All Over Again

By Anna L

 

             While looking in the mirror, she begins to yell at herself and thinks, How can you be so stupid, Ally? As she gets angrier and angrier, the anger builds up until she unloads on the mirror. After punching herself in the mirror, she feels so much better, like a dam broke in her chest and rushed hot water though her chest and stomach.

             Walking away from the broken glass all over the bathroom floor and counter top, she begins to rethink the day that she had as she sits down. As she sits on the edge of her bed, in her tiny three room apartment she has been living in since she got out, she just thinks.

             Not going back, not going back. The words flash across her mind like they are on an old school projector. More words flash across her mind this time accompanied with the memory of the day, almost like the words are subtitles in a silent movie. It’s not my fault that I hit him; he hit me first. It was self defense.  That’s what it was--self defense. “I mean punching and kicking me when I’m down is wrong,” she says aloud.

             Then she thinks it’s all her fault for being with him in the first place. What was she doing trusting someone, especially someone who drinks like that?

             Been on my own since I was 14, in and out of detention homes, juvenile homes, and into prison, and was smarter than to get involved with someone like that. Just thinking about it, getting out of prison at age twenty-six and getting involved with someone like that, is just stupid on her part. The thoughts just run through her mind like a small debate.

             More memories of the day flash across her mind: him kicking her when she’s down again and again, over and over, each time harder than the last.

             Finally having enough of his abusive shit, she kicked the legs right out from under him, like she learned in her self defense course she took at the age of ten. She began to kick him, the way he kicked her in his drunken rage. Then she heard it, that sickening snap when his ribs broke from the force of her kicks.

             Hearing that sickening sound again in her mind makes her sick, and she runs to the bathroom and throws up.

             She was doing so well on parole, kept a steady job, and kept her apartment. After getting out, she promised herself she wouldn’t hurt anyone again and she wouldn’t go back again.