Red Nail Polish

(Trigger Warning. Contents sexual violence, mental health & domestic violence)

Look, I am sorry I’ve hurt you. I really am. You didn’t deserve my bullshit. There was so much I couldn’t tell you. I was afraid if you knew, saw, felt, the real me, you’d leave, and I’d be alone. The irony doesn’t escape me, as I lay alone in the dark, hoping, wishing you wouldn’t leave. I can hear you moving around in the next room, packing quietly. Your grief hits me then. Gone is your man anger. Your disappointment seeping in under and around the door jamb. Your defeat casting grand shadows on the bare white walls of what was once our room. You stub your toe on a moving box, and curse softly. Even in that curse your defeat is deafening. Your movements are sluggish, battle worn, and automatic. I’m watching the flickering of light as you walk back and forth in front of the bedroom door. The sadness is crushing me, as if I am in a serpent’s embrace, coiling around me. There is nothing left to say. We yelled, screamed, cried it all.

I should have stopped you at “I love you”. I should have warned you that you will regret loving me. I should have mentioned I wasn’t capable of being loved. You would have laughed playfully at me and accuse me of being dramatic again. You wouldn’t have believed me. I see that now, as I picture the love you had for me in your eyes. That look has mesmerized me, has held me captive. That look gave me hope. You gave me reason to question the veracity of my own worth. That is when I started to hate you. Love and hate blooming in my heart. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be?  I’m still not sure even as I look around me and see your existence in my life slowing rolling up and rolling out.

My throat hurts from begging you to stay. But I don’t blame you. I can’t. I knew this would happen.

 My mother knew this would happen too as soon as she heard about you. You were in the shower the day she called, pretending to care; only it was her way of reminding me of my own self-loathing. I knew I looked guilty when you came out of the bathroom as I rushed to get off the phone.  I am sorry I lied about her death. The truth is far worse than the lie. I didn’t think you would understand the emotional vacancy between my mother and me. It was easier to tell you my biological father killed her to than admit that her hate for me has been slowly killing me. The truth is she doesn’t even know who my biological father is. Or at least they never caught him. My grandparents didn’t give her a choice. Nobody gave my mother a choice, and I have lived with that burden all my life. She held on to all that pain and hate and reminded me daily. Eventually, she left too. She left me with my grandparents, too religious to see the truth and too old to care. I still don’t understand how I was raised with this zealotry only to lack morals.

 I should have stopped you at “I love you”. I should have told you the truth. I should have mentioned that I don’t know how to love. I know what love looks like, I can see it everywhere and in everyone but me. I know how to imitate love. I learned that as a teenager in the backseat of a much older man’s car. Of course, I was greedy. I was born to take and take and keep on taking. That’s what my mother said when she left. I would take my classmates’ lunches because I was so hungry. They would gang up on me, and I learned to take a beating. Give me an inch and I would take a mile. I never took what I didn’t need though. Shoes, red nail polish, food, other girl’s boyfriends, once even money out of a charity box to buy myself a jacket for the winter. Sometimes baubles to fill the cracks, but mostly I was learning to survive.

I know you don’t believe anything I say now. But hopefully you can see how he meant nothing to me.

I hear you mumbling into your phone. You’re trying to muffle your voice in our hollowed-out home. It doesn’t work. Some words reach me. You’re not trying to hurt me you’re just telling the truth to your rapt audience member. Suddenly you laugh and I wonder if you have a new girlfriend. I love you and I hate you so much for laughing in this moment. I haven’t heard you laugh in a long time.

I get up off the bed slowly, so the creaking springs don’t betray me. I stand there for a while hesitantly, not sure what I am going to do. Your voice rumbling under and around the cracks of the door jamb. I reach for the doorknob and gently turn it. I want to look at you again, for the last time. I know you are leaving soon. I understand why you refuse to tell me where you’re going. I don’t blame you for not trusting me. I don’t trust myself.  Very carefully I ease the door open, just a crack, just enough to see you. Your back is to me, standing at the kitchen counter. You laugh again. And I sigh. You might have heard me as I see your back stiffen just a little. You end your call then, and I am sure it is another woman. My face is pressed against the door. You don’t move for a few minutes; you sit there hunched over. Defeat and disappointment crowding around you again. You stand up resolutely, with a stuttering heave. You half turn my way and catch my eye through the crack of the door. I see your anger and your sadness. And I see where my red nail polish left red scratches down your cheek.