Retracted

How difficult it is not to fight back when spat on and stepped on and slapped.

Your gut jacknifes and curdles and throws up on itself.

It is hard to see the dignity of holding back and stepping off to the side when your face is all red and your person is something to be picked up off the floor. Where's the dignity? Covered in gunge, a little bit cracked, but still okay. Better than the festering one with it's shoe holding you down.

From down here, you sort of get a different perspective of the world and society at large. An epiphany of how and why everything's falling apart. The surprise is gone and all things settle down like silt at the bottom of a murky river. The feeling's heavy and quite suffocating. What is one supposed to do at a time like this?

The strong urge to vomit comes upon me. Without being able to instinctively reach out as we are programmed to do, instinct has to find other ways of getting heard.

Dreams torture your mind so that your brain dries up and turns to stone. I am strong, it says. I am rock. Stone. Nothing can hurt me. Nothing can break me, when it lost its soul and all that remains is an echo of its voice.

There is a dignity in accepting blows. In being the anvil in this relationship. In the end, it's the hammer that takes the beating and has to be replaced.