The past couple of weeks have been really difficult for me with the news coming out of the NFL about domestic violence and child abuse.  Because now everyone is talking about abuse and what is abuse and is it ok to do this and why didn't she leave.

I can't get away from it, because it's everywhere and everyone is talking about it constantly.

I'm in a place where I am having a lot of feelings, and they are getting stuck in my throat.  I am gagging on these feelings, and I spent so much time in my life choking on this stuff and teaching myself how to cry without making a sound.

And I still can barely speak or write about them.  I am trying to work through them in some writing I'm doing offline, but it is so very hard and so painfully slow.

So let's see what I can say.

That there are some people who believe they own their children and that they should be able to to whatever they want to them. 

That physical punishment is humiliating.

That knowing you are basically on your own at a young age is very alienating.

That being constantly physically punished and yelled at caused a feeling of being completely alone and that no one will ever help you, which is a devastating feeling for a child to have. 

I don't know, y'all.  

I read that Rainbow Rowell had written Eleanor and Park after hearing the Mountain Goats album, The Sunset Tree.  And since I loved that book so much and found it devastating in the ways that I could recognize myself in it, I bought the album.

This song and its lyrics completely destroy me, because again- I recognize myself and my life in a way that I think I had always assumed in my child/teen logic and shame that these things had only ever happened to me.  And we are never meant to speak of them anyway, so who would ever know.

"And then I'm awake and I'm guarding my face,

Hoping you don't break my stereo,

Because it's the one thing that I couldn't live without.

And so I think about that,

And then I sort of black out."

Lyrics like being punched directly in the chest.

I don't know, y'all.  I really don't.  I'm glad people are talking about it, because god knows it needs to be talked about, but it is so very hard to listen to sometimes.

Which is why you got 2 recipe blog posts before I could really bring myself to even do this.  And why I may nope out of the news for a bit.  I seriously need a break.  My heart hurts.