So today you hurt me.
I saw it coming a dozen times, but each time I was quicker, thinking on my feet, dodging and catching.
Until today.
You are my work, my purpose for being here right now, time after time after time. But you are also my passion, you and a hundred other souls, to try and make your suffering less and your life better, because you have less than me. I have lifted you up from the floor many times, cleaned up your drunken mess sometimes several times a day, called ambulances, cleaned your cuts and scrapes, washed your body, supported your unbalanced inebriated weight with my body, broken your falls with my own weight, served you food, talked and talked and talked.
Today you were drinking early, you were in a mess and you wanted to die.
I stayed with you when I should have been elsewhere, talking and listening to you wanting to die, endlessly almost without a breath talking.
I sat and told you silly jokes and you told me some too, I made you laugh.
You asked me to pass you the bottle of buckfast that had been placed out of your reach. I refused, and left you alone.
Later I was helping you clean up, then walking with you, slowly, each precarious step carefully planned, but in the doorway you stopped – ‘I’m falling, I’m falling!’ you cried, as I tried in vain to steady and support you, your full weight hit me, crushing my arm against the door frame, and down you went again with a crash. I screamed. You shouted. Then you looked up at me, seemingly sober for a moment ‘oh – I’ve hurt you. I’m so sorry!’
‘Yes! You’ve hurt me!’ that moment of disbelief. ‘ And I can’t get you up now!’
‘I’m so sorry, so sorry!’
‘I need to go, I’ll get someone to help you .. I know you’re sorry,’
Later, shaking, crying, staring into the dark, the pain persisting despite painkillers, I was back in a place I escaped long ago, filled alternately with rage and panic. I am spiralling down through dark water, I feel it on my skin, my chest is tight and sore, and the air is heavy to breathe. Your smell is still in my nostrils and I despise it now. The feel of your intoxicated body is still on my skin and I can’t shake it off. You are suddenly all men to me, and I cannot escape this. In you is the man from long ago who threw me to the floor in a rage, I can see now the walls are painted in a cream coloured gloss paint. The floor is thin non slip matting, and I feel my ribs crack as I hit it again, and again and again. I see now there is no end to this.
In you is the man who twisted my arms up my back til I screamed, and threw me face down on the carpet, holding me there with weight on my back, I feel again my body smash down onto the floorboards where the everyman that is you to me right now threw me forcefully down.
And I cannot get the smell of you out of my nose or the feel of you off my skin. I cannot get you, everyman, out of my head. I fucking hate this and I hate every fucking man. I want comfort from a man outside the cycle who has proven over years he is safe, but tonight I can’t reach for him in the bed where he sleeps beside me, because he has become everyman too.
I am isolated, destroyed, I am lying around in useless broken fucking bits, vulnerable and afraid.
There is no end to this, and now it’s me who wants to end this bloody nightmare.
But there is. Everything passes. This too shall pass.
In the morning it will be different, I just need to keep holding on.
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