Count To Ten.

In the process of counting to ten, we've gotten to a hundred. I don't ever want to count anything, least of all this, it feels juvenile and even a little tactless, it robs something from me to turn my pain into numbers and recite it like prescribed penance for a venial sin, but today, he wants to count. The rarity of this occurrence turns my dislike of the activity into a sad but eager curiosity at the novelty of things. The kind of curiosity that tourists feel when we attempt to vacation inside someone else's life, when instead of getting a hotel, we rent a house in the middle of a working class neighborhood, so that we feel enough belongingness for the locals to validate our right to be there. So that we may go back home and tell our friends with confidence that we know what it's like to *be* those people.

I am trying to be this person, but even as I repeat the numbers that he utters with the feigned familiarity of a person who has always done this, I feel like a tourist in this space. Sometimes, in the attempt to belong, I imitate. I imitate the prototype of a person like me. I don black leather, I line my eyes with liquid darkness, I wear a suit of ritualistic subversion, I count the strokes of a cane, because it seems like that is how it is supposed to be, and for a moment, I succumb to the idea that life may be easier if I just did things the way they are supposed to be done. I titivate who I am, so as to make more sense to the world but even all the circumlocution in the universe doesn't rationalise my actions enough to scrub that unsettling feeling on my skin. I can see myself being someone else and the slightest deviation, the most brief repose from being exactly who I am, is unacceptable to my inner-critic. She keeps me honest, she forces me to wash the mascara off my eyelashes and look at myself, as who I really am.

"Stop," I tell him, as he counts the number eight, for the twentieth time, "Please, just stop."

"We haven't gotten to ten yet," he says, "I told you, I will stop at ten."

He misunderstands me. I have no desire to inveigle him into tenderness, I don't want him to stop hurting me, I want him to stop hurtling numbers at me. The numbers have no meaning anyway, each time he says one, he decides it shouldn't count. Each time, his reasoning is more outlandish than before.

*That wasn't hard enough.*
*You made a sound.*
*You moved your leg.*
*That was too hard.*
*You didn't count after me.*
*Your hair flew in the wind.*

He wants to trick me, he wants to trick the numbers into being more than they are, and that's okay, but I grapple with the futility of it. He doesn't need them to do this, he doesn't need to fool me into hurting more, we don't need to speak at all. He counts to eight, yet again, as the pain sears across my chest, but I cannot focus on it, instead the digits he announces distract me like a grain of sand stuck in my eye. Even though I am by the ocean, I cannot see it, I cannot swim it, my vision is distorted and I can only hear the place where I want to be.

"Please," I ask again, "Just stop it. Stop doing that."

I could speak more clearly, I know I could, but the words won't arrange themselves into cogent sentences. It's almost as if I don't want him to hear my dissent, I want to be misunderstood, I want my legitimate request for silence to sound like unjustifiable rebellion. He grabs me by the throat and shakes me, it shakes the sand loose from my eyes, and for a moment, I feel like myself again. Shaking uncontrollably in the hands of the man I love, unable, at last, to think, but it only lasts a moment. He returns to his overly-structured assault on my skin, and the repeats the same number, over and over, as he strikes me.

"Please stop counting," I say, finally, unable to maintain my façade any longer, "Just don't say any more numbers please."

He laughs. I understand this laughter, it is familiar, it often reverberates inside the walls of our bedroom far away from this borrowed space in a land where we don't belong.

"That's what you have been begging for?" He asks, still chuckling, "You don't want me to stop hurting you? You want me to stop counting? What is wrong with you?"

I do wonder why I hate it so much. I always have, but it feels different now, it feels like the promise of more, measured, inevitable pain is akin to the taunt of a mother, as opposed to the promise of a lover. The pain of the future now seems harder to bear than the pain on my skin, when he beats me like he always does, there is only the present, but as he weighs his strokes, I am forced to live in the future. I feel that every single day, as I count the years on my life as well. It was easier somehow when the terrible things were memories and not hypothetical horror fanastises that seem more and more plausible each day. The pain of things you have lived through is so much easier than pain to come. And it will, won't it? There will be pain. Pets will die. Then friends. Then I. I am counting myself into it. Each year, with each passing number, the trauma of the future gets closer than the trauma of the past. I have travelled so far from the ruins of my life, and so much closer to the destruction of it, but I don't want to have to do that here. Now. With him.

"Please, just stop counting," I beg, again, "Beat me till the sun comes up, just stop saying the number nine."

For a moment, I can see him considering my request. He strokes my chest with the tip of the wood, poking the wounds and smirking at my need.

"No," he said, with the unmistakable undertones of mindless, unnecessary cruelty, "I will count and so will you."

Perhaps, this is why I was refraining from spelling my desires out into words, telling him what I want is like asking to be denied. I can see the appeal of it for him, and unlike me he doesn't do it to the fit the prototype of who he ought to be.

"Nine," he says again, swinging his weapon against my chest, "Come on, repeat after me."

"Nine," I say, embarassed by a number that escapes my lips.

"That doesn't count," he says, as if I really expected it to, "You didn't speak loud enough."

I want to cry, but it's not because of the hurt, I feel like he is denying me the pain by forcing me to commit to a construct that means nothing to me. I close my eyes and focus on the sound of the sea as it thrashes against the shore outside. Instead of his unkindness, I count the waves I see in my head.

*Nine.*

*Nine.*

*Nine.*

*Nine.*

I hope we never get to ten, but I know it is coming. As the tide rises and the waters get choppier and harder to withstand, I know it is coming. I think ten is when I drown and I am not ready to let the wave take me. I grasp at the illusionary sand as it recedes beneath my fingers, I open my eyes to see him, calm as the sea and harsh as the ocean. He counts me into doom.

"Ten," he says, striking me harder than ever before.

I scream, as if filled with fear for the unknown, I don't know what happens at ten. Do the lights go out? Does the ocean cease to exist? Does the wind stop? Do I?

"That doesn't count," he said, shaking his head, "You were too loud."

"But we got to ten," I say, the disappointment choking me up with tears and anger.

"We did not," he says, pulling me into him, "We'll have to try again tomorrow."

I hate the promise of tomorrow, but I am grateful for it. I will count to ten over and over, if you promise me tomorrow, and assure me that I can, indeed, begin again.  I'll be someone else, if you tell me that I keep doing this, just a little bit longer. I'm afraid of the end, but I'll count to it, if you can fool me into believing the clock resets when the tide comes it.