by Motavenda Melchizedek
There’s a perpetrator living inside me.
He says, “You have no power.”
“You’re fat.”
“You’re dirty.”
“You’re ugly.”
“Don’t bother”, he says.
“You’re unworthy. So don’t even bother to lift your filthy, no good, rotten to the core self because you deserve nothing more that you’ve got.”
Poverty. Loneliness. Disempowerment. Hopelessness. Isolation.
“Not a drop more.”
He’s taken up residence inside my head.
A fully furnished apartment.
With all the accoutrements.
In fact, he lives like a king.
There.
Inside my head.
Inside me.
I wonder,
Did he sign a lease?
Am I bound here?
It is my head you know.
Why did I rent it out?
...I don’t remember exactly how it happened...
I was so young at the time.
A baby.
You see, I had no choice. The violence. The abuse was so bad I had to leave my body to save myself.
That’s when the first truckload arrived. With the first batch of his things. It pulled right in and parked there like the place was his.
I watched from a distance. As he unpacked his things and spread them with determination all over the inside of me.
“Now what?”, I thought. “Get out!”, I screamed. “You had no right! That isn’t your head it’s mine!”
He just ignored me.
The next truck pulled up and he began unloading more. He plugged in his radio to drown me out. Over time he boarded up the windows, got attack dogs and acquired quite and arsenal in order to keep all of this that wasn’t his.
And from my mind he controlled everything. My life was his. Every thought at his mercy. Subjected to his scrutiny. He’d take and turn and twist them to keep me down and away as my insides were feeling like home to him now and he like there very much.
It went on for so long that I came not to know it anymore. That there was a perpetrator living in my head. I thought he was me and I believed whatever the king said.
A very dim light deep within me would sometimes flicker with desire to grow and this want would travel to my mind where it would meet up with the perpetrator king. He would greet it at the door of my mind - of his throne.
“Get Away!”, he’d say. “You are worthless. You are not welcome here. There is no room in my home for you, desire. I have plenty of my own. And I desire most to rule. I command you to go!”
And my sweet and sacred desire would wither and fade off into the distance.
And so it was for many years. He ruled with a hard and heavy hand as each of my desires withered and faded off into the distance. The day came when I could not bear to desire anymore. And that day became weeks and months and years. And I breathed only because he commanded that I do. And I ate only because he said to and I drank when he snapped his fingers. And my life became his.
There is a perpetrator living inside me. He says I have no power and that I’m fat and dirty and ugly. He tells me not to even bother getting up, that I’m filthy and no good and rotten to the core.
But the very dim light within me has grown now. Its is shining bright and brilliant. And my flickering desires have become blinding light.
They blast down his door.
He is scared now.
A scared king trying anything
to keep his throne.
And this is war.
A war I will win.
