Daddy yelled at me - "Stop crying, and take it like a man!!" - and I shriveled up into myself, being a baby again. I tried to think of all the happy things we had done before that - Daddy let me watch him play WOW, and he played a board game with me, for the first time since I had met him! - and there were a couple, but it was hard not to feel the pain, and to not cry... Eventually, though, I learned to stop; when Daddy told me to pull my pants down, and bend over the edge of the bed for a spanking, I did it shakily, but I did not cry, even if Daddy hit me with a belt. I 'took it like a man', but it seemed Daddy did not like that, even though that is what he had told me to do. He yelled again - "I might as well spank you double, since it doesn't seem to bother you!!" - but I did not cry. This made Daddy stop eventually, but when Daddy turned into Father, I wished I could get the physicality back. The shaming, and yelling, and screaming, and fighting was so much worse - it made me want to die. When I told father this, he only did it more; so I tried to die. Then he left me on my own, ashamed of me; from then on, I wrote until my fingers callused, and drew until my hand cramped, to have a world of my own, where nobody was shamed for wanting to cry, or end their lives.
Inspired be a prompt on Writetheworld
