I was dressing when he walked in and warned me to ‘watch it’ or he’d have me ‘charged’. When I asked what he was talking about, my BF pointed to a bruise on my thigh and said ‘abuse’.
‘Oh! You know me.’ I told him. ‘I’m always hurting myself.’
‘But, it’s still abuse.’ He fixed me with a pointed stare. ‘Isn’t it…?’
I openned my mouth…
… if I were to starve another person… deprive them of sleep… perpetually add to their stress… force them to negate their own wants and needs for others… push them to do more than they’re physically capable of… to the point of cuts and bruises… yup, that’d be ‘abuse’…
… and clamped it shut.
Sure, though, that it was just the ramblings of a cobweb clogged mind, I brushed the thought aside and got on with my day. Later, however, random thoughts (like ‘… and what about that ‘smoking thing’…? if you forced toxins into someone else’s body…?’) kept popping up.
Eventually, I recalled a time years past when I’d come to the realization that because I hadn’t been given the tools or permission to propperly express emotions like anger, I’d developed neurotic behaviors like turning it inward and ‘hurting’ myself with food. Obviously, I hadn’t ‘fixed’ the problem like I’d thought I had. Sigh.
So, back to the drawing board…