I used to think the hardest part of being hurt was pretending it hadn't happened.<\/p>\n
I was wrong.<\/p>\n
The hardest part was learning to worry more about other people's reactions than about what had been done to me.<\/p>\n
That was where I was on my birthday, standing in my kitchen with a knife in my hand and a strawberry split open on the cutting board.<\/p>\n
The cake sat on the counter beside me.<\/p>\n
I'd baked it that morning because I wanted something familiar to do with my hands.<\/p>\n
There was nothing special about the cake. Vanilla, strawberries, and white frosting. The kind of thing I had made for birthdays since I was a little girl.<\/p>\n
I had turned thirty-one that day.<\/p>\n
I should have been thinking about candles and dinner and whether my father would like the food.<\/p>\n
Instead, I was trying to keep my face turned away from the kitchen lights.<\/p>\n
The skin beneath my left eye was swollen.<\/p>\n
A dark mark stretched along my cheekbone, partly hidden beneath the makeup I'd applied that afternoon.<\/p>\n
I'd started getting ready early because I knew it would take time.<\/p>\n
Concealer first.<\/p>\n
Then foundation.<\/p>\n
Then another layer where the bruise refused to disappear.<\/p>\n
I wiped some of it off and tried again.<\/p>\n
By the time I gave up, twenty minutes had passed, and I still couldn't look at myself without noticing it.<\/p>\n
I told myself it wasn't that bad.<\/p>\n
I told myself nobody would see it.<\/p>\n
I told myself a lot of things that day.<\/p>\n
Derek was leaning against the refrigerator when he spoke.<\/p>\n
"Your dad's outside."<\/p>\n
I kept the knife against the cutting board.<\/p>\n
For a second, I thought I had misunderstood him.<\/p>\n
Then I heard the doorbell.<\/p>\n
Derek watched me from across the kitchen, his arms folded over his chest.<\/p>\n
He wasn't looking at the cake.<\/p>\n
He wasn't looking at the food I'd prepared.<\/p>\n
He was looking at my face.<\/p>\n
"You need to fix that expression," he said. "Don't start anything tonight."<\/p>\n
I stared at the dark reflection in the microwave door.<\/p>\n
My face looked almost normal from a distance.<\/p>\n
Almost.<\/p>\n
I tilted my head slightly, checking the bruise from another angle.<\/p>\n
It didn't help.<\/p>\n
The doorbell rang again.<\/p>\n
My father had always been punctual. If he said he'd arrive at six, he arrived at six. If nobody answered the door, he rang again rather than walking away.<\/p>\n
That was one of the things I had always loved about him.<\/p>\n
That evening, it made my stomach tighten.<\/p>\n
Derek straightened and pushed away from the refrigerator.<\/p>\n
"Please don't make this awkward."<\/p>\n
I nearly laughed.<\/p>\n
Not because anything was amusing.<\/p>\n
I had simply reached the point where the things Derek said sounded so far removed from reality that sometimes my mind couldn't find another response.<\/p>\n
Three years earlier, I would have argued with him.<\/p>\n
I would have asked why he was speaking to me that way.<\/p>\n
I would have expected him to explain himself.<\/p>\n
Now I knew how those conversations ended.<\/p>\n
If he raised his voice, I had pushed him.<\/p>\n
If he slammed a door, I had made him angry.<\/p>\n
If something broke, I had driven him to it.<\/p>\n
If I tried to leave a room while he was talking, I was supposedly disrespecting him.<\/p>\n
And if I showed up to my own birthday dinner with a bruise on my face, I was expected to make sure nobody noticed.<\/p>\n
Especially my father.<\/p>\n
"I'm going to answer the door," I said.<\/p>\n
Derek reached out and caught my elbow.<\/p>\n
His fingers closed around it briefly.<\/p>\n
Not hard enough to leave a mark.<\/p>\n
That was how I measured things by then.<\/p>\n
Not by whether he had any right to touch me, but by how much pain he caused when he did.<\/p>\n
He let go.<\/p>\n
I put the knife down.<\/p>\n
For one brief moment, neither of us moved.<\/p>\n
Then I walked toward the front door.<\/p>\n
I could hear my father shifting his weight on the porch.<\/p>\n
The sound was familiar enough to make my throat tighten.<\/p>\n
I had imagined this evening differently.<\/p>\n
I had pictured him arriving with a small gift, perhaps a card with his usual handwriting inside. I had pictured him asking what I had cooked and telling me that I shouldn't have gone to so much trouble.<\/p>\n
I had even imagined him teasing me about the cake.<\/p>\n
Instead, I was about to open the door and hope he wouldn't look too closely at his daughter.<\/p>\n
I put my hand on the handle.<\/p>\n
Behind me, Derek said my name once more.<\/p>\n
I didn't turn around.<\/p>\n
I opened the door.<\/p>\n
And for one second, before either of us spoke, I wished I could go back to the kitchen and try the makeup one more time.<\/p>\n
I used to think the hardest part of being hurt was pretending it hadn't happened. I was wrong. The hardest part was learning to worry more about other people's reactions … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36589"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36609,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36589\/revisions\/36609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}