The Weight I Carry

Trigger Warning: Topic is about Sexual Abuse/ Cussing- If the topic is uncomfortable for you - skip todays article

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Photo by Christopher Sardegna on Unsplash

This topic is tough. I cannot to this day, comfortably watch movies that have abuse in them. Physical or sexual it doesn`t matter. I will look for reasons to go and do anything to avoid the flashbacks and anxiety it creates in me. I have successfully buried the flashbacks so deep I hope they never resurface fully. If one creeps in, I instantly shut it down.

Why write about it then? Because I want to be free of it. Free from the shame and the guilt of still loving or caring about the men who abused me. I do not hate any of them. I am disgusted and loathe their actions. I can never think of them, but I cannot hate them. I don`t have the answer to why, not fully and it adds to the weight I carry.

I have been in three major relationships in my life. All of them I have ended and all of them abusive in one form or another. I seek not to ever be in a position to wonder what someone else wants or expects from me ever again. I am tired of feeling dirty or like some piece of meat to be handle as a man sees fit. It is my body, mine and if I don`t want to be touched or expected to erase myself and my wants and needs to be at your beckon call or selfishly think that communication and partnership should be reciprocated, I have that right. My birth right, isn`t it?

Am I angry, yes. That still today, with all of our advancements the acceptance that a woman needs to be subservient to a man and his desires and his views of our worth. Does that mean I hate men; no. I do not trust all men. I do not trust most men. There are only maybe, maybe a half dozen in my life that I trust without fear. And those men have proved themselves. How, do you ask? They have never made me feel uncomfortable, tried to cop a feel, nor been suggestive that they could have of me what they wanted. Even as a joke because taking what hasn`t been offered is nothing to joke about, ever.

So, as you read further do not think I am without anger and disappointment at the societal complicity that we give boys who grow to become men. As “boys will be boys”, or locker room (barn) talk. Women who are strong are considered ‘Bitches or (excuse the term, I hold no bias to lesbians) Dykes’ as a way of diminishing our accomplishments, our sacrifices, our moral standards we set for ourselves.

Some say if there is not pain, there is not gain. I hate the saying but know it`s truth. I thought it was finally time to sit in the calm and be at peace for once, here at the end. When will it end? Will I stay sane?

I am on the last leg of my journey, and I felt I earned my rest. Should I have known that there may be a final test? Must I take it? Do I dare complain?

Maybe I think to myself, no I don`t think I know. There is a weight within me, that I have yet to let go. I thought I had, when I forgave the one that took my innocence away. But I dare not speak of how I still love him to this day.

The disgust I have been met with at the mere thought that I could still love the man who abused me. Then followed by accusations of my participation or acceptance of the very thing that destroyed any resemblance of trust in a man, sickens me. (oh yes, my five-year-old self seduced a full-grown man, eff that shit) I was five, FIVE and it went on until I was twelve.

Mother nature dressed as puberty saved me. With that knowledge, I was instructed by my abuser, one early Sunday morning, that I needed to confess MY sin. I wonder to this day if he did? And if so, why the priest, God`s intermediary, would not save a child? Did I confess such a thing? No…… not until before my second marriage. And the monsignor released me as it was not my sin to ever confess. Sixteen years from the day I was told to confess to the day I did I carried that shame that weight that somehow it was my fault, and I would forever burn in hell.

Man she`s got issues, is that what you are thinking? I don`t blame you if you are. I wear my scars outwardly upon my skin now, where they laid once upon my soul. A life in therapy. Yet are we not all subject to a life in therapy. We face challenges every day. Do we learn and grow from them? The hardest, to me is to find light where there is darkness, once you`ve felt it`s bitterness, it weights your soul in its heaviness.

So why do I still love the man I called my father? Below are some reasons.

He was my dad. I thought all fathers behaved that way. I was around nine the first time I felt this was not normal.

He taught me how to drive and taught me to be on time. I told him once, “Hey I had the right of way!” “Yup, you’re dead right” his reply. A life lesson I learned that day.

Your word is your bond, keep true to your word. A contract binds, your word carries on. “It will follow you through life”, he said as he taught me about being a good worker and give the hour your worth. Do not cheat or steal and never, never tell a lie.

He taught me how to fish and bait a hook. He taught me to wash a floor on my hands and knees, write a check, budget and he taught me how to cook.

Never did he utter a fowl word in my direction. That my mother accomplished. She stated all my life until I was 28 that she hated my guts, while he said he loved me. I wonder why I was so effed up in adolescence. I carried more anger at her for not protecting me than of him abusing me. I forgave them both. I was their child, and I needed to learn how to love that child within myself.

I`ve had it thrown at me more than once when I finally sought out therapy. How can you still love him? You must have asked for it or liked it. How vile, how f*cking sick and twisted minded those words are. How cruel those people were who could utter such things about a five-year-old.

He did not deny his guilt when confronted by family, when I came forward at 26. He could have and caused me more damage. Making immediate family choose who`s truth would be believed.

He asked for my forgiveness when he had his stroke the following year of my initial therapy and passed the year after that.

No one, and I do mean no one would have ever thought that my father would have done such a thing. An affair with his sister-in-law, well yes, he was a man but abuse me, that way, oh no, never.

He the good provider, a middles class income, home and family. Hard worker and devoted family man. Ironic that a man who slept around was still considered a family man. Quiet and kind, who hated liars and thieves. But if left unsaid and unasked, he was granted a pass as a man of his times.

He was abused himself; he told me by a family member he was farmed out to, earning money for the rest of the family. The oldest of sixteen children, who took more than one beating from my grandfather. Doesn`t excuse his actions in any way but does explain his psychology.

And before I am asked. No, my girls were never left alone in my father’s company nor care. He was their Papa, but my eyes were never off of my girls when he was around them. They learned long after dad`s passing when they were older. (teenagers)

I only had to tell him once that I could not stand to hear from his girlfriend about her grandchild who was abused (not by my father) - (that woman I have come the closest to hating- I despise her to this day) My aunt, who told my mother she was pregnant for my father`s child when I was two. I said to my father- Do you not think I know the trauma that child has gone through? Do you not think I know what issues she will have the rest of her life? My aunt never again uttered a word around me.

The more I have written the more I have realized it has actually been a love/hate relationship with my father, my mother and now that I am sitting and thinking about it most relationships when I have been wronged or hurt.

The need inside of me to be loved, feel loved, had me always seeking for somebody else’s opinion of what it meant to be me. Who I was in relationship to them, for them, instead of myself.

I stood strong and hard thinking that I showed people I loved myself but inside I was still that child who didn`t understand why I was so bad. That child has grown and has set free all of what others expected from her.

I do not want to carry this weight any longer. I am not sorry that somehow I found it within myself to love those that hurt me. With some it isn`t love, but it definitely is not a hate. It is more sorrow, or disappointment, for a love or friendship that could have been.

This next sentence pisses me off because this is how my mind has been trained by actual shit thrown at me. What makes you so perfect? Maybe it was you? Yes, maybe it was me who tried to never hurt somebody on purpose. I wasn`t spiteful I didn`t enjoy knowing I somehow upset someone. I never claimed perfection, so don`t feed me than line! It`s in my song I wrote in therapy. I just don`t want to be guilty no more for sins that are not mine.

Now my vulnerability is scrolled across the page. I bare my scar by removing it`s scab. Who, and there is always a who, will pore salt into the wound I try to heal?

That is the weight I carry. I have carried for 53 long years and have wanted release from. But can it come? Must I carry it to my grave? It is not pity, or applause nor martyrdom I seek.

It is peace

I just want peace

I will not share the song I wrote at sixteen about my abuse.

Dad has been gone coming up on 29 years and I have not sung nor listened to that song in probably 25 or 26 years.

Truth, I miss my dad, not the abuser. I love my dad, not the abuse. Forgiving doesn`t mean forgetting, though I wish it did.

Forgiving allows the abused to move forward and try to do that without carrying the weight; that hate, shame and guilt tacked on. The darkness it casts can last a lifetime. I`ve been seeking the light. I do everything in my power to stay in the light for I have been where there wasn`t any and it almost cost me my life.

✨Be the Light in some one`s darkness