By Juno Felecia M
I have never once believed myself to be a good person. I believe that I am not a bad person but sitting here as I carve the soil to bury you, I wonder, ‘Why do I not feel unease? This almost makes me feel… Good.” But I promise you and assure you, this feels befitting almost victorious.
Maybe not perfect but when has life ever been perfect. It started on a rainy bus ride when I was in grade two and you were too old. I do not remember the details but all I remember is what you taught me, to please and be good. You were my uncle, so I thought it was a lesson for my life and you made sure it was. Didn’t you? Periodically you would remind me, you were a good teacher and that I must acknowledge. You see the lesson must be vigorous but the reinforcement should be like the soothing touch after a slap. So it would be, as the year’s progress. A touch, a gaze or a grazing hand. I was caught up in the lesson taught, to be a good girl. Please you. Always. No matter how it made me feel. The clawing feeling, the way my skin would numb. Your eyes made me feel worthless. An empty cavern for you to inhibit. I felt hollow and empty. But that was what you wanted, did you not. To dehumanize me and remind me that I am nothing.
So, today I sit on my Grandfather’s grave when you stare at me. You see surrounded by the dead I was still petrified of the living. They might decay but the truly dead are the ones with no soul. Ones like you. I hate you, I absolutely loathe you. You made me lose my innocence, my childhood. I cared and cared but was always alone. There were no Princes coming to save me from the wickedness. The world, the books, the stories and the songs, all lied to me. You lied to me. You ruined me. For as a child, I believed in you, then I believed in hope, then in love and then in salvation. But none came. There was nothing but darkness, nothing but evil. So, I ask myself how to save someone made of the night? Naively, I believed that I would escape. I hoped to become one with the light and find hope. As a child, I believed in the goodness of people and the kindness that was meant to be in the roots of their hearts.
But, I am older and less naive. Jaded by men who are not you but are still you. For, for you I am but a doll, made for your pleasing and your shallow eyes. I have no being in me, no spirit, no soul. So you gaze, intently and I ask, “What are you looking at?” But I know, for this is all I have felt my whole life. That night, under a cloudy sky, I drag your body. I finally killed my demon and set myself free.
By Juno Felecia M
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