Page 3 of We Are Yours

I hit the ground harder than before, rolling onto the filthy floor that always smelled like stale cigarettes. Yet right now I couldn’t smell a thing. The irony was not lost on me. Except for the frantic hammering of my heart, my world went utterly silent. I couldn’t draw a breath, no matter how badly my body begged for it. I was a fish out of water, flopping around with an imaginary hook on my lip.

But I didn’t grit my teeth in terror.

I didn’t shed a tear in defeat.

I didn’t even beg for mercy.

I never did.

Making it easier for my survival instincts to overcome, I watched way too many kids get the shit beat out of them, and defeat never did them any good either. This was a sick game of cat and mouse, and through the years, my mind learned how to protect itself.

I didn’t know what it was at first… how I was able to dissociate so easily. I didn’t even know it was an actual thing, a defense mechanism I’d been using for as long as I could remember. I just figured it was a natural reaction to the suffering that occurred all around me at any given point in time.

It wasn’t until a group home kid shared with me that a therapist once told him our minds had the power to seek shelter within ourselves.

It was called self-preservation.

A fight or flight or freeze response.

Our way of coping.

The best way I could describe it was having a bizarre, unsettling out-of-body experience. Like I could physically see the situation I was in from outside of myself, through an outsider’s perspective, I guess. Sometimes I’d see myself from below, other times I’d see myself from above, then there were moments like these when I couldn’t see anything at all.

When my mind would become my gaze, and my feet represented the only way I could escape. Except it wasn’t me. At least not conscious me. My feet always fled on their own, chasing safety, which was far from the outside world, but it was the only choice I ever had, and that day wasn’t any different.

This wasn’t the first time I experienced abuse, and deep down, I was fully aware that it wouldn’t be the last I’d live through.

In the haze of my flight response, time seemed to stall for me, and one right after the other, my feet pushed off the ground. Within seconds, my heavy footsteps echoed off the nicotine-stained walls and through the thick, infested air that breathlessly clung to my chest like a vise.

My stagnant breaths lulled the pounding of my heart as I heard him snap from behind me, “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

This wasn’t my fault.

It was never my fault.

It was their own rage driven by the booze, or it was the drugs inflicting pain despite the numbness they endlessly pursued, day after day, night after night.

I wasn’t the problem.

I was just there.

And that was all that mattered.

It was the only motive they needed. Whether it stemmed from the resentment of their lives or the bitterness of their pasts or maybe even their own trauma they once endured.

None of it mattered because hurt people hurt people, and I learned that very early on.

At the end of their self-destructive days, the only therapy they ever sought came in the form of adding yet another emotional or physical scar to whoever the person was closest to.

Usually, it was a foster.

“Loyd!” his belligerent wife shouted from somewhere in their run-down, three-story brick house.

From the second I was forced to step into this place, I despised it. The Bates played nice when social services were around, but once my case manager was gone, so was the dog and pony show they’d perfected down to an art.

As my feet flew with reckless abandon, taking two steps at a time, Mrs. Bates yelled out, “Loyd, get her before she leaves!”

I sprinted down those rickety stairs. Each creak made more noise than the afternoon train rumbling down the road, getting ready to leave the station. But nothing compared to the drunk and high man stumbling behind me.