[fight or flight]

I slammed the bedroom door. My heart was racing, and I was sweating all over. Breaths came in shallow gasps. I was shaking in anger. Fear. Rage. Fight-or-flight. My reflexes were on fire, but my room was empty and still. I wanted to destroy something to render visible the fragile constructs that had just been shattered, but everything around me held value, and destroying more of myself was not a solution.

I glanced in the mirror. My neck was bleeding from shallow, jagged tears. The surrounding skin was red and raw. It didn't hurt. Everything else hurt instead.

I stood breathing heavily, listening to the screaming downstairs. Deep, angry murmurs sounded only long enough to be interrupted by hysterical shrieks, screaming my name and obscenities coupled in condemnation.

The words hurt more than the lacerations, but I drank them in, daring myself to flinch from the familiar buffet of insults. I pressed my forehead against the cool glass of the mirror, absorbing the moment. My breath formed twin eclipses of frost beneath my nose. I was porcelain. I was steel.

"Don't you dare ever touch me again!" I had shouted, through tears and rage, feeling everything and nothing at the same time. My father had pulled her off of me. Everyone was shouting, but to me, there was no sound except my own voice and my declaration of autonomy for the first time. I didn't deserve the abuse. Sound was my witness.

I had threatened to call the police, but my dad had convinced me to go upstairs and to let them talk it out. He must have been scared and confused, but I was infuriated. The outburst was, to him, a first, but to me it was the last incident of many, marking the end of years of hidden abuse.

I don't know why I didn't call the police. I had grabbed the cordless phone from my parents' bedroom on the way to mine. I stared at it, wondering if anyone would even help me if I did call. I had found no solace in authority thus far, and I questioned the validity of my trauma. The phone was familiar in my hand, and the child abuse hotline number printed in faded letters on the business card I had kept for so long and used once before, only to be rejected and invalidated. I pressed the Talk button and the dial tone sounded blankly. I stopped breathing, daring myself to punch in the numbers. Seconds felt like minutes.

I turned the phone off and dropped it. I threw myself onto my bed and listened while my parents argued about me. Later that evening, my father would try to confront my mother again about what she had done, and she would accuse me of having done the physical damage to myself and claim herself blameless. She would never harm me physically again, but would make up for it tenfold in emotional damage.

And now I'm here. My relationships with my parents are severely strained for reasons related to this and reasons completely unrelated to this. I haven't talked to my mother in over a year. If I had called the police, if I had been placed into foster care, if I had grown up as a ward of the court or had documentation of the abuse, the state of Maryland might recognize me as independent and provide more financial aid to facilitate my education. I might have gotten out of that house. I might have been able to start over. Might.

Instead I did what was easy. I did what was safe. I dared not assert the rights I knew full well that I had because I was more afraid of being invalidated than I was of being unhappy. In exchange for this cowardly decision I received years more of misery and powerlessness, a 'safe', 'normal' childhood that I can hardly look back on fondly.

I don't blame myself. I was just thirteen years old. How could I have known? I was just a child, forced to make a decision beyond my years. The cowardice was nothing in comparison to the strength I had to exert in order to maintain faith in myself.

I wouldn't trade the experiences I had for anything in the world, because they have made me who I am. I don't regret what I did, or what I didn't do. My experiences do not define me. What I have learned from those experiences is what defines me. My ability to extract "victory from the surface defeat" is my strength.

I can't help but wonder what would have happened if I had dialed that number. How my life would have been different. Maybe it's irrelevant, but I doubt I will ever stop wondering.