Never Perfect

As I silently gazed upon the hill where my house once lay I began to ponder why I had even returned to this deslolate place. Even though the landscape is full of greenery, the place feels hollow and dead. This is the feeling that overcomes my body. A feeling so strong that 20 years is not near enough time to forget the events that occured inside this place I used to call hell. My own personal hell. I don't remember my first bike, or the first time I was able to ride a bike without training wheels. My memories are the nightmares I wish to escape. Even thinking back now, I'll never understand why pain was the only thing she ever gave me. Every slap in the face, and shove into the wall, was just a reminder of the perfect daughter I would never be. I was beaten down so many times, I knew she would eventually end my life. In fact, I prayed every time she was waving her fists, that this punch would be the last. It never was. I suffered bruise after bruise. Broken bone after broken bone. I was her punching bag, not her daughter, not someone she would couldn't live without, just another object painted with her anger. She broke a vase over my head when I was 16. I never saw it coming, even though day after day I came home in fear of the abuse she held over my head. Constant threats, whether verbal or the shaking of her fists, she terrorized and teased me. I never knew when an impulse would overcome her, forcing me to succumb to her fearful fists and frightening eyes.