Rage

How can I hate you this much?

It doesn’t make any sense. 

How can I possibly hate you as you are now? Aren’t you normal? Aren’t I the one in the wrong?

I always thought I was the bad person for hating you, for not being able to stand your words or your opinions or your touch or your mere presence. I always thought it was so obviously my fault for being uncomfortable around you, for wanting to hide away every time your eyes landed on me, like a dramatic little girl playing the victim in a tragic situation that doesn’t exist...or, at least, doesn’t anymore. And so I always thought there was something wrong with me for feeling like this still, and that I should get this mindset — that is quite frankly my problem — fixed immediately, for your sake. After all, how could I feel this way towards someone I live with, someone who quite literally provides me with resources to survive? How could I hate you when you stopped so long ago, when you’re quite normal now? How could I hate you when you haven’t done it in years — not since I was that little girl, not since I didn’t know I wasn’t meant to hurt like that, not since I was weak and vulnerable and scared and I trusted you far more than I should have?

It was then that I should have hated you, I know this now. But I didn’t. 

I loved you. Or at least, I thought I did. And no matter how hard I try now, I just can’t do it. My heart refuses to forget, though everything else so desperately wants to — my healed bones and bruises, my faded scars. My sanity, what’s left of it. The rest of my childhood. 

Abuse is a funny word. And no matter how hard I try or how much time passes, there’s a part of me that won’t forget it.

So how am I meant to go on now, living here, existing here, pretending to be happy here while so steadily hating the man I am meant to love at my age, in my situation, for reasons so long gone that it is far too late to even think about revealing them now?

How can I hate you now when I should have felt it the moment you laid a hand on me, not the moment you stopped?