Sticks & Stones (Male or Female Monologue)

Background Info: The final chapter, the end of abuse what will happen?

Sticks and stones will break my bones… but names? Names I will remember forever. For inside the names lies the monster. It creeps across the floor and snatches me before I can see it coming. “Slut, Whore, Fat, Ugly, Unloved, Worthless”… the list goes on & on. You would think that the words would hold no power, but they do. They slither into the mind, onto the skin, become a part of me and eviscerate every shred of self-worth I hold inside.

There is no way to truly express it what it does to someone who hasn’t been there; the pattern of pain stains each soul with its own unique brand of misery. It rips away the person I want to be and makes me shrink into myself to the sanctuary I’ve created there. But the sanctuary is only a temporary stay of execution from the madness that haunts me.

Yet I walk through the world, passing those around me who are unaware of the pain, the insanity and the hell I am in. If I smile pretty, they’ll never know. They’ll never see the invisible scars that are fused into my soul. I learned early on that life is always what you get but never what you want.

For years, trapped, like a caged little child, within the night I lie shivering in the cold; Hoping for a hero, a knight in shining armor that would be blind to my stains and love me in spite of myself. Praying for a freedom, a peace in the night; I tried to find the eternal darkness to be finally be liberated, but it eluded me.

So I walked dark paths, lived in a twisted distorted version of life; like being held under dark murky water with just a tiny measure of oxygen to sustain me. There in the dark I am taking the smallest amount of breath that I can to survive. Always feeling dizzy and scared as hell, as if each breath I take is going to be my last.

And then one day, one wonderful, glorious nothing special about it, ordinary day, someone reached out, took my hand and pulled me out of the water and I took my first real breath in a long time. The sharp pain hit my lungs as I drew it in… but it was a good pain, a healing pain… and the pain reminded me that I am still alive! That it isn’t over as long as I draw breath, that my past doesn’t determine my future, and most of that I have something I haven’t seen in a very long time, hope. Just a tiny little bloom, but if I nurture it, love it and believe in it… it will grow.

I realized that this is the way most of us are. We are all so sure that we are living but inside we are dying… and it makes us bitter, to ourselves, to those around us and we find ourselves hurting those we love the most… and if we were to lose one of them we would sit and cry if only… if only. But why do we wait until it’s too late? Why do we pretend everything is just fine when all we really want is for someone to hold us and tell us that we are going to be ok… that the child inside of us is still alive, that it never really died, it was just hiding waiting for a safe time to come out. Hold out your hand… and see what happens.

Give it all away and come back to life, choose to make yourself whole; and breathe in freedom once more. Feel the spring coming and the new life that is on its way! Like me, it’s a choice you have to make and it’s waiting for you so what are you waiting for?

Can you smell it? Can you hear it? Dare you believe it? Just Hold on… Can you feel it? The air is coming close your eyes now… and breathe.