Tag: nothing

  • It knows and Forgives it away!

    Byron Katie, "Loving What Is"

    "I love thanking these men for sacrificing their entire lives to teach our children how not to live – and therefore how to live – if they want to be free.  I tell them that they are the greatest teachers and that their lives are good and needed.  Before I leave, I ask them, "Would you spend the rest of your life in prison if you knew that it would keep one child from having to live what you're living?" And many of these violent men understand, and they just well up with tears like sweet little boys."  Byron Katie

     

    Imagine using your life as an example of what not to do.  I truly do believe that if they are willing to sacrifice their whole lives so we can see a living example of what not to do, it begs us to learn from that.

    Just as Penn State is a living example of how not to react when faced with abuse. It seems that each person who heard or saw something did the opposite of what needs to be done.  And in doing so has shown us a great example of a huge institution and how one man has the power to taint it all.

    The opportunities of people stopping him are incredible…big guys, powerful guys, guys with clout and intelligence, and all let this pedophile continue to hurt little boys.

    What a shining example of how we deal with sexual abuse.  WE don't.

    If only this was a Penn State problem, but it is a world wide epidemic.  Look at the students RIOTING to save a man who didn't tell.  

    We want to save a reputation of a man who didn't tell.  Oh, he told the supervisors, but he didn't draw a hard line and refuse to work in an organization who protected pedophiles.  He didn't of himself go to the law of the land and say, "this is going on".

    And as Jon Stewart says, "We are not trying to take away your football" or in the FALC's case, your religion…WE just want the ABUSE to STOP!!!  

    Let's use this as an example and begin walking one by one to the sheriff with what you know, names you have heard, tales of horror being done to the children.  I know, IF I know, you know.  

    You know and you will either be an example of doing nothing or doing something…the choice is yours to decide.

    Sadly, It isn't that no one knows…it is that they know, it is just that they too decided to do nothing for reasons personal to them.  

    The church is not what you all think it is…it isn't this pure state of faith, this island in the storm of evil of life, it is the vortex of sexual abuse, that has a bigger tool than Penn State, It has the Forgiveness of sins.  IT knows and Forgives it away! 

     

     

  • Orphaned with parents.

    The view I have on my childhood home, is that my father sits and does nothing and my mother runs around busy busy.

    And yet how much further from the truth that actually was.

    My father sat, after he abused.
    My mother did nothing about the abuse.

    Their opposing actions are what twist the mind of a child.
    We look for signs, and see the opposite of our experiences, we think we are nuts, we have a problem in our head.

    There he sits and does nothing, there she goes busy again.

    As we speak, she is in another land, rocking orphaned babies. It is ironic or not that she is rocking her own children…for we were left on our own in our own home.

    Orphaned but not homeless. Orphaned with parents.

    (I am not for sure for sure, IF she is gone to the orphanage as planned, this is an assumption of mine.) I may hear of my false info, so wanted to be upfront, the plans may have changed, it could already have happened, her where abouts is unknown to me.)

  • Matter to someone.

    What came to me yesterday was the moment in the diner this summer, when I saw my mother for the first time after a 5-year separation, and how my body responded. How before I could put on my social cloak, I was riveted in fear.

    My body had reacted perfectly and yet I didn’t have all the puzzle pieces, but now I do.

    The reason I feared her isn’t because of what she would do to me, but what she had been unable to do in my past.

    How she was unable to get me/us away from a pedophile, that in fact she did the opposite, she tried to make their union normal, while he abused us.

    How she forgave his sins, and rallied harder to make their marriage work, to keep him so we had a father. She put all her efforts in keeping something that wasn’t true. She focused harder on him, and never once treated our wounds.

    As a child you see how invisible you are, how unhearing she is, how unresponsive to your pain.

    I now feel better about the way I feared her, for at the time it almost felt like I had self empowerment leakage, where even as a 51 year old woman, my 80 year old mother could send me into a fit of terror.

    My body recalls her and responds in its truth.
    I love my body and its meters.

    And how true to form she has remained after all these years.

    What stands out the most of the days, weeks, months after my father being arrested for molesting his granddaughter, is the absence of my mother.

    She actually was sequestered and not taking our calls. She went on vacation to Australia and Hawaii, she stayed in the warm climate for months, and only arrived here around the time my father was driven home in chains.

    I do not recall one action that would bring comfort to a child who was abused by that man, not one. She was so busy caring for her needs and his, that she overlooked the dozens of girls, by this time, who stood around with their underwear down, bottoms exposed, abuse clearly showing, and did what she needed to do.

    When I sat in her home, four months after the fact, I saw her shed tears about what was going to happen to her, I saw her strength arise in defense of him and her religion, I saw her blank and defensive when I confronted her on her actions as a mother.

    Not a tear fell as I told her about my experience with her husband, it was like the doors were all closed, I was talking to nothing.

    Isn’t it incredible yet again, that we can fear actions of nothing.

    Nothing. To do nothing is extremely painful to endure.

    My mother sent cards and made personal visits to all the girls she knew who had been molested by her husband, neighbor girls, but she did not give me her daughter the same courtesy. She apologized in a letter saying how sorry she was, that she didn’t believe this young neighbor girl and was sad that it took years to do so.

    The detective handed me that letter, and I crumpled it up and threw it on the floor, like a child enraged, and I was.

    My own mother at the time was sequestered and not taking my calls, was unable to hear of my childhood abuse, and she was penning letters to other hurt little girls.

    How telling, how cruel, how insane…how dare she dismiss me that easily.

    Again what I feared from her was nothing.

    Nothing again.

    I am worth nothing again.

    Nothing.

    What she gives me is nothing, a void. Space, silence, a void.

    I just looked at the two words together. A Void.

    I didn’t know that avoiding was nothing.

    A void.

    When you avoid someone you give them nothing and doing nothing creates a void

    A void isn’t love, it is space, silent, open, and alone.

    Imagine feeling this energy from a mother while you have wounds from your father?

    Instead of being able to find comfort and shelter, we encounter a void, space, emptiness, where no one is coming, nothing will happen…

    A void is who my mother is to me.

    Running from my father I fell into a void.

    It is no wonder my mind couldn’t comprehend or compute, there was no safety anywhere.

    Who is there to catch you when you fall?

    My last line in my letter to Mr. Detective man was, “Every little girl should matter to someone.”

  • Pick Up the Broken Piece.

    What a slow learner I am, how incredibly naïve and blindly stupid…I am surprised that I am just now catching on. How has it taken me this long, almost six years to figure this out?

    The pain I have gone through, the mental anguish and all the soul searching, and still I didn’t know.

    My family didn’t break apart, wasn’t destroyed and didn’t crumble under the weight of abuse, it wasn’t shattered, or flung upside right or mentally broken, only I was.

    I broke.

    In my head I had them all broken up like me, but they remain intact, a full family, minus a few.

    No worse for the wear, unscathed and unbroken, they are holding up strong as the same family unit, while I am broken.

    My brokenness is sharp, loud, and unwanted, a jagged point that doesn’t fit into the familiar routine.

    A routine I can’t remember, forgetting the lines and missing the steps, characters changing before my eyes, my script no longer matches theirs.

    When they laugh I cry, what they love I fear, when they gather I flee…I shout at their silences, say wrong words that jumble up the play.

    I am the heckler or a bad actor playing on the wrong set and ruining the show.

    When I am gone and silent the show returns to its familiar dialogue.

    I see the picture clearer now…I see me trying to direct a play in progress, wanting to hand out new scripts, change characters and lines, make it a horror movie instead of a comedy…

    What I have been trying so hard to do is change a play in progress.

    I have been wanting them to change so the broken me fits in…while they want me to return to the stage unbroken, healed, once again the old me.

    The spot is open, the stage is there unchanged all I have to do is not be broken and rejoin the chorus line.

    What I know to be true of all people who are abused within the family, it is not so much the first betrayal, but the second one.
    The second betrayal is that once you expose yourself and speak your words is that nothing changes, except that you are now alone and exposed.

    Kicked off the stage of your childhood home.

    I sit here dumbfounded at my naiveté how I foolishly believed that a child, even an adult child that was broke, would break the whole family, but my family marched on, again.

    No one stopped to pick up the broken piece.

  • The Consequences are nothing.

     

    “To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.”   

             Theodore H. White

     

     

    Today a sister has a birthday…I am silent.

     

    I will go against the usual Happy Birthday banter and say nothing. 

     

    Saying nothing matches the flavor of our relationship, which is nothing.

     

    To pretend that we do have something between us seems pointless to me, to drop our nothingness for one moment to utter ‘happy birthday seems sacrileges.

     

    We both agree we do not match, there is no pretending between us, so it seems even odder to step out of our nothingness to act in a manner of being ‘something’ to each other, and then retreat back into nothingness.

     

    It doesn’t feel heroic, but sad that my relationships between them and me were so easily changed to nothing.

     

    Nothing is what we are to each other.

    Not sisters or friends, maybe more like strangers we once thought we knew.

     

    Standing in the truth of nothingness feels better than wanting something from nothing.

     

    I know that I am the one who changed severely, who went against the dominant way of thinking, what I didn’t expect was that, that act alone would relegate me to nothing.

     

    It takes a heroine to be nothing, to stand with yourself, your truths and your perceptions, knowing you are heading against the current and will suffer the consequences.

     

    The consequences are nothing.