How I fought for myself on Friday.
Age seven is when I realized I was not going to escape. Some People may wonder at my strangeness my aloofness and why I am often quiet in my way. Some who have heard my story or parts of it In an effort I think to try to Fix something shout to the heavens forgive! You have to Forgive! As if it's a magic pill that will release me from the horror they did not live. So I ask them. At 7 Did you eat cockroaches with your oatmeal mistaking them for raisins? Did you wash your bowl and spoon with rags full of maggots and knew that that bowl and spoon would never be clean enough but ate anyway because of the pain of hunger? And then because you felt such shame you stood as a child washing dishes for 9 hours straight many times over because you couldn't take it anymore only to have it go back three days later? Have you ever had to walk through a home knee deep in the decay of sanitary napkins, dirty diapers and trash that sticks and leaves its stickiness on you? How about this? How about being made to feel special for you eagerness to clean so that you can become a servant in a slum house and think that this is what defines your specialness. Oh it's a bitterness alright. Not so easy to forget the roller skates and chipped sidewalks that brought the news to you that you weren't going to school. That you would learn with books at home that had a fresh supply of destroyed self worth to use as bookmarks. And then later not even shown any worth of being a schooled child at all... and then have all these times of togetherness and happy times glorified all the while feeling guilty for wanting to be somewhere else doing something else, being made to feel ashamed of who you are?. In your words of forgiving I hear be not bitter. It hurts. Use this as a great gift you say. Or the passive aggressive statements like God won't give you any more than you can handle,Think and focus on of all the good times! This also, is the dangerous lie I use to tell myself. It is not all a gift even though I try to find usefulness out of this mess out of this scar coat. Living this was hell on earth even through moments of laughter and the facade of happiness.. It was a curse and my mental illness is BECAUSE IT BECAME AND WAS MORE THAN I COULD HANDLE!
It is the worst kind of festering wound for a child when abuse murders and robs you of parts of self in order to survive and for a grown person to try to heal this?. Who was told over and over I love you, I love you, we love you, we love you! But shown different.. that your worth was based on obedience and killing off parts of yourself was a noble act and that your worth was determined by how useful you were to supplying them with what they wanted and needed. Is an awful thing to try to overcome. As a young adult To try to seek things to supply your own needs or to just be you? To want? To dream? And in the beginning be cruelly told, You can do that!.. only to realize it was a joke. What they meant was No you can't do that. Never that in your way only my way, this way. Anything outside of their perimeter was a damn joke. So You Stop dreaming because you are reminded with all the years of belts and bibles, ideas, and neglect that you are really just a damned child who does not belong in this society, in this world. Your dreams are spun and turned into knives that get turned and pointed inward and pierce your own heart. But that wasn't even enough. It later became beliefs that dreaming of anything more outside their box was an actual sin. Your thoughts of just wanting to be you was an actual sin. That creativity outside of this box was evil and your very thoughts even unspoken thoughts were reason enough for your punishments. Becoming something, doing something different was a treacherous act if it went against their ideas and concepts, again punishment. Socializing and having friends became an abomination and invited punishment and and seeking help or exploring different ideas?.. was inviting in the devil in himself! SO you were told, daughter Burn your dreams, the unicorns and the magical things that you created because it is filth and idolatry.. They say while you sit in the very filth they created for your pillow at night. You go to sleep with the smell of Laundry full of piss, mildew, dog excrement, beer and whiskey burning your nose. But oh you must forgive. This I have heard so many times. Yes even for this forgive.
Believe you say. Believe and consider in this religion or that religion or this way of thinking or that way and you will be free. That little one will never be free. I had a religion that was called non religion that squeezed the life out of me and convinced my heart and mind that death was my only escape. To live meant suffering and more suffering. And to leave this religion or group or whatever the hell you want to call it? Was to openly invite death at my door and not only wait for it to destroy me but the lives of my children. So after leaving I became a watchman and stayed awake every night for months making sure my children were still breathing, afraid everyday when I went out i would meet death. Everything had the potential to bring me my punishment. From choking on an ice cube while being by myself to a semi coming across the road to take me out.
In all honesty, I'm SO glad you found your way. I wouldn't wish this on anyone but can't you see? Your way is not my way and never will be. If you have room for choices It's sometimes easier to pick a way when you are not poisoned by venomous words and coldness disguised as warmth. But we all have our own path to walk, to find meaning for living, to figure out what we are to learn on our journey. I'm a fool and I cut off my own soul. By leaving this is what I was taught. And when you say forgive before I'm ready? You are also saying this. So I sit here crying because I guess I am. But it's my choice right now because the wounds are not healed. They are not tough scars yet. I do not profess to know anymore than I do and I most certainly do not know everything. But to the ones who act like you know everything? You know very little and also just know what you know and your knowledge comes from your own reality just as my knowledge came from mine. And now we try to create lives despite these realities by these ideas and beliefs but it's often just projections of our past story and it's our job to know the difference between reality and projections and how to grow up out of the pile of earth we were each born from But to think there is only this one way? You are also being foolish.
How can you ask a rose to grow in a vase full of acid? Or ask her to be in a vase that once held acid at all? This rose even if it kills her must jump out and replant herself in a garden where she can tend to her damaged roots and grow without the confines of a vase and accept that her flower blooms are darker and more frayed than most. She is crooked, and strange against the pale pink of the others. There is no fitting in for her. No true belonging to anything except to the dust under her feet and to the stars in the sky. Conformity for the gift of acceptance for her might as well be death.
But here we are to that forgiveness thing again. Don't you know the pain you cause by not forgiving, You ask? Yes. I do. And you know what? Maybe this dark side of me that was tormented and hurt finds it better to have justice right now by not forgiving when there was no justice at all before. Maybe this is my way for now to allow myself anger where I could never have it. You are only hurting yourself you say. Maybe I am.. but isn't that my right to do so? This hurt? It's what I feel right now.. after a lifetime of being numb...This may change to something else that looks like and is forgiveness later but for now until things are felt, healed and let go it must be how it is to create space for that something else later..
You see behind the veil of these words, beliefs, attitudes, neglect, laws and glory I was really taught to hate any part of myself that strayed from that.. so to the one who hated and spread it? his own seed now turns against him. Because under this cloak of self judgment and the protective self critic, this little one needs a different protection now when she never had any before. And I need to learn to relearn things, like what it is to live, love her and me now, all parts of myself where there wasn't any before. But I'm not there yet. I still have coals to walk over.
She wasn't protected. She was exploited in the worst way as she got older not by family only but by others who drove her deeper into isolation and believing that the world was in fact a very unsafe place by form of experiencing rape and was taught to be small and made to want it and to like it and shut the f*ck up about it. Because speaking up meant more doom and pain, so all which to her felt like being a tiger stuffed in a matchbox. And To love for genuine reasons? Was also to be called and screamed at and labeled as a harlot by my father even though it was only being with one person my teenage self trusted. I was a harlot because he said it was what Gods message was to me. I was fulfilling some kind of prophecy he said. And because of rape and my decision to make love to try to make sense from it, in conjunction with my filthy life I believed him. And I believed that I had no control over anything. My life was decided for me. But one day. That changed. All this awakened something primal and wild and it taught me to fight. So now I am much like a wounded animal. And when poked I cower until I'm backed into a corner. But in that corner is where you will find my strength. My strength is in that corner. One must think it's the place of defeat but it is where I find my strength and power, my wild nature and I strike out with power and tear away and shred and pounce and devour at the flesh of the heart of rapists and soul murderers until they leave me alone. And then I hide myself among the jungle plants to lick and heal my battle wounds..
Until next time because in my thoughts and memories and dreams there's always a next time. I find the next times in the grocery store, as I'm eating oatmeal and dropping my kids off to school. I find the next times in laughter, and intimacy, sex, and empty chairs and when I wash dishes and do laundry and when I get touched by surprise I'm ready to strike out of fear. I never asked for this but it is what I have to work with. So finally, you all know.. You can now quit asking me to forgive because now you see me right?. And know. Under this cloak of this little one is a wounded beast and she no longer will trust the stench of meat that always was full of poison. It is better for her to drink from the pools of the earth. For there is truth. The earth mother. The universe, That is her sanctuary.
It's not found in words that come out of the opening of ignorant mouths which spew words and commands of obedience to beliefs like glittering dog vomit to this one.. love, for me in captivity? It came from all those words from those books and now? for this tigress, the one hidden under the cloak of this child, this woman, this soul?.. love has a different new meaning and it doesn't come from a book.. it never will.
Just so you know there are days when I do forgive. I have understanding. But then I have these days when more wound are revealed that need healed. These days when the enormity of the truth hurts just too damn much.
I am mad. I am enraged with fury. My eyes burn red with tears from it. But I Have every reason to be and to let it go I need to be angry and be able to share it without fearing that I'll get killed for it, judged for it, shamed for it. Then... and only then will I be able to be open for the possibility of forgiving and transformation into something else.Yes there is an immaturity here but as someone who had parts of her personality and self destroyed I'm building myself up from the ground up in some places. Building myself from places that should have been nurtured as an infant, child, and teenager. Some days I just get mad because it hurts. If you made it this far?.. bless you.
