I don’t speak of this often as it is something I’ve held closely to me, something I’ve relied upon when I didn’t think I could take another step of life. It is a bittersweet memory that has toughened and softened me, whatever I needed in the moment — a memory of love like I have never had before, and have not since. A sweet first, and tragic last.
It came from someone who entered my life like lightening bolt and exited before the flood gates gave way.
There is no way I could summarize this story that crosses over a decade and half, I really do not even understand the full scope of it all. I do know that when I was a little girl I convinced myself that everything happens in life for a reason, steps of destiny. It was a way for my mind to cope with all the dysfunction around me, with knowing what being a survivor of child sexual assault was like since I was 5 yrs old. It was a way to stay sane in an insane world. Somehow my child’s heart knew I needed it even if I didn’t realize the impact of everything as it was happening. Much like the impact from that one whisper…
It reverberates just as much today as it did in 2008. There have been days when I was hard of hearing but somehow the echoe remained, saving me, if only by a string.
It is also tied to some of the greatest heartache I have ever cried tears over — bittersweet would be an understatement. I wish I had the words to desrcibe all of the emotions and more so, the meaning in it all but perhaps that goes back to what was on my mind this morning, when I woke up, Love.
Selfless unconditional Love. How sad that it took me all these years to understand what it means and to recognize it when it is protecting that child’s heart. But it did. That is why I am willing to bury my other heartaches by facing them and calling them out for what they were — validating myself, but this one — NO — I am not willing to let go of it, I am not willing to close the door on the heartache I cried over and I am especially not willing to let go to those moments of laughter, Never.
It all goes hand in hand, all of it. Without that whisper I would not have found strength to carry on, heal myself and help others. Without that whisper, when I needed it most, well..I am not sure where I would be today, if anywhere.
They exited, kind of, my life soon after that whisper was spoken. It sent me on a spiral of self discovery — painful self discovery. Needed self discovery. I went through every emotion one could think of and as I was in the public’s eye for being a reporter in a small town, topping it off was also being a domestic violence survivor and a Liberal from the Chicagoland area in rural Wisconsin. Yes, it was a lot. I was buried under all of that, then the recession and a lot of trauma still unresolved. That whisper kept me alive, it was a lifeline, an invisible one.
So, No, as I close the doors to all these other memories causing pain I refuse to close the door on this one…
The word love was never mentioned..
They just wanted me to end self decrepitating humor, they didn’t find it funny and wanted me to believe in myself as much as they did.
How do you close the door on that…..?
I can’t. I won’t. I listened. I heard. I am grateful. I want to never forget. End of discussion.
HEALING HEARTS
https://www.gofundme.com/f/inject-healing-hearts-into-communities
I might be placing my vulnerabilities out there for the world to laugh at and me to be picked apart but we keep getting this wrong, why not try?
At least I want to try to place a bandaid on my branch of the family tree, I am tired of the destruction.
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