A group of girls in my 6th period class sit at a table across from mine reminiscing about the few times their parents ever hit them

They sit laughing and recounting the apologies their parents gave them and how it never happened again

And I can feel the knot in my chest forming because I was never so lucky as to even receive an apology, never so lucky as to only be hit once

And I don’t want to make a scene but I can feel the tears welling in my eyes

But I really don’t want to cry in front of these people because it’s not their fault or their problem and usually I don’t get so upset

But I hear one of them say, “That was the only time I ever yelled at an adult” and I hear one of them say “I almost hit my mom one time, I know that’s bad but she was making me so angry.”

And I sit at this table across from them reminiscing about the time I got in a fist fight with my mom

I know what you’re thinking, why would someone be so terrible as to hit their own mother?

But first ask yourself this, what mother would be so terrible as to try to break their own child’s arm?

I don’t want to go into detail on the incident because I don’t want you to feel like I’m fragile, like you have to put a warning sign on everything you say

I don’t want to need trigger warnings but sometimes I am still small

Sometimes I still need someone to promise me they won’t hurt me and I need the constant reassurance that I’m okay, that I am not less than a person

But god, do I wish I didn’t need that. I wish for the strength to be whole. But that shit is hard.

It is hard to feel whole when the person who brought you into this world told you, you would be absolutely nothing without them

Constantly abusing you and yet reeling you back in with the reassurance that without them, you wouldn’t exist so you deserve this

And I am trying to learn that I didn’t deserve anything that happened to me, I am trying to learn that I am still a person without her

I am trying so hard