Fear

Have you ever been so afraid that you can't feel anymore? Your head screams at your heart that it should be pounding, but the only answer it gets is the faintest shaking in your hands. Instead of running to hide, you stand there dumbly as your mind attempts to process what is going on.

I spent six years living like that. Home was like that.

My parents, God bless them, made my childhood a bright and happy one. I remember all of the fun things we used to do, and how much time we spent laughing together. It was a golden age, one since tarnished by the darkness of the years. I can barely remember what it was to see my parents being carefree...

Six years ago, just about, Phillip Peter came into our home and made life frightening. I would go to sleep every night curled up around the knot of numbness, that sickening twist of fear, all the while wondering if I was going to wake up in the morning or if Phillip would just off me during the night. My days were cold, walking on a feet-slicing edge of a knife while I waited for the latest explosion. Every day it got worse, the scenes more violent. It felt like I was in some sort of sick, twisted movie where the only ending could be a homicide-suicide combination tabloid cover. Birthdays, holidays, every day could not pass without my mother and father being beaten on by a little whelp of a boy.

Best part? No one believed me when I said I didn't want to go home. They told me "Your parents are too cool! Why wouldn't you want to go home?" Because I didn't want to be near the screaming, the swearing, the hatred that was Phillip. This year, though, things finally got better. The state finally realized that Phillip was dangerous, violent, volatile and ready to kill. They took him into their custody, pulling him out of our house. That's all it is now... a house.

You see, even with him gone I can't seem to escape him. I've told my parents that I never want to hear his name again. I've told them that I am sick of the entire mess. I just want to get on with my life. But how can you let go of someone who has dug his claws into the very cavity of your heart and left poison there to rot it up? Mom, for one, just can't let him go. I told her specifically that I didn't want to hear her rants on Phillip, that I just wanted him to go away.

She doesn't listen.

Everything ties back to him, and her need to talk about how bad he makes her feel all the time. My possible internship with the Folger's Institute Library of Shakespeare? Just tied back to him. My eight page paper on Shakespeare and the shifting moral systems in Western culture? Tied back to him. The weather? Tied back to him.

Why can't it stop?!

I don't want to hurt her feelings, but if she mentions him and how he makes her feel one more time I am going to start to scream, to cry, to stop feeling at all. Why can't she get that?

And then she and Dad insisted that I see "The Soloist." Why did they do that to me? It involves someone who behaves like Phillip does--they should know, they saw it more than a week ago--and yet she demanded I see that instead of "17 Again." All the fear, all the numbness? It's back, knotting and twisting in my stomach just like it used to. My hands are shaking, my head is screaming.

And for what?