She waited silently in her closet, straining to hear any kind of movement on the other side. She heard nothing but the sound of her own heart pounding rhythmically in her ears. Questions and fear ran through her mind making it hard to focus. Why did he want to hurt her, was she really that bad, did she not belong in this house? She heard footsteps pounding up the stairs; she knew it was him; no one else had that loud frightening gait. She shivered, thinking what he would do if she was found. She pushed herself into the back wall of her closet, sitting uncomfortably on her shoes. The door creaked open and she was sitting there in his frighteningly large shadow.

Pulling her fiercely out of the closet he threw her onto her bed, yelling at her maliciously as he had done many times in the past; but this time it was different, this time something broke inside of her, this time he went too far. He grabbed her harshly by the shoulders and screamed in her face telling her how worthless and how deficient she was. The little girl, mature beyond her eight years of life, took these words and filed them away into a large metaphorical file cabinet; as she did every time before. Once he finished by shoving her away from him as if she had some sort of contagious disease she would run, down the hardwood stairs through her kitchen and her living room, up another set of stairs to her nanny’s room. She crossed the room slowly trying extremely hard not to cry.

“Did he hurt you again baby girl?” the nanny asked gently. The little girl nodded and burst into tears; her nanny held the fragile child as she sobbed uncontrollably, shaking with the fear that she was really as worthless and deficient as he said she was.

There was a loud noise but no one heard it; it sounded like a fragile glass object crashing to the floor. But she heard the noise and felt the pain of the tiny broken shards. That noise was the sound of the little girl’s heart shattering into a million tiny pieces. The words he had said swirled around her brain becoming louder and louder; never fading no matter how much time went by. They engulfed her self-confidence and her will to fight, leaving her a shell of her former outgoing, fun-loving self. She hid the pain well for many years until she heard the noise again and the pain got worse, until she could not take it anymore, until she knew she needed help.

Seven years later, the little girl, now a young woman, sat on the same bed where her nanny held so many times, to comfort her from his piercing words. A tear rolled down her cheek as she thought about those times and about her nanny. She had not seen her nanny since she was eight but she remembered her as though she was still here, her long dark hair and her comforting chocolate brown eyes. Her nanny was the only one who ever treated her as if she were a little girl; everyone else treated her as though she was an adult, using expletives and confusing language to make her feel inferior. But not her nanny, she gave her the love she so desperately needed and wanted. But now she was gone and no one noticed the little girl dying inside; no one noticed her heart break beyond repair.

Time does not heal all wounds, she discovered, as she got older. Her heart still ached for her nanny and she still cried herself to sleep every night with the thoughts that she was deficient and worthless. His words never faded, nor did they lose their sharpness; they kept prodding her insides until they were bruised and punctured. She knew she would never recover from his words; she knew that they would eventually kill her.

She never regained her former self; she only lived by creating fake emotions to mask her ever-growing pain. She knew that this pain would soon overtake her and she would have noting left, not even the sliver of hope she held onto for seven long years. She knew that she did not have much time left; she would never realize her dreams, she would never grow up and have a family. She knew, though, that once she ended her life they would realize what they had done, that they had killed their own daughter and maybe, just maybe, they would cry and feel remorse.