Call Me Cockroach

by Leigh Byrne

Ugh, mashed potatoes. I still couldn’t look at them without thinking of the time Mama planted a bullet in mine just to see if I would eat it. She smeared my face in my own vomit that day and I took a hell of a beating from her too.

Hundreds of men would have to tell me otherwise, hundreds of times, to even begin to silence her voice inside my head.

“I’m gonna make you watch me shoot your baby and then I’m shootin’ you!” he said in an almost demonic voice.

The kids would be happy, and I would be okay somehow, because I was a cockroach.

Talking openly and honestly helped me to understand that the most significant hindrance to my healing process had been my inability to discuss the details of my childhood abuse. Telling Dani was a positive step, possibly my first on the path to healing.