Like Nothing Ever Happened

by Tapring Weston
(Brooklyn, New York)

We've Been married a few years now, but I feel like I have been sleeping the whole time. My husband never put his hands on me, but the words he uses are just as painful. His words tear through me like an ice pick leaving a hole small enough to prove there is an impact but almost invisible to the untrained and inexperienced eye, but the unseen injury exists. Now I haven't figured out a way to make the internal bleeding stop. The blood is starting to build up under the skin, mentally and emotionally.

I'm black and blue. So I cover it with a band-aid, also known as a smile and hope that the internal bruises heal quick. I laugh and joke and often spew a few words back before the emotional swelling starts but the band-aid is snatched off with more verbal assaults, "your fat, sloppy, lazy, funky smelling, I hate you, B!+@H, lazy A$$ Ni&&er. I feel like putting my fingers around your neck, I feel like punching you in your stupid face. I feel like throwing bleach In Your face!" These verbal assaults are too much, but he never put his hands on me. He always acts like nothing even happened like he never verbally assaulted me. He calls me babe with that same mouth he attacked me. He gently rests his hand on my shoulder the same one attached to the fingers he said he wanted to put around my neck. He says I made him say those things to me. He says It's my fault. But he never put his hands on me. So it looks like it never even happened. He always manages to keep the bills far enough behind to where if he leaves I will struggle to catch up. Other people who know me view me as being strong. I'm usually the one they look to for support. So I can't let them see how weak I feel for allowing this to go on for so long. The embarrassment I feel, and the shame. So I tuck the thoughts of it away like it never even happened. I often wonder what did I do to deserve him treating me the way he has. Why don't I deserve to have someone take care of me? For someone to be a foundation for me? For someone to appreciate my curves? For someone to not threaten me with what they feel like doing to me? Why don't I deserve that, But instead deserve this?

What did I do to him?

The man I married is not the man I'm married to, we've been married a few years now, but I feel like I have been sleeping the whole time. He never put his hands on me, but the words he uses are just as painful.