FORGIVENESS

Some things are unforgiveable. Yet forgiveness has been crucial to my well-being, that of forgiving myself. Does a child deserve scorn for living through the terror of sexual attacks by the brothers she loved so dearly and trusted?

Yet it is scorn. It is betrayal. It is dumping a child off in the wilderness alone, though she still lives in a house of monsters. All pretending to love her.

Does this child ever grow to love again? To trust?

No. And yes in a way that is unusual, from afar. From a place that is safe, where you cannot hurt me. Or if you do it won’t annihilate me. Protecting the tiny flicker of hope and love that resides deep down inside. 

Forgiveness is, and continues to be work for me, to forgive me. Because being left on my own at age eight with the scourge of hands burning on me for the rest of my entire life, meant taking it in as my own evil.

Washing it away will never be complete, or moments of it can miraculously occur. It becomes part of a personality, blaming myself. Blaming the family cannot occur because it is necessary for survival.  

As an adult there is a home of my own internal and external that is safe, though the feeling is fleeting. All that was taken is not forgiven, though accepted… it happened, I was there. Forgiving myself for the misfortune of being born into that group is the forgiveness sought. May peace reign.