In my dreams last night I found myself sitting at the dining room table. Like so many times years ago, my report card spread open on the table in front of you.

Your fingers again grasping my dreadlocks, tightening more and more as you continued your verbal assault. I could feel the sting in my scalp as you tightened more and pulled harder, trying to lift me from the chair I was sitting in. This is not the first time. Why do you keep on returning?

I found a way to block out the pain, and silence the onslaught of your physical and verbal abuse, long ago.

I have felt the pain and heard your words many times. It never gets any better and your words are always the same.

Fuck! I wish you could at least change it up a bit and add some new content to your tormenting antics and your rants. It gets so boring, always the same old thing. Each time I brought home my report card from school. Every time you visit my dreams. You never surprise me anymore.

Not like you did that first time in first grade. You started with words like, "You are never going to amount to anything in this life. You are not applying yourself. Look at these grades, not one A. How do you ever expect to be anything other than a ditch digger. You stupid god damned kid!"

I was frightened that first time you reached out and took my hair into your grasp. I trembled in fear. My heart felt like it was going to explode inside my chest.

Seeing the rage in your eyes, as you gritted your teeth between rants at me for being less than you expected of me. That time I was sure this would be the time that I would die at your hand. I remember, as I got older there were times I wished that I would, just so I could escape your brutal barbaric assaults. Oh how I wished that it could all be over.

I can not remember ever being praised for doing anything good.

Finally around age 8, I found that I could block out the pain and your rants by going to a fantasy place, a place serene, filled with no sound. I have become a part of it, and learned to love this place over time. Though I have never in reality been able to find a place like it.

When I willed myself to my fantasy place, the pain subsided and your words silenced, but I could not escape the anger in your eyes and on your face.

I learned that if I stayed there long enough, the pain that I had felt transferred back into your fingers and hand, as they cramped under your grip and the anger on your face changed.

I could see the transformation as I inwardly smiled, never letting you see the pleasure on my face or in my eyes.

I was able to experience my revenge, as I knew soon you would have to take your other hand and physically bend each of the fingers on your left hand out from your grip on my hair.

I revelled in the fact I could see the change in your face, as it morphs from seething anger into horrendous pain. I knew soon I would be released from your grip and sent to bed, to dream in my fantasy place.

This was my victory, I had beaten you at your own game. Fuck you and your tormenting displays. Two could now play this game.

Even though I was smaller in stature and weaker in body, I was stronger than you in my mind. When I went to my fantasy place, you couldn't hurt me, you no longer scared me. You lost, I won.

Once more I awake from my dream, this incessant dream. Shivering not from fear, but because of the cold sweat that soaks my body and bed. I have not feared any part of you for years, you can no longer scare me in reality. From this life you have now passed on.

I forgave you for your transgressions a long time ago. I know that I have become a better person than you ever told me I could hope to be. Life has taught me to be myself, not what others expect me to be.

Why do you persist on invading my dreams? I thought I had escaped your grasp when I was 13.