There was no Spring this year, like last. It’s summer and I’m not ready. I’m still struggling with the aches and pains of winter, as they haven’t receded like the pile of dirty snow in the street, now gone. I normally start to feel normal before now, or at least better.
My continued apologies to my readers for not writing more often. I’m trying to be forgiving for not living up to the standards I’ve imposed on myself” I can only do what I can.
I find it funny I’ve never reread any of the posts in here, not one. It’s like a painting I toiled over or a song on the piano, once it’s done I better move on. Otherwise I’ll paint over it or change the melody and lose what was once there.
My editor, wonderful person that she is, will probably frown at all the one line paragraphs or trains of thought, so I figure I should create a topic to write about.
But I can’t.
I remember a pain chart somewhere on a wall, a poster really, that had the customary bar moving upward, from one to ten, with an emoji smiling or grimacing at each level. You know, ten little 🙂🥵 or 😕 assigned to the respective number and level of pain.
There also was a brief sentence describing the various levels of pain, such as “I know it’s there, but don’t think about it” to “it’s the only thing I can think of”. I’m not quite at that level, but close.
Meaning it’s real damn hard to focus on anything for more than 10 minutes.
So my friends, I either quit writing, or tell shorter stories. There’s a lot of things I’d like to say, or capture on paper. Partially a journal I should have started 60 years ago, but didn’t. Partially my view on life having gone through a tremendous amount of highs and even more tremendous amounts of lows. I did manage to learn a lot along the way, too bad I never applied any of it until lately. A work in progress.
What I do know is writing down bits and pieces of my life has been extremely cathartic, especially writing down the traumatic event that triggered the whole thing. One night that occurred 62 years ago, ancient history.
That one singular moment guided, or should I say misguided, my entire pathway from that point on.
Being raped when a young boy influenced everything I did from that point onward. My gender, my self-esteem and the right and wrong decisions I’ve made along the way. Relationships and family. For five decades I felt I did something wrong, I was to blame. Once I looked at it through a seven-year old’s eyes, I realized I was reading way more into it than I should have. Over-thinking the whys and hows instead of taking it for what it was.
A seven year old just doesn’t have the mental capacity to analyze what happened. I see that now.
Being raped nearly haunted me forever, nearly, but after writing the whole miserable mess down in this blog I’ve been able to escape it’s grip. !!! 🙂
I don’t fully understand how it works, but my theory is simple. I managed, after several months, to put the actions of those 2 days down in a simple story. After publishing it for the world to read, I wrapped it up and put it on some back shelf of my mind, and left it there.
I don’t need to keep re-living the nightmare, and if I’m ever stupid enough to do so, I can go to that post and read the entire tragedy in one sitting.
Since writing, I found the flashbacks and nightmares slowly went by the wayside to the point I haven’t suffered either in the past 15 months. The last was a flashback in a men’s room at a doctors office.
If I find myself even starting to think about it, I remember there’s no need to re-visit it. It happened once in real time, so skip the re-run.
I realize now I was never to blame for what happened. My parents really screwed up by putting their child in harm’s way. Trust me in saying I’m far from “cured”, I still have to work on self love, forgiveness and compassion. Those will come in time.
The anger I still have needs a lot of work, so I guess I’ll keep writing.
I’m finding it terribly hard to write about that without, well, getting angry.
I sense a lot of revisions in my future.