why can't you just do right?"  I was so convinced that those words were just bullshit coming from an abuser's shitty mouth.  I thought I could free myself of that thought forever by leaving, moving, running away and starting over.  Instead, here I am, a year into my own run of things, still being asked the same question every day.  I ask myself the same question.  Why can't I get things right?  Wishing for things to get better, wishing I would do better, wishing I could make things right for myself after all those years in purgatory - wishing does NO GOOD when it is impossible for me to follow through.

It's no wonder he knocked me around, dragged me by my hair, threw me out of the house all the time, and screamed in my face every day.  I am SO frustrating!  I frustrate myself!  It's no wonder he would choke me like every night.  Because everything that comes out of my mouth is just one huge diarrhea of stupidity.  I wish I would just shut the fuck up all the damned time, too...  Everything that I do is just one giant, never-ending string of stupidity.

In those domestic violence survivor groups, the leaders always remind us all that we should avoid relationships following a history of being abused.  I don't really think it's just because they want us to take time to heal before moving forward so much as I KNOW it is because it's pretty much proven that people like us are just impossible to deal with that whoever we cling to will inevitably just get so sick of us that they wish they could smack us in our stupid faces.  There are more reasons that people are abused than just that they get involved with some shithead who was pre-programmed to abuse.

What the fuck is wrong with me?  Why am I like this?

I tried.  I tried to believe that it was him and not me.  I tried to believe that others were right when they told me "abuse is always the abuser's fault and ~never~ the victim's."  If anything, trying to believe that bucket of shit was my greatest downfall this year.  I've been walking around like a fucking idiot with a chip on my shoulder.  I managed to convince myself that nobody had the right to cross me.  I have walked around without humility, demanding respect yet also insisting that somehow I have the right to have everything go my way.  Being abused was so humbling and demeaning.  He tore me apart until there was nothing left of me but a shell, a walking corpse with no option but to do what I was told and hope to God that I didn't do anything wrong in his opinion to earn myself another strike.  When I left, I was so fed up with following his rules that I just wanted to do everything my way in some stupid effort to enjoy the freedom I had finally earned myself after all those years.  It is SO hard to live every day knowing that any tiny mistake will earn you some form of physical and emotional pain and suffering.  When I walked away from that life, I wanted so badly to be FREE.  I was so hung up on the idea that nobody was ever going to have the right to cross me, fuck with me, or get in my way ever again.  And for what?  No good has come of my lack of humility.  I just keep pushing everything good out of my life because I am on a never-ending streak of fucking-up.

I can't help but believe the whole world would have been better off if I had just died by his hand.  Maybe he would have shot me with his rifle when he was so out of his mind on drugs and running around the house with it loaded, one in the chamber, chasing after invisible and inaudible intruders.  Maybe he would have run me through one afternoon in one of his furious rages with the machete he used to cut my hand.  Maybe he would have held my throat for just another minute too long after I passed out until I just asphyxiated and died.  But he didn't.  I woke up from the seizures, no shot was ever misfired in my direction, and I didn't bleed out from a sickeningly deep gash in my flesh.

The ONLY reason I am any use to this world is because of my daughter.  Without me, she wouldn't have a safe home or a new life to succeed in.  It was because she was right there when he cut me open that I finally knew that I had to get us out of there no matter what it would take.  It it is because I know that I owe her a better life than the one I had brought her into that I know I have to keep trying.  I have to show her that I love her, have to give her everything I can to ensure that she lives a better life.  I have to teach her that she is better than falling victim to some asshole's violent plans to keep her under control.

I hope that she believes other people when they tell her that her mother was strong, and brave, and determined.  I hope she never sees the truth behind those lies.  I hope she never realizes that I would not have fallen victim to my old life in the first place had I actually been intelligent, strong or brave.  I don't want her to know the truth, because I don't want her to lose faith like I have.