Pain Don't Hurt Read Free Page A

He always had an answer, an explanation. He seemed so cool. Later, when that answer became drugs and that wily personality became a dishonest one, we drifted apart. Or rather, he drifted, leaving me to take the brunt of my father’s brutality all on my own. It isn’t surprising that he ended up in the world of drugs, as we all were looking for escape from the ghosts of where we came from. My mother and father chose alcohol. Colin just went with the pattern laid before him, though his selections of substances tended toward the . . . exotic. I don’t know if he chose to live part-time with my dad as a child or if his mother sent him to be with him, but he was there, his childhood split between the two houses. I know that whoever made the decision for him to be raised in that house with my father, even part-time, did him a great disservice.
    â€œAll right, now you need to imagine your feet are nailed to the floor. Get in that fight stance and only turn from the waist, and don’t look all scared. Wipe your stupid mouth and quit gawking. Pretend you’re not a scared little idiot.”
    Looking back on it now, it makes me laugh. I was so shit scared of him back then, I did whatever he told me to do without question. Now I know he was giving me terrible advice. You always step with your jab, remain loose in your stance, and whip punches starting from your feet all the way up. You don’t “imagine your feet are nailed to the floor.” So stupid.
    â€œNow throw that jab out there. Throw like you actually want to hurt somebody, not like you’re just some pathetic princess. You want me to start calling you ‘princess’?”
    I balled up my fists and threw them as hard as I could into the center of his giant palms, trying as hard as I could to focus on keeping my feet, floating in my big brother’s shoes, from moving even a little bit. Sweat was rolling down my forehead, and my stomach was clenched into an angry tangle of nerves. I was in danger of throwing up, which seemed a better alternative than standing there in front of him right then, except that I knew if I did, he would kick my ass even harder. My punches weren’t hitting hard enough. I knew they weren’t because he was looking more and more irritated. I couldn’t seem to generate enough power to have an effect. I imagined my hands punching clean through his palms to the other side and slamming him in the face. I imagined him, with a surprised look on his face, laid out on the floor. I imagined him scared of me.
    My father’s favorite quote was “It is better to be feared than respected, for fear lasts longer.” He loved to tell anyone and everyone this. When I was diagnosed as being a type 1 diabetic very early in life, followed shortly by being diagnosed as having a problem with my aortic valve, something in him seemed to decide that he needed to “toughen me up.” As though that disease was my choice. He hated that I had any natural frailty.
    â€œYou call that a punch? Come on!” he roared. Everything in me wanted him to disappear, to just explode into a puff of dust with my next punch. I begged, pleaded, made deals with God or whoever. I wished as hard as I could. Nothing will encourage religious tendencies more than the feeling of absolute helplessness. Maybe that is why my mother never missed a service. She attended morning mass every day, both in her church and in my father’s. While my father professed to be a Catholic, my mother preferred the Russian Rite church, but she liked to attend both churches. I think she would have gone to a synagogue if she thought they would have her. She would drag me with her every Sunday to her church and then to the Catholic church. I still think the rituals affiliated with both churches are beautiful. I mean, you want to see Christ presented with a lot of pomp and circumstance, go to a Catholic or Russian Rite church. The costumes, the