I prefer peace. I like

I prefer peace. I
like sanity. I am attracted to kindness and consideration. I can't stand strife.
I am repelled by vengeance and punishment. I hate it when I have disappointed R
in some way. I want to always be the princess- lovely, good, and delightful; the
admirable queen of his heart. I think that my experiences in my childhood
enabled me to compartmentalize everything in my life. I can hold both the yolk
and the white separately in one hand. I have read all the books so I know that I
subconsciously chose this method for dealing with those who prey on children. A
burden was placed on my heart that I was too small, too undeveloped to carry or
sustain. So, I did the best that I could to survive. And most days I wanted to
survive. Once, I had decided that I wanted to die. I don't know that I wanted to
get away from my haunted house, but that I wanted someone to feel sad that I
left. I wanted for someone to experience remorse for causing my absence. I found
a bottle of pills, Vitamin C, in a tennis bag. I swallowed the whole bottle. I
was 10 years old. I remember bathing, so that I would be clean when I was found.
I brushed my hair and put on clean clothes, my best, in fact. Then I went to
bed. I remember hearing my parents listening to some jazz artist on the record
player. They were dancing together. Their quiet laughter rose above the music
occasionally. I was happy for them. If a person had just stepped in, they
would've thought, "This is a happy house, one with reciprocated love and
affection." I knew differently, but was happy for my mother. She sounded
satisfied. I stayed awake half the night with anticipation of something
happening. Not a loud something, but a quiet something that I thought I would
somehow be conscious of. When I awoke in the morning, I was surprised to find
myself curled up in my own bed. I don't think that I thought beyond death, just
that someone would feel badly that I had died, and that maybe I wouldn't be so
sad in my heart anymore. I was relieved a bit, though. I loved my mother
desperately and while lying there in my rumpled day clothes, I realized that she
may have felt responsible for my death and that would make her sad, like me and
I didn't want anyone to feel as broken as I did. Not anyone that I loved, that
is. I wanted all those that had hugged me a little to long; that had offered
perversion in a pretty bottle; that had shown me things that I didn't want to
see to pay for it all by feeling some sense of remorse. I didn't know that the
last thought they had of me was when they were with me, while they were
relishing the booty they were pillaging. I think that when R is disappointed in
me in some way, I am fearful that he will never think me again the queen of his
heart. That he will think me unredeemable. I have endured hurt by those that I
trusted. I have been scalded by those who I thought would only nourish me. So, I
understand disappointment by those you never expected it from. I don't want him
to expect it from me. I don't want to be to him as terrible as those people were
to me. I don't want him to despise me as I have them. "Forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us." What a monumental task that is. I
can expect to be forgiven to the degree that I forgive. Have I forgiven? Will I
be forgiven? Am I worthy to receive of what I will not give? Do both the victim
and perpetrator drink from the same chalice? Does the wine taste as sweet to
each tongue?