I didn't have a lot of choices growing up.
Not unless you count the way I wanted him.  

Painful or excruciating.

I didn't have much power either.  
No amount of prayers, wishing, hoping, begging would change his mind.  

Not to say that I didn't try though.

I have a difficult time conveying just how strong my memories and flashbacks are.  I appear calm and collected to the passerby.  I have to.  But peer into my soul and you will see the claw marks of my pain. Scraping their way down into a collective pool of boundless grief and torment log jammed by the planks of fear and shame.

I long to turn myself inside out and bare my rotting scars.  To have someone besides myself witness what bubbles to the surface just long enough to be squelched again.  Power and a choice.  That is what I beg to find within those murky waters.

A choice to change.  
A choice to pull the planks and let the stagnant flow.

The power to persevere.  
The power to put them in their rightful place.  
Forever.