Victim Again

It makes me sick inside. Women with so little sense of self, such injured instinct and broken self-esteem, going back, going back, to the men who have abused them. He tears you down and you make excuses for him. He throws you out and you take him into your new home. Friends rally around, move you out, risk their own safety. We carried out boxes of your belongings with hope for your escape, and now he carries his boxes into your refuge, and safety disappears.

The face that was glowing with relief is pale, reflecting the dying going on inside. The eyes that sparkled with life gleam feverishly with sickness, the cancer of co-dependency spreading through your system, destroying the hard-won cleanness that you had gotten back when you escaped.

He is on his best behavior, knowing his toehold is yet tenuous. He must use all of his smarmy charms to ingratiate himself into your wounded heart again. He knows what you want to hear and he is saying it all. Acting humble. Sleeping on the couch. Sucking up to your friends. Accepting the feeble rules you lay down, knowing inside he will blow them out of his way with ease once you are under his spell again.

And he wants to hug me, your fierce friend that went through that hell with you, and pretend all is okay. He is different, he says. He has changed. But his energy is the same, sinister and duplicitous. Forget it. I will not allow that again. I will never touch another abuser. I will never pretend to tolerate someone who has harmed someone I love. I will not put on a mask in public that I condone this latest descent into insanity, even when I know this too will hurt you.

And you, my pathetic friend, must go too. I cannot stand by and watch you slide into the pit one more time. You choose this life. You choose to be his victim. I cannot stay and watch.