Ask any person who has never suffered through parental abuse about how they feel about it, and what do you get? “It’s sad, and stuff.” The most frequent reply: “It’s messed up, and… yeah.”

What does “yeah” mean anyway? To every teenager, it means almost everything. But no matter how much you try to mold that word to mean the sadness and torture within abuse, you can never really understand the pain that a child goes through with the sadistic, cruel intentions of a drunk, sadistic, drugging parent.

And that’s the job I’ll try to do. I’ll pour my heart and soul into the blank canvass of paper – the blank canvass that molds itself to what the writer or artist wants it to be – to show you the evils of abuse.

Imagine coming home one day. You hear screaming and yelling. It’s all directed to you. But you don’t know why, and you wonder what you did. It truly wasn’t your fault. You see your mother run out into the living room and you kindly greet her.

Now imagine that mom running up to you, beating you like you’re nothing but a piece of garbage on the sidewalk. She punches, bruises you, and takes the filthy cigarette hanging on her foul mouth and presses the burning end of it on your skin. And she’s your mom. She curses at you, calls your worthless, makes you feel like you’re nothing. Then you start to believe it.

She’s yelling at you because she finds out that she’s acquired lung cancer. Your mom takes her rage out on you, and it’s entirely her fault. As if finding out your mom is dying isn’t enough, you’re beaten halfway to death because of her own mistakes.

But what could you do about it? You scream. You cry. And imagine you’re only five years old. She burns you again and says, “IF I HAVE TO DIE, YOU’RE DYING WITH ME, YOU WORTHLESS PIECE OF POO!”

For those of you who read this, you know what I mean when I say “poo.”

Your mother deprives you of food for the next ten days, and it’s not because of her rage towards herself. It’s merely because she doesn’t shed a single thought towards you. You feel worthless. You wish you were never born.

It doesn’t matter to you how many friends you have; they’ll never know what goes on inside your house. You’re too embarrassed to say anything about it, because breathing a single word about it would reduce you to tears.

You walk to school, fostering bruises on your arm. It’s your secret, and trust me, when you’re being abused, you’re too afraid to say anything about it. What could you do? If you’re a boy, and you have that mother, what happens? You try to hide those bruises, those scars, away from something, anything. And I mean anything.

Let’s say you’re a boy, and you have nothing to hide those bruises – those bleeding, aching, agonizing bruises – on your arm. You sneak into your mom’s room and take a linen ribbon. You tie it around your bruises and walk to school. You have nothing else, and you bravely take it.

This is when it gets worse: The other guys in the school see it on you and tease you about it, as if you don’t go through it enough at home. But at least you’re not hurt, right? WRONG! TRAGICALLY WRONG!

They call you gay – and that’s not something to be ashamed of – but the fact that they call you it. They not only insult you, but they also make it seem like being gay is something to be ashamed of if you are. But I won’t get into that.

Then after school, you walk home and those immature guys beat you up, and flaunt that linen lace in front of you. Don’t they have a conscience? Obviously not.

And if you’re a girl, it’s much harder. Image is everything. You have to hide it, but that’s not what bothers you most. What bothers you most is that you’re pain isn’t noticed. At least when you’re a guy and you wear that lace, someone – no matter how immature – sees it. But as a girl, it blends in. You’re inner feelings are destroyed.

Then after being beaten and teased in school, boy or girl, you walk home and dread the worst thing of all: a parent that hates you. You’re holding that lace; get rid of it fast! Throw it in the dumpster, trashcan, anything! When you get home and she finds it on you, what’s going to happen? The same thing that would happen whether or not she knows you took it.

You’re beaten and abused once again. You’re forced to live through it for eighteen years. But that’s not what hurts most.

Imagine being stabbed where it hurts most. Then the dagger is taken out. Then it’s pierces through your skin again. And again. And again. And again. And again. For eighteen years.

Some parents who take to the extreme and kill that child. At least he or she is put of his or her misery. And usually they don’t. And that dagger is pushed through the most painful part of your body: your heart. The bruises are everywhere: on your skin, on your bones, forever burned into your mind, and in your heart. What happens when these poor individuals have had enough? Suicide.

What’s “and yeah” when it comes to abuse? That entire thing, but ten trillion times worse.