Bulb

Her brain flickers like a lightbulb. The world is bright. The world is dark. 

The world is supposed to be easier than this. She's all of eight years old, and she has the weight of the world on her shoulders. Tiny shoulders meant for holding up that head that she so often forgets how to hold high. She needs to brace, some sort of emotional crutch to keep upright.

Here's the thing about abuse. You can see the black and blue bruises that litter skin. You can see the scabs forming over old cuts and scrapes.

You can't see the mind breaking, hidden behind the guise of a lie laced smile.

Her heart is bruised by words. Ones that tell her she isn't good enough under the mask of wanting what is best for her little girl. Wanting that extra inch to earn perfection, to resemble God's image. 

God is perfect.

Newsflash, she's eight.

She wants friends and fun and to breathe without thinking maybe the bulb is going to burn out again, or that the big hand is going to swivel it loose, just enough to make her run back to the light.

She's too young to realize that the light is a flame. Too close and you get burnt. Those burns etch into her soul, and you can't see them, but they're there, aching for relief. 

The soul ages, and she's twelve, and she's too young to be hiding from the world. She holes up in her room with a book, in hopes of escape from the rest of her house. House, not a home, because home implies love, unconditional, and not some manipulative slander saying that she isn't good enough, despite buttering it up with polished words that are supposed to come off as constructive.

If that's the case, why is her soul held together with duct tape and rubber bands? She curls into a pile of teddy bears that smile at her. Genuine smiles with no pretense. Not ones that beam because she finally didn't mess up, because she sat there for hours and played therapist for the woman over thrice her age when all she wanted was a glass of water.

She sits thirsty, swallowing her own spit, because it's better than the words thrown at her when she leaves the bounds of her sanctuary.

By sixteen, she finds a light. She's finally left alone, if only for a minute. She logs into this infinite haven, eyes half out the window, waiting for her master to return. She pours her soul into her haven, hoping to contain it in a new vessel, because the rubber bands are growing weak, and she really needs to breathe.

The headlights approach. She powers down and flees back to sanctuary, back to her pile of stuffed smiles, with their arms open wide, ready to hold her safe. It's hardly seven thirty, but she's asleep, she claims, biting the inside of her lip as she tucks her chin into her blanket to avoid the kiss of the emotional vampire, who has some to drain her juices with the same woven tales she can repeat verbatim. They're like reruns, but the show should have been cancelled sixteen seasons ago.

If you catch her drift. 

She falls ill, and the vampire sinks her fangs so deep that she can't run. There's nowhere to hide, shackled to a woman who wants nothing more than a puppet to love her. She feigns love, because she understands the consequences if she doesn't, and drains her account of self love dry trying to feed her captor. 

Her body restores, but her heart does not. She's a shell of her former self, albeit not a glamorous aspiration to be frank, and she pours herself back into her books, pretending that she can be that girl, the one with life and passion.

The one not bound to be a solemn Christian doormat, trampled by the weight of a two hundred pound soul sucker.

At twenty, she gets brave. She meets a boy who screws the lightbulb tighter, stands guard. She takes a stand and cries the truth as she shrivels up into the chair, calling her out. She tells her that she's gone, and doesn't want to come back.

Turns out there was more than one monster in the world.

She ran back home, holing up in that room for a month, cringing at the notion that she was back at square one, because nobody had taught her how to break free. Nobody had ever screwed in that bulb until he did, and he had only done it for his own self gain. Had nobody wanted to love her for the sake of love?

Another year, another boy. He took her limp soul and mashed it back together, planting her feet on the ground. He told her that it was not okay to suck up abuse like a vacuum, because she was not a vacuum, but a human, capable of self love. Capable of putting on her armor and denying entrance to those that wanted to tear her down.

Those words would bite him one day. 

Still, it had spun the lightbulb tight, and the light would flicker less often as her army grew. It wasn't big in size, but it was big in might. Big enough to declare war.

So she did.

She cut the vampire off, and started to take back what was rightfully hers. She wanted to be the hero of her story, not the victim. Someone who could say 'the end' and live happily ever after.

That wasn't the someone she became. The monster fought back. She sent emails, and letters, begging her child to run back. Saying that she had done no wrong draining every last drop of light out of her. Saying that she had raised her better, that children were supposed to unconditionally love their mothers.

Sorry, but this girl had developed standards. Ones where people loved her for the person she had given new life to.

Ones where she was learning to love herself.

The thing about scabs is that if you pick at them, they take longer to heal. She lets her army bandage her wounds, and promises not to scratch.

That's what the vampire is for.

She corners her, and makes her body convulse as tears stream down her face. The lightbulb shatters. 

The world is dark. 

Her army screws in a new bulb. They may have lost this battle.

But they refuse to lose the war.