~Epilogue

"Mum you're hurt"

My small voice came out in barely a whisper, he wasn't supposed to hear us.

"I'm fine muffin" she smiled faintly through her cut and bruised lips.

I held her face in my little hands as I stared at my mother's battered and bruised face,her purple swollen eyes, her busted lip, her bruised cheekbones. Through all these she still looked beautiful, her smile was as beautiful as it had always been. The beautiful smile that held a lot of pain behind it. Her smile never faultered, maybe it did but she never showed it . She smiled through it.

Through everything,

She smiled

She held unto my little wrists pulling my palms to her lips she placed kisses on both of them.

"I'm fine muffin, I promise"

I wrapped my arms around her neck burying my face into her long brown hair. It always smelt like jasmine and roses, it was my safe haven, she was my safe haven. Her trembling arms wrapped around my small body as she nuzzled into my neck and I could have sworn I heard a whimper escape her lips but it was gone as soon as it came. I held unto that moment, that little moment of peace in my life of hell. I held unto that moment for the rest of my life, I cherished that hug but little did I know that it was going to be the last time I ever felt her warmth again.....

I sat on the same couch, the same couch i'd sit on 14 years ago every single night. The memories hit like nostalgia. I'd sit on this couch trying my best to nurse my father's punching bag back to health. It killed me every single day to see the woman I loved,

The woman that gave me everything,

The woman that taught me everything

Be beaten and violated like a piece of shit. Her screams would echo through the house, her agonising groans would give me constant reoccurring night mares. And when it was all over I tried the best I could,

The best a 7 year old could do.

But I wasn't enough

Nothing I did was enough and at the end it was of no use, she had suffered enough

Every day I'd ask myself one question.

Why?

Why didn't she just leave?

Why didn't she just run away from his abuses, but no, she stayed back and because of what?

And then I look at the reason every single day in the mirror. I hate the reason, this one, worthless reason took my mother away from me.

I wasn't worth it

I never was. I was never worth all the hours of suffering she would go through, I was never worth any of the things she went through. But yet she endured them, with a smile on her face.

Her smile that was forever etched in my memory, for better or for worse. Her smile haunted me, sometimes it was my source of strength. She was and still is, what she stood for wasn't worth it. It killed her at the end.

I killed her.

It was all my fault

Mine and no one else's.

My fault, but she never made me feel like the burden I was. She was too good, too good for the life she was subjected to, to good for the asshole she married, too good for any of this, too good for me. It was all my fault and it still is...