write a little everyday- day 6 (5 days missing) traumatic experience doves

       I don't know how five days passed and I didn't write. I could've sworn I made a post a few days ago. My commitment to write everyday is harder to keep up with than I originally anticipated. 
           Just two days ago my boyfriend was making a few silly jokes about cooking and eating me. He started to say he'd roast me or fry me or maybe make a soup, and I lost it. First I asked him to stop, then I yelled irritatingly, then I began to cry. He found this hilarious and continued until he realized it was seriously bothering me.  
 "Did someone in your past actually try to eat you or something?" I kind of chucked at that. "No, but once a kid I babysat told me his parent cooked and ate my pet doves."  I never felt the same after that.  I loved those doves, even if they were a gift from an asshole abuser. 
             Twelve years old, sound asleep with a copy of the babysitters club open on my chest, I was awoken abruptly. 
  "Get the fuck up and do these dishes! You know better than to leave dirty dishes" The alarm clock behind him glared 2:42 in red lighting. "huh, you told me to go to bed. You didn't want me to ruin your party." 
"Stop lying fat ass and get up and do these fucking dishes!" He grabbed my hair and pulled me out of bed, out of the room, and to the kitchen sink. 
"This is fucking unacceptable" he bellowed as he slammed my forehead on the front edge of the sink. He began grabbing glasses out of the sink and slamming them on the counter. This is when his half passed out friend awoke on the couch. 
 "Man, don't treat her like that."
"Shut the fuck up, she's not your kid" He spat back with his breath that reeked of whiskey and beer. 
"She's not your kid either!" he retorted. Phil was wearing a smug grin now. He woke me up because secretly he just wanted someone to push around. Now he would have someone more his match.  It happened quickly and before I knew it fists were flying. I was grateful for this man stepping in, but he didn't realize that unless he killed Philip, he would only be making it worse for me. I looked out the window for a moment but then I hurried to the sink to do the dishes.  I was shaking so bad I dropped a dish into the sink and while trying to fish it out, I sliced my hand. Blood began to pour out from the wound that stretched across my palm and fill the sink. I was more terrified of how things would go if Philip saw me just standing here. So I wrapped my hand in a rag and reran the dishwater. 
    After a load and a half of dishes Philip came up the stairs as a different man. His vendetta was no longer against me, and now he was concerned and caring. Once he noticed my hand was cut open and my forehead was swelling he started acting like a parental figure. He became nicer but every word was dripping with manipulation. The truth was, now he was afraid of the evidence stacking up. He didn't want my mother to know about these moments, and he also knew I'd lied too many times to Child protective services, and they'd done a few home visits for my many bruises. I always claimed to be overly clumsy, and since I actually was, it wasn't too hard to sell that story. This time though, he was afraid of the witness. He knew that fighting his once friend may lead to my mother finding out the truth. He was expecting me to tell a big lie this time.
        The next day I walked in after school to the cooing of two white doves, Jack and Rose. Philip presented them to me as a gift in front of my mom, just because. He gave me a look that told me what they really were, a bribe gift. I'd always been afraid to tell my mom the truth. Philip would say things that would make us fear for each other, my siblings and I. He would make us all afraid he'd hurt the other, or if our mom found out he'd hurt her too, and most of all that no one would believe us anyway. 
         That Saturday morning my two sisters and I went to the beach with our mother. We walked the sand dunes and sat in the tall grass. That was the day we told our mom about the past four years that her boyfriend abused us. I know it was difficult for her. She couldn't understand why we hid it, or how she never knew. Deep down she did though. She couldn't see it then, but it's easier in retrospect.  After she went home she tried to end their relationship. As we were in the yard playing I heard my mother and Philip screaming. I walked up the stairs to see them both holding knives as their bodies were twisted up in a fight no one was going to win. I screamed at them and they moved apart from each other. She told him to leave before she called the police. 
           Unfortunately that wasn't the last time we saw Philip. Many times while hanging out with friends at my house my moms ex would pull up and yell things at my window. He would bang on our door or call our phone multiple times. When we moved, he found us and continued to harass us. Once we had the police there to discuss his last altercation and he called and threatened to kill the police officer. Needless to say that didn't go well for him. Eventually he moved on, but I assume it's because he found a new person to torture. 
                 I saw Philip a few years later while I was at work. He was shopping with a woman I assume was his girlfriend. He had the audacity to say hello to me like we were old friends. After I rung them up I pulled the woman aside and said,
"I'm assuming he's your boyfriend, and he's probably only working enough to seem like he's trying. He's probably babysitting your kids, and acts like he cares. Don't leave him alone with your kids. Seriously, don't."
She started to protest when I said the working thing but as I finished I saw her eyes change. She was letting him babysit, and I knew it, because this was his pattern. It made him feel powerful to dominate us as children, knowing he would always be able to control the situation. As a man he was a no one, a drunk, not worth the fight. 
       I kept those doves though. All the years I hated him, and then forgave him so I could move on, and Jack and Rose were doing well. I moved again for a second time and I started babysitting a young kid. I was a teenager now and devoted to having fun, the kid loved my doves and I gave them to him thinking that it was the right thing. Barely a week later, his parents told me the doves died. I cried so much and it hurt. Then the next time I babysat the little boy he told me that his parents cooked and ate the doves. I'm not sure if it's true, but it messed my head up. I didn't need any help there...