38 | Hannah
Hannah
I forgot I was in hell.
The shower couldn’t wash away the filth because I feel it so deeply that it’s in my veins.
At work, dealing with less-than-pleasant men doesn’t rattle me.
There’s security in knowing they’re at my mercy and bound by the rules of the strip club.
I can tolerate them, especially if they pay well. But this is nothing like that.
Not even close.
Even the men from my past—the ones who tried to control every atom of my life—weren’t as low as the things coming and going in this room. To them, I’m nothing. Utterly nothing. My pain brings them enjoyment; my fear is their high.
When I’m alone in my room at home, imagining some powerful alpha male using my body for his own filthy pleasure and turning me into the sole source of his satisfaction, this isn’t what I was thinking. It was never without my consent.
Wrapped in a towel, I open the dresser drawers again. Changing out of my clothes feels like I’m forgetting a part of myself outside this building. Leaving her behind. Abandoning her.
But I can’t wear them forever. Not only is that gross, but the things I went through while in them... My own pants were used to immobilize me, to kill my ability to defend myself.
Changing into clothes from this hell feels disrespectful, a betrayal of who I am. But staying in the clothes I came in feels just as bad. Like a constant reminder of moments stolen from me. A reminder of the pieces of me they take every time they violate me.
My fingertips brush over the cotton fabric in the drawer. They’re so plain, like a uniform signifying my role here. But at least they’re clean. I tell myself that when I leave here, I can leave these clothes behind—along with the parts of me I’ll never get back.
My earliest memories are just a tally of things being taken from me.
My father chose his career over the woman he unfortunately knocked up and the baby who came from those choices.
His choices. Instead of being his responsibility, I was his mistake.
His regret. He was never mean to me, never cruel, because he was never anything.
He just... wasn’t. I was robbed of the experience of knowing a father’s love.
Then there’s my mother, always reminding me in some subtle way that I wasn’t enough.
Too thin, too flat-chested, too loud, too opinionated.
Then later: too fat, too busty, too bitchy.
There is no “right” with her when it comes to me.
Maybe she resents me for ruining her music career—for being the reason she couldn’t follow my father in his pursuit of fame.
I pull on the clothes and stare at the stranger in the mirror. I’m black and blue, lip swollen on one side, discoloration around my neck, hair wet and unbrushed. I look exactly how they always made me feel. Broken. Less than.
Joke’s on both of them. They’re working dead-end jobs now, miserable and alone.
Last time I saw my sperm donor, he was balding with a beer belly, still clinging to a dream of making it big.
And my mom? She’s on husband number three.
Hard as it is to believe, I think this one is the worst. It didn’t matter that he’d get in my face and tell me to get out of his house—the one I’d lived in my whole life. She sided with him. She always does.
I got a job and left at seventeen. Never looked back. She made her choices; she can lie in the bed she made. Good or bad, it was time for me to make my own decisions.
I finally got my shit together after realizing I was following her lead, picking a string of all the wrong men based on the examples I’ve been given. It’s funny, most people think I strip because of “daddy issues.”
But if anything, I strip because of my mommy issues.
Dad couldn’t make me feel bad about myself if he wasn’t around. No, that was all her. The men I dated after I left were the result of my trying to find the acceptance she never gave. I was always chasing a ghost.
Then I found the stage.
When I’m up there, I’m the one in control.
I’m the one being watched, but I’m the one who decides what they see.
How much of me they have access to. Everything about those interactions is up to me, and everything I give, they enjoy.
For the first time in my life, I wasn’t too much or too little.
I was exactly what I wanted to be, and what others accepted.
Here, I’m pulled back to before. No power, no say, not good enough. It’s opening all those wounds I’ve worked so hard to heal. The ones still healing. Every time that door opens, it’s like my past is strolling in to remind me that I’m helpless and nothing—something to be controlled.
But no matter what my head tells me, my heart knows it’s all self-doubt and trauma speaking. I am worth so much more than I’ve ever been led to believe.
I flee to the bed, no longer able to look at the woman in the mirror.
The blankets drag up and over my skin, and for a moment, I pretend my world is only as big as this mattress.
It’s dark out now, maybe seven, if I had to guess.
I close my eyes and let the room disappear.
My mind drifts to who I am through Gavin’s eyes.
In the silence, the calm, I’ll let him caress my thoughts.
Butterfly may be what he calls me, but he doesn’t treat me like I’m delicate or surface beauty. To him, I’m not something fragile that’s going to break if he holds me too tight. He doesn’t look at me like a mistake to be forgotten or the cause of ruined dreams.
When he looks at me, there’s weight to it. A respect. He treats me like someone who can stand beside him, not behind him. When I’m with him, I feel safe enough to be myself. Through his eyes, I’m not too much or too little. I’m simply... his.
It’s not the kind of “belonging” that means living under his thumb or losing who I am.
I’m his in the same way that he is mine.
In a way that builds me up, adding to what already makes me great rather than stealing pieces away.
He sees my strength, my courage, my resilience, and he doesn’t try to dim my light.
He helps fuel it. He doesn’t need me to be smaller to make himself feel big.
Being his means that no matter where I am, there’s an army behind me.
Fighting for me and cheering me on as I go.
And maybe, just maybe, he’ll think I’m a woman worth a war.
I have to hold onto that.
I think of the hours of texts shared, how we’ve bared our souls to one another—everything from favorite colors to our greatest fears.
I have to believe that means something. Remaining constantly skeptical of everyone is exhausting, and I’m done being tired.
I’ll believe him until he gives me a reason not to.
This is the ultimate test, and it’s the most fucked up way possible to find out if I’m wrong about him. I’m not the administrator of this test; in fact, I’m an unwilling participant. But here we are.
I either save myself, or he saves me. Either way, I’m going to be okay. I’ve survived too much to wither away in some room in the middle of the desert. This will not break me.
I wake to the sun filtering through the window. Nature’s alarm clock. For a fraction of a second—while my mind is still wrapped in the heavy, peaceful layers of sleep—I forget where I am.
I needed that sleep, and the peace that comes from many hours of rest. I must have been out for a long while. Then reality hits, and the stale silence of the room suffocates me as the memory of the lock on the door clicking into place returns. My stomach drops, the peace vanishing like a mirage.
I forgot I was in hell.
My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth, and my stomach churns with a dull, gnawing ache of hunger.
Kicking my legs out of bed, I march to the bathroom and greedily cup handfuls of water to my lips.
The chlorine smell of the water bothers me less after accepting that I have no other option.
I remember learning that the body can live longer without food than without water, and I’ll be dammed if I let dehydration take me down.
Hell, maybe I’ll lose those extra few stubborn pounds while I’m in here. I have to find a silver lining somewhere.
Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I decide to offer myself the small mercy of self-care.
I can’t fill my belly, but I can give myself the feeling of being human.
They’re minor things, maybe, but they make me feel alive.
They remind me that I’m still here and that I can still control something in this life.
Sticking with the cold water, I press it against my bruises. The chill offers a relief that feels almost too good for my surroundings. I lather the cheap soap in my hands and wash with careful detail, tending to the small cuts and swollen lumps that are now my face.
Just as I set the hand towel on the edge of the sink, I hear sounds at the door. I stand frozen in the bathroom, not wanting to meet whoever is invading this space—the only few square feet I can call my own for the time being. I hear footsteps and then the snap of the latch on the door as it shuts.
I squeeze my eyes shut and pull in one deep, shaky breath, bracing my body and soul for the impact of whoever this is. Turning toward the bedroom, I cross the threshold, lifting my chin to meet the face of my next abuser.
But when my eyes meet his, recognition sucks the air from my lungs.