The beautiful girl in prison

She's gone now-no longer around. She could be anything she wants to be. Instead she is settling for the worse. I can imagine her in a cheap little apartment, the guy she has chosen, not working, or working as little as possible. He is afraid. Afraid of letting her spread her wings but she is too. If she ever does he will lose her. He is terrified of that just as he is terrified of his own shadow.

First time I met him I felt a deep rage inside me. Ugly punk without talent or looks and the kind who gets a girl pregnant, then walks away. Short runt with thin little arms. Then again, he might not walk away choosing instead to live off her, stealing her tips, then telling her what to do. Every so often she will go somewhere with marks all over her face and she'll tell people she ran into a wall when drunk or had another car accident, but I am not going to believe her stories.

Stories to protect him just as she had protected a parent or a brother or an uncle--even the mother who had abused her while she was growing up. She might have been raped repeatedly by a close and trusted family member. Happens all the time. Or just had the snot beat out of her and often. "What is she doing wrong?" the little girl in her cries out. "He's my father or she's my mother, my older uncle or brother. I am supposed to love this person. Must be me. I am doing something wrong. I am dirty. I am worthless. If I only try harder, I can make everything right."

"Why me?" The little girl cries out in anguish. "He, she--is older than me. He, she, they are my umbilical cord to safety. I am lost if I have to go out on my own." So she protects her abuser. If anyone should ask what's happening to her, she lies for them. "He didn't beat me....he didn't rape me", she tells anyone who wants to know. The little bug in her ear is telling her--"I didn't do it right. If I was good--if I was worthy it would never have happened. All my fault. Next time it will stop when I change and am worthy of love."

Much later now she's all grown up. Still...there's that little voice that never leaves her saying-"You are not worthy of love. Not until you make it right....not until you have punished yourself for everything you did wrong." She's on a mission as if on remote control, seeking out the bad apples while turning the good men away. Somehow she has to make it all right in order to purge herself of her sin. The men in her life are like the one who abused her in her childhood. She's out to change them. If she can act just the right way and do the right things she will finally be accepted. She has something to prove to herself that --on an ongoing replay of her past- she has finally become worthy of love.

Can't do it with just any man. Fixing the original problem requires a special breed. She chooses sickos-men who secretly hate women. Men who lack confidence in themselves. Who hate themselves. Cowards at heart--the fighters among them bred to fight women, not men. Lazy ass holes. And stupid men. The chemistry's working like a magnet to her past, attracting guys she holds tight just like her childhood abuser.. The others she leaves alone. Doesn't return their phone calls and if she makes a date, stands them up.

Pond scum. This one's she's chosen should have been raked out of the water on sight. I should have punched his lights out when I first saw him and knew him for what he is. Better yet, cut his balls off, rendering him harmless. Which would have exposed him as the useless eunuch he is even with balls.

Here's what's going to happen next. He's going to isolate her. Then keep working on her-ridiculing all of her ideas, the hobbies she might want to have, the poetry if she writes poetry. Her mind keeps playing tricks on her, telling her that if she changes, he'll change. She'll change for him. Bet on it. She'll turn the world away choosing instead, the world he chooses for her. After all, this time she's got to get it right. Everything's always her fault. She's in prison and he wants to keep her there, a prison with bars she created in her mind when she was a little girl.