I want to tell someone.
I desperately want to tell someone.
I need to talk to someone. Anyone.

I list them.
He says no.
I listen to him.
He knows.

He has his reasons.
He makes his excuses
Why I can’t tell each and every one
It comes down to how that would impact him.
How it would impact him takes precedence over how this is affecting me.
Obviously.
He doesn’t care how it’s affecting me.
He cares how it’s affecting him.
(And yes, I’m stupid not to see.)

Ask forgiveness, not permission.
That is his way.

We are not the same.

I am his prisoner
I obey
I have to.
He has all the control.
And he knows.

* * *

Yet still
I beg him to let me tell.
I am falling apart.
He upgrades his excuses
From rationalization to triangulation.
He fears my disobedience
But he knows the solution
He’s been working on it slowly but he has to ramp it up.
The key to my compliance is mistrust
If he’s the only one left I can believe
I will no longer have this need

And so he tells me stories
He’s always telling stories.
I didn’t understand then but now I know
It was never about whether this person goes to the same church as someone he needs to hide this from
It was never about whether he trusted that person enough
And it was never about someone disliking me that he had to protect me from
Or someone else not being worthy of my secrets

It was always about control.
He had it over me
But not them.
He could not control their mouths
Their clothes
Their bodies
Their minds.
He could not keep them from asking questions
He could not prevent them from helping me see
He could not ensure they wouldn’t recognize something in him they too had seen but couldn’t quite believe

I’m not allowed to tell.
I’m not allowed to say.
This is a secret
I never sought to gain.

I told him I didn’t want this.
All it takes is someone asking
Is this something you want
He cannot have that asked of me
If he can’t do it no one can
If he won’t do it no one should
He can’t have me expecting that kind of consideration

He can’t risk anyone revealing to me
This is not actually normal
When the source of his power is making me believe it is.

* * *

So still
I’m not allowed to tell
And there’s no one left I want to tell
No one but him would understand

No one but him would pretend it’s okay
Well, except for me
That’s my power
Queen of pretending it’s okay
Queen of acting like I’m okay.

* * *

No one would understand
But I
still
can’t
take
it
I can’t help but feel alone
Desperate
A tiny part of me shouting
“I need to talk to someone else”
And so finally, permission comes
He chooses who
Who?
Someone not in town.
Someone not his target.
Someone he convinced to laugh at the bruises he gave her.
Who?
Someone who posed the least threat to him.
Someone nonjudgmental.
Someone who if push came to shove, he could choke.

Someone knowing helps quiet what’s left of that little voice.
Someone knowing and believing what he wants them to believe makes it easier to keep believing.
An agreed upon reality
Of course she couldn’t know.
He told me who I could talk to.
He taught me what I could say.
He manufactured what I believed.

* * *

Sometime later

Somehow there’s nothing left to tell.
Somehow his control over me diminished.

I tell without asking.
And he finds out.
“I thought I could trust you to keep this between us.”
As if I ever agreed to that.
As if I ever agreed to anything.

I am broken.
I am lost.
I no longer live under his thumb
I no longer wear what he tells me to wear
I no longer eat what he insists I eat
I no longer go where he wants me to go
It takes a long, long, long time before
I no longer feel what he wants me to feel
I no longer believe what he wants me to believe.

I no longer keep what he wants me to keep.
I speak.

* * *

Oh how much I learn.
I understand now
How dangerous it was for him
If I were to speak
If I were to learn
If I were to see that we were not in the reality he concocted together
He made it just for me
How many stories he told
How many people he told them to
How many versions of himself
Versions of events
Versions of reality
He had so very delicately balanced
So fragile

His power was my silence.
My power was my voice.

I fought to reclaim it
Fought to learn the truth
Before I ever used it

I used my power for good
I used my power for truth.

* * *

A long, long while later
Insert a long, long story here
I live in a reality where he gets to tell me what to say
What not to say
Today
For all time
In public
And now, he asserts, in private, too

As if I ever agreed to that.
As if I ever agreed to anything.