Leave to Live! “The Audacity to Leave”

“You are glowing.”

“I love your makeup,

These were their words. Perhaps her concealer was an original, she should make it her regular plug and probably refer it to her friends. This concealer not only covered her blemishes but scars of her broken self, the punch marks, and the fingerprints of slaps on her swollen cheeks.

“Your eyeliner is cute.” Of course, it was cute! It could cover up the darkness, sadness, and brokenness that seeped through her soul. She wasn’t a model, but she had fierceness in her eyes. The photographers would hurry to take a picture of her, the writers would long to spill ink over her… Smoky and fierce, beauty in its language I guess, but this beauty wasn’t given space to shine, she was just a caged bird trying hard to sing.

“Nobody needs to know!”, So each day, she took extra time to conceal her scars, to look beautiful, and to please him so he wouldn’t add more scars to her already scarred self with his fists that could crack their silent pale-colored wall.

The chandelier probably shines brighter than her, because she has been drained of all her light and thrown into a sea of darkness, sorrow, and endless pain where she cannot scream nor shout, where she can only drown and let the salty water mix with her hot unshed tears.

Kicks, slaps, hits, curses, blood. Each day was a living nightmare, he said ‘she was his only light’, so he took away all of her light and left her drowning in darkness, nightmares, fear, and fictional hope. Perhaps the light forgot to outshine the darkness.

He said ‘she was his better half’

The better half that he smashed upon the wall repeatedly and kept breaking into pieces till the walls were dyed with stains of red. He gave her a perfect camouflage; her ‘MaryKay’, his wealth, her original concealer – to conceal how broken she was, but how could you put broken pieces whole again.

She was his doll; ‘to mold as he pleased’.

He said he was sorry, that was a magic word, it was supposed to do the magic of changing the story. But, perhaps, the magic lost its potency because the magician was not as passionate at casting spells as he was at telling passionate lies. She was caught in his fog, he was the master; and she would do as she is told, she was within his boundaries with no way out.

              …And one day,

She woke up and discovered that she was fierce, courageous, and more than his boundaries, more than his needs -there was more to her than being a caged bird, there was more to her than being a punching bag.

The camouflage was broken!

The concealer was faded!

Perhaps she had overestimated her light, her friends called her lucky, rich, beautiful, and fortunate. And it had led her to care too much about what society would think if she had left.

It was finally time for her to leave!

The camouflage was broken!

The concealer was faded!

it was time for her to leave

There was no blood for him to spill!

He had drained her of everything. He once called her ‘his antidote’ but he exhausted all the antidote’s potency.

…like an empty shell, she pulled herself out of his boundaries, without taking a dime with her, she was leaving without looking back.

Finally, some breath of fresh air, he drained her of everything but not the power of her mind to get back up. Perhaps, there was still a chance for this light to shine again! For this bird had escaped from its master’s claws.

She left him with no words but a disfigured paper with a faded ink that had the broken words;

Dear Master,

you forgot to refill the concealer can.

By Abana Asabe Rhoda for RhealyzAfrica

Women
Stan Smith