that room

this talent for silence has always come easy.

i stare at the screen of my cell phone and watch your drunken rage blip up again and again and again.  i watch the little line of three winking ellipses and imagine the curl of your lips.  i imagine you screaming at the tiny device in your hand what a bitch i am.  how selfish.  how horrible.

we haven't spoken in nearly a year but tonight apparently you've grown suddenly impatient.  i can see the half-drained bottle of Makers Mark sitting next to you and, as i watch the next angry text bubble burp into existence,  i think, "you're acting just like my asshole father would act when he was drunk and needed someone to yell at," needed a small, powerless, female form to absorb the rage of his inadequacy:

15 years old, standing silently in the doorway to my father's bedroom as he ridiculed my clothing: "you know, Angela Marie, the baggier your jeans get, the more ordinary you become."

and tonight, your text: "you know what, Angela, cool fades."

the implication being that i am unworthy of even the smallest accolade, even the tiniest crumb of acknowledgement and self-satisfaction. in actuality, you've inflated my accomplishments. or maybe i've just come so far from being the inadequate girl you once knew that it is hard for me to see my survival for what it truly is: unexpected and astonishing. 

at 18 years old, sitting in the corner of my father's bedroom trying not to cry, eyes downcast, as he screamed at me about what a bitch my mother was, how heartbroken he was that no one seemed to care about how much he had suffered during their marriage and during the years since. how he had promised himself he'd be patient and that "when the kids are old enough, I'll finally get to tell them the truth about what a goddamn bitch their mother is. Only now it's all sour grapes and I don't get my due! I hope that bitch rots in hell, Angela! If I had a gun, I'd blow her fucking head off! And YOU! Where have YOU been in all this when I needed someone to talk to? Do you understand how hard this has been for me?  DO YOU UNDERSTAND!"

and tonight, your text: "I don't have anyone to talk to" standing as pathos amid an unprovoked barrage of insults and condescension that run from midnight until 4am. how many times did you called me a bitch? 

i set my phone upside-down on a pillow next to the bed, snuffing the flash and buzz of your assault.  i pick up the book on the night stand and open to where i'd left off. i hold it close to my face.  for several minutes my eyes pass over the same few sentences, my brain not retrieving the information of the text.  i try again but only half of the information comes through.  divided, i persist, but half of me is back in that room.  in every room that has ever qualified as "that room."

i curl further into my blanket and say the words out loud: "i am not that little girl anymore, asshole. i do not have to sit here and listen to your drunk, mean bullshit."

i begin again at the top of the page.