The small drops of blood had now dried up from my wounds as I lay down on the cold floor of our basement. It had been over an hour now and I was tired from all the crying.  The pain was unbearable and yet this wasn't even the worst. 

There had been worse times. When he would tie me up in our basement and beat me up while he mouthed all sorts of profanities until I was unconscious.  I was nothing but a mistake to him, a burden, and I would never amount to anything in life. It hurt to hear him say those things to me. Him being the same man who helped me come into this world. My father. 

"You are not my son," he would say, "It's a shame that I made you flesh and blood."

All this would happen in the absence of my mother and I never once told her about it.  He threatened me.  He threatened to kill me if I ever dared to utter a word about it to her and I remained quiet to forever suffer in silence. Although it hurt me, the fact was that she loved him and I did not want to come in between that. 

He was always careful not to hit me in the face or anywhere visible otherwise my mother would start asking questions and even though I loved her to death I was mad at her because she was always oblivious to my pain and never noticed whenever something was wrong or maybe she knew but didn't want to accept it. 

Sometimes the beatings were so bad and I got badly hurt.  I remember one time when he pushed me against the wall and my shoulder got dislocated. I never dared to go to the hospital because then my mother would know everything and that would anger him. I had to push it back in place all on my own. 

Living in this house was hell for me,  but the outside world was even worse since society did not accept me either. I would go out on the streets and have people look at me like my all existence was a mistake and each breath I took was a crime all because I was gay. 

It felt like I was in the middle of the ocean, miles, and miles of water around me but I didn't know how to swim. I was numb and I couldn't feel. It was all I ever knew. 

I had to live through school being bullied and I had no friends at all.  No one wanted to be friends with a gay kid. My only safe place was my room back home where I would lock myself up and stare at nothing. Sometimes I wondered if everything would have been okay if I was never born. I wondered what it would be like to be numb forever as I lay down on my bed when my parents were not home. I had so many options to choose from, be it drowning in the bathtub,  overdosing on prescription medication or even hanging. 

Maybe my mother would have been hurt and disappointed but my father wouldn't have cared. It would have been good riddance on his part since he considered me a waste of space and time. He said I wasn't man enough but instead I was a little bitch. That's why he resorted to causing me pain all these years. Probably as a way of punishment or as a way of ridding me of all the sins I never even knew I had committed. 

I pushed myself off of the basement floor as I felt excruciating pain shooting up throughout my body. I had to get cleaned up before my mother came home from her nursing job or else she would question me until the truth was out. 

I dragged my feet across the hall feeling tired and defeated. All I wanted to do at that moment was sleep and forget everything that had happened earlier. I made my way through the bathroom door and pulled up my shirt as soon as I was standing in front of the mirror. 

I looked at the scars. Some older than others while others lay on top of the older ones.  This had been the work of my father over the years and I had learned to cover it up with makeup. Sometimes I was afraid the beating would go too far and my father would end it all for me.

I took a bath and took one last look at myself in the mirror as I started applying concealer to my body covering up all the bruises that littered my body like some type of art. A tragic artwork, I was a broken canvas.