Карина Каржавина

Thank You For Breaking Me

Living is this cycle of trial and error. Along the way, we trust the directions to make themselves visible.

Bombarded with intrusiveness (exception: NO ONE). Responding to chaos is expected. We gather our ruins, rummage through the aftershocks, all for clarification of what to do in future combat.

So, these are my thank you’s. For the enlightenment along the way, unwelcomed and received.

Thank you for instilling vigilance. Four exact years I spent hiding. Endless nights parked peering into my window, following my every movement closer than the wind, leveraging life and death, my distress only fueling you. I no longer sleep hiding on the floor. I stopped taking alternative routes on my way home. I’m not running. Thank you for cementing fear. Fear of the control you accessed. These days, I grip security tighter than my anxiety.

Thank you for showing me how to determine intentions. Sincerity. Expertly evaluating interactions. Body language. Tone. During confrontations, disagreements, successes, and failures. Your unfiltered anger revealed an underlying truth as to why a home no longer exists here. Thank you for a lifetime of fraudulence. Spotting authenticity is now a pastime.

Thank you for grounding my belief that a human lacking moral conviction is no safeguard. Unexercised consciousness holds no backbone. All confirmations of violation! Yet you sat silent. Twiddled your thumbs. Fear of being an outcast? Clarity at its finest. There is no Switzerland when it comes to rape. Following consent. Abuse. So you kept their secret. Discredited my truth. Thank you. That’s when I saw you for what you will never be.

Thank you for teaching me that freedom comes with solitude. Tactics used to diminish self-worth no longer rule over this space. I broke down your algorithm and now teach others how to meticulously cut puppet strings. No one will ever make me feel less-than in this lifetime or the next.

Thank you for teaching me that being viewed as a conquest is empty next to the desire that engulfs you in a nourishing partnership. Intimate or not, nothing is beautiful about being referred to as property. My back stopped bending as your staircase. I threw out living vicariously in hopes of pleasing you. I am not your possession, thank you very fucking much.

Thank you for preparing me to question everything. I trusted you(.) genuinely wanted to lift me up. Rather comfort was pulled from its root. You lifted my skirt instead. It spoke volumes in forced silence. Business or personal, you reminded me how easily it can creep up. Warped in familiar faces. Support does not share safety. Allies don’t taint sacred spaces.

Thank you for choosing to play victim. We played a game without a finish life. Seemingly with no way out. You made up rules along the way that kept you in control, failing to understand in every situation you claimed no responsibility as you wrote me up work orders for all my flaws. Now I use your game as a checklist for red flags. My apologies threaten your vanity because they are no longer voiced to secure your self-serving agenda. My soul vibrates with self-assurance. I leveled out the playing field.

Thank you for falsely adopting my trauma. Invading my personal sanctuary. Stealing my original writings. You had a firsthand look at my innermost person, deciding instead that you’d rather impersonate my pain for a rise. Glamorizing my sorrow, studying my script, and performing your rewritten version. A harsh reality, because nothing stays hidden forever. I knew that. Years spent accumulating words puzzled together between bindings, only to have them ripped from my treasury. My peace robbed by a single book. I lost all sense of identity back then. Thank you for forcing me to rebuild.