ALWAYS SORRY - by Big Dee

Sorry. I learned it before I learned my name. Not the kind that means you made a mistake. The other kind. The kind that means you exist and you're already apologizing for it. The cane didn't ask questions. Neither did the sharp edge of whatever was closest. I bled... Look up at the cover image .. I bled worse.And when the bleeding stopped I was expected to kneel. To say it. Sorry. For what, I didn't always know. For being there. For breathing wrong. For my siblings' mistakes that somehow found their way onto my skin. I wore their punishments like they were mine because nobody taught me the difference. Their wrongs. My skin. My knees on the floor. Sorry. There's supposed to be something wrong with me right? In the way I flinch now. The way I shrink before anyone even raises their voice. There's something that looks broken about it from the outside. But it isn't broken. It's learned. Funny how that's where the real damage hides. Not in the scars you can see. In the ones that became habit. "You're manipulative." they say. "You're pretending." "Stop acting dumb." I wish I were acting. I wish this was a performance I could step out of when the lights go down. But the scars don't come off with the costume. The places where my skin split and healed wrong, the imprints the cane left, those aren't props. They stayed. Long after that place. Long after those hands. They stayed. I flinch because I was taught to flinch. I apologize because silence cost more than surrender. I shrink because every time I tried to take up space something came to remind me I wasn't allowed to. A slap. A whip. A voice. It didn't matter which. My body stopped waiting to find out. Someone raises their voice now and I am already gone. Already small. Already forming the word before the accusation lands. I stopped talking too. Not because I had nothing to say. Because I learned that my words cost me. So I kept them. Kept everything. Became someone who moves through rooms quietly, takes up as little space as possible, and prays nobody notices her long enough to find her inconvenient. I became the person who disappears before she can become your problem. The pain back then made me forget to eat. Food felt irrelevant when surviving was already a full time job. But the body keeps its own records. Now the pain forces me to eat even when appetite is the last thing I have. Even my stomach learned to hold things it shouldn't have. Please. Don't mistake my damage for dishonesty. I'm not asking for rescue. I'm not asking anyone to carry what I carry. Patience would have cost nothing then. It costs nothing now either. I'm tired of the darkness I learned to live in. It's cold there. It's small. I've been in it so long I sometimes forget it isn't just the world. Some people, are teaching me now. Teaching me that sorry doesn't always have to be the first thing out of my mouth. That I'm allowed to take up space without bracing for what comes next. It's slow. Some days I don't believe it. Some days the flinch wins before I even notice it happening. But I'm trying. Maybe one day the sorry comes slower. Maybe one day it means what it's supposed to mean and nothing more. Maybe one day I look back at all of it from somewhere warm and finally exhale. I'm not there yet. But I'm sorry I'm not there yet. And I hate that I just said that.

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