FIC: Survivor
May. 17th, 2008 11:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ficwizeTitle: Survivor
Fandom: Original Fiction
Prompt: 95 - mime at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
tamingthemuse
Warnings: An unorthodox look at abuse victims. Please take care of yourself if you read.
Rating: Teen
Summary: There are three options when faced with a dangerous situation.
Disclaimer: I own this. Not that it's doing me a lot of good.
A/N: This was written in part as a response for my writing group, "There are three of them."
As always, feedback is welcome and appreciated.
*************
There are three of them.
People always say there are two basic human responses to any threatening situation – fight or flight – but they forget that there is a third option. Survive it.
I don’t want to watch people offer me fake sympathy. I don’t want to know that they are really wondering why I stayed as they mime the appropriate reactions at me – condolences, horror, shock, pity.
Fuck your pity. I’m a survivor.
Why do I stay? Because I choose to stay. I choose not to fight back as he slams me against the wall, slaps me for not having his dinner ready, hurls the dinner plates at me when the food isn’t up to his standards. I choose not to run away when he comes home at night reeking of booze and anger and bone crushing and weary despair.
I choose to stay with him. I choose to survive this.
No one else ever asks me how my day is. No one else ever brings me flowers just because he saw them and thought they were pretty. No one else ever sobs on his knees as he apologizes to me for the things he’s done.
I forgive him.
I love him.
Those same people who offer me faux sympathy can’t believe that I could love him. They can’t believe that I would willingly forgive the monster who broke my wrist, blackened my eye, knocked lose a tooth.
But they don’t know him. How easy and convenient it is for them to judge him (and me) from the safe perspective of apathy and distance. They don’t know that he once stood up to his father and ended up in a coma for it. They don’t know that he has twenty seven perfectly round burn scars on his back from the lit end of a camel cigarette. They don’t know – and they don’t care – that he was taking care of his mother and baby brother from the age of ten on.
Who ever took care of him? Who loved him?
No one, until me.
He means it when he says that he’s sorry. A woman knows when her lover is lying to her. We know. And I know that he really and genuinely hates himself for what he does and means it when he promises not to do it again. Not until the next time.
I see the pressure building in the twitch of his eyebrows, in the wrinkle in his forehead, in the white around his mouth. There will be at least two days when he won’t come home on time, but won’t yet stagger through the door in a fog of whiskey fumes and a haze of fury at the world that will only find me as a target.
And still I choose to stay.
Because he’ll cry afterward and rock in the fetal position on the floor. He’ll hate himself enough for what he does that I don’t have to add my hatred to the already unbearable burden he bears.
I won’t fight back. I won’t flee.
I’ll stay.
And I’ll survive.
Because I am a survivor.
Fandom: Original Fiction
Prompt: 95 - mime at
tamingthemuseWarnings: An unorthodox look at abuse victims. Please take care of yourself if you read.
Rating: Teen
Summary: There are three options when faced with a dangerous situation.
Disclaimer: I own this. Not that it's doing me a lot of good.
A/N: This was written in part as a response for my writing group, "There are three of them."
As always, feedback is welcome and appreciated.
*************
There are three of them.
People always say there are two basic human responses to any threatening situation – fight or flight – but they forget that there is a third option. Survive it.
I don’t want to watch people offer me fake sympathy. I don’t want to know that they are really wondering why I stayed as they mime the appropriate reactions at me – condolences, horror, shock, pity.
Fuck your pity. I’m a survivor.
Why do I stay? Because I choose to stay. I choose not to fight back as he slams me against the wall, slaps me for not having his dinner ready, hurls the dinner plates at me when the food isn’t up to his standards. I choose not to run away when he comes home at night reeking of booze and anger and bone crushing and weary despair.
I choose to stay with him. I choose to survive this.
No one else ever asks me how my day is. No one else ever brings me flowers just because he saw them and thought they were pretty. No one else ever sobs on his knees as he apologizes to me for the things he’s done.
I forgive him.
I love him.
Those same people who offer me faux sympathy can’t believe that I could love him. They can’t believe that I would willingly forgive the monster who broke my wrist, blackened my eye, knocked lose a tooth.
But they don’t know him. How easy and convenient it is for them to judge him (and me) from the safe perspective of apathy and distance. They don’t know that he once stood up to his father and ended up in a coma for it. They don’t know that he has twenty seven perfectly round burn scars on his back from the lit end of a camel cigarette. They don’t know – and they don’t care – that he was taking care of his mother and baby brother from the age of ten on.
Who ever took care of him? Who loved him?
No one, until me.
He means it when he says that he’s sorry. A woman knows when her lover is lying to her. We know. And I know that he really and genuinely hates himself for what he does and means it when he promises not to do it again. Not until the next time.
I see the pressure building in the twitch of his eyebrows, in the wrinkle in his forehead, in the white around his mouth. There will be at least two days when he won’t come home on time, but won’t yet stagger through the door in a fog of whiskey fumes and a haze of fury at the world that will only find me as a target.
And still I choose to stay.
Because he’ll cry afterward and rock in the fetal position on the floor. He’ll hate himself enough for what he does that I don’t have to add my hatred to the already unbearable burden he bears.
I won’t fight back. I won’t flee.
I’ll stay.
And I’ll survive.
Because I am a survivor.
