I will hear you always.

“A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still.”  Albert Einstein

 

My brother and I have been trying to sort out the ramifications of feeling responsible for childhood abuse.

 

It seems that somehow the child walks away guilty.

 

I had to look up the word guilt.

 

Adjective, guilt

Having committed an offense, crime, violation, or wrong, esp. against moral or penal law; justly subject to a certain accusation or penalty; culpable: The jury found her guilty of murder.

Characterized by, connected with, or involving guilt:  guilty intent.

Having or showing a sense of guilt, whether real or imagined: a guilty conscience.

 

Okay, now I had to go and look up innocence.

1.    The state, quality, or virtue of being innocent, as:

a.    Freedom from sin, moral wrong, or guilt through lack of knowledge of evil.

b.    Guiltlessness of a specific legal crime or offense.

c.    Freedom from guile, cunning, or deceit; simplicity or artlessness.

d.    Lack of worldliness or sophistication; naiveté.

e.    Lack of knowledge or understanding; ignorance.

f.   Freedom from harmfulness; inoffensiveness.

2.    One that is innocent

 

What caught me is the meaning of Innocence, the state, quality or virtue of being innocent, as: Freedom from sin, moral wrong, or guilt through the lack of knowledge of evil.

 

In reading that, I now know how a child walks away guilty, he or she now know the meaning of moral wrong, sin, and knowledge of evil.

 

We know things no child is ready to know.

Innocence then is NOT KNOWING that!

 

Since we now know the meaning of sin, of moral wrong doing, and felt evil, know evil, we then believe because we know of it, we then too are guilty of it.

 

We then feel to be equal partners with the morally wrong adult.

And the meaning of guilt is ‘Having committed an offense, crime, violation, or wrong, esp. against moral or penal law.’

 

So we walk away feeling guilty because we did commit an offense.  We are no longer innocents, because we now have knowledge, experience and feelings of what evil is.

 

We walked in innocent, and were taught, and shown and experienced moral wrong behavior. 

 

Deep within us we feel guilty for doing a moral wrong.  Our innocence our lack of understanding is gone.

 

We have been introduced to evil, and somehow feel that, for we can no longer feel innocent.

 

Is there a way to get that back? Can we go back to before our abuse; can we get back a clean slate?

 

In my case, no.

 

I will never be a girl that wasn’t abused.  I will never get back my innocence, I will always and forever be a girl who was abused, that is my childhood.

 

Yet somehow I understand that my innocence was STOLEN, I didn’t just give it away, it was taken from me.  I was changed forever in that moment, but that isn’t who I am.

 

I am not my abuse.  My innocence is in understanding all of me, all of my past, and knowing that there wasn’t anything I could have done to prevent that?  I had no prior knowledge of evil, it came to me, I wasn’t the one to stage this, it happened to me.

 

My brother is struggling with these two threads….

 

The guilty thread has run his life for 46 years, exactly as long as mine did.  He cannot seem to reach and hold on to the innocent one, to see himself as a victim, a little boy with out the prior knowledge of evil before my Uncle introduced him to it.

 

He can’t remember his innocence; all he knows is the knowledge of evil.

Imagine a child not knowing innocence? Imagine a man filled with guilt over losing something that was stolen?  Imagine a man not able to stand in his own innocence, instead is harassed by a fictional tale of his guilt.

 

I too had a fictional story, a one with a loving father.  I had to re-write my tale; I had to search for my innocence too. I had to go back to my little girl and release her from her guilt.

 

I had to go back as a big assed woman and show her the lay of the land, to show her, her part.  Her part? She brought love, trust and faith, and it was stolen away and replaced with shame, blame and guilt and knowledge of evil, her body knew.

 

How do I convince my brother, he at 4 is not responsible, that little boys don’t arrive on this planet filled with shame, blame and guilt!

 

They don’t come here knowing of evil, evil is shown to them.

 

How do you convince a grown man, that evil is not who he is.

 

More importantly how do you show him what innocence is?

How do you tell him, that he and he alone has walked far too long in shoes that are not his to wear. How do you convince him that every thing he has ever known is wrong?  How do you show him how to wear the cloak of white, when for so long he has felt it isn’t his to wear?

 

I see him as a little boy who was injured and one who can’t accept this was an action against him, not from him. 

 

Imagine how hard it would be to live as evil inside, that that is all you have ever known.

 

Too little to remember innocence, Too little to remember who he really is,Too little.

 

He is forever feeling like he will be found out.

Found out he is what?

 

It seems he is waiting for the ‘outside,’ us folks to find out that inside it is really true…..but no one out here sees him as he sees himself.

He sees himself differently than we do.  Why?

 

Our self- image truly comes from the inside.  Something inside of him has him convinced and is stronger than the voices outside.

 

We can’t convince him he is innocent.  That is up to him to discover, maybe instead he should find the ways he is guilty.

 

I want to know them, show me the evidence.

 

Show me the money!

 

Tell me what you knew, tell me your plan, show me where you learned this from….You tell me how you were able to get a grown man to take off his pants at 4 years old, tell me!

 

Maybe your gagging and anxiety is because you have had it all wrong, maybe you are anxious to be held accountable for something you had no control over?

 

What did you control?  What?

 

Maybe if you realize that you are not in control, that it isn’t you that is running this show, maybe just maybe you will find you are innocent. 

 

Your mind has you convinced he does.  Your mind has you out there in a pretend future, and a pretend past.

 

Martha beck is wrong….”Forgiveness is knowing your past can change, It has to change if you remember it all wrong.”

 

Forgive your mental mind for drawing the wrong conclusion, that when you had knowledge of evil, it didn’t make you evil, it made you one who knew evil.

 

I am sorry the Uncle you trusted, had faith in, taught you evil, he gave you knowledge of evil.  He eclipsed the little innocent boy and put the knowledge of evil in its place.

 

It is up to you now to replace that image of that little boy.

In your mind you have his image as evil.

In your mind your Uncle is innocent.

One of you is lying?

Tell me who?

 

You only get one choice Is he guilty or are you?

 

Pick one.

 

Say it aloud to yourself.

 

I will hear you always.