I'm posting this on here but please be forewarned that it wasn't easy to write and I'm sure it is not easy to read. Please take care of yourself if you decide to read this.
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Last night my body was hurting pretty bad and very tense/tight/stiff. My neck/mid and upper back especially sometimes going into my low back. Breathing was difficult as if it was almost impossible and my chest/lungs hurt. This morning, the pain intensified and was getting to the point I couldn’t take much more of it. My body was feeling exhausted and depressed.
So I went and jumped in the pool and started just pushing the water around with my arms trying to let the anger and emotions flow through that were coming up. I was taking a lot of frustrations out on the water and then I got to the point of just screaming underneath the water and hitting my arms in the water as hard as I could. It didn’t take long to get to a point of exhaustion and then I laid in one of the recliner pool chairs that we have. As I moved my arms, I could feel my body release in many ways and shake and tremble. Knowing what that’s about, I just let it happen and kept focusing on moving and breathing. Finally my breath did like the polar bear video and just went deep and then let go.
By that time, I was exhausted and I just let my body lay there for some time (until the rain storm came up). But my mind began to be flooded with so many words. I think of it as John Boy Walton used to say, that sometimes I get so much in my head going around, I just have to put it down on paper. This was one of those times. I just had to write. I couldn’t keep it in any longer. When I was done writing (through all the tears and emotions that were coming up), my body gave a big sigh of relief. Much of the pain and stiffness in my body had left, although some residual pain/stiffness was still around. I let the words of what I wrote, sink in and let myself cry as hard as my body wanted to.
When Jeff got home, I told him I wanted to go to the beach because I wanted to read what I wrote to the Ocean. So off we went. It was hard reading the words but I really wanted to have the sounds of them go out from me. It was a release and I knew the ocean was big enough to take them. When I finished through the crying and emotions that came up as a result, my body felt a sense of peacefulness and resolve. We spent the next hour just walking along side the ocean right next to the surface taking in the ocean sounds.
There’s a little residual pain/stiffness I notice in myself but it is a far different feel than just a few hours earlier. I’m feeling more like I can do this instead of feeling overwhelmed. I’ll probably get in the pool and do some more movement stuff tomorrow to keep it flowing through. This one was a rough one and it sure hit me pretty hard. The good thing is, I found a way through it.
Here's what I wrote:The pain within my body grows as fast as a weed drenched by buckets of water. It has no end. The pain continues. Every nook
and cranny of my body hurts and screams out as if a giant club is whacking it over and over. Every muscle fiber and cell dreams of a day when the pain ends, the back no longer hurts and the body moves with ease. It hurts and I want to scream. It hurts and I want to cry. It hurts but alas this is just another day.
I cry out looking for someone to fix this, someone to take this away, someone to just bring an end to it. I search for the path through it hoping to escape the pain my body endures. I long to listen to the answers for all the questions that I have and that hound me every day and night I take a breath. I beg for an end to this nightmare called life. Some days when I feel I have the strength to go on, a thief comes and robs me of all energy I can muster up.
My wonderings travel into the amusement of some sick entity that is enjoying all the pain I suffer through. My heart feels a burden of a million knives that were jammed through it. My eyes have seen so many things they wish to forget and my arms have been held back as a prisoner wanting to escape its captors.
Everything around me seems to trigger an episode of epic proportions with no logical analysis to grasp. The facts don’t add up. The observations fall short. The sounds, the smells, the touches all seem as one army united against me that my eyes cannot see. Yet, I know it exists. Its surprise awaits me with each glimpse of a night time sky or sun filled day. The triggers they come and go, almost as if they are the thief I run from. They rob me of everything. They steal me blind. How can I go on?
It is almost paralyzing when the pain begins to grown. The anger sits on the sideline as it becomes my world. The anger within me grows pushing the pains that I feel to the breaking point of no return. I so long, to notice the flowers, not the storms. I long to feel the soft gentle waves of the ocean, not the rocks hidden below the surface. I so long to feel normal, safe and secure. I so long to feel my body instead of trying to outrun it.
Yet the images, the sounds, the smells and the touches that flood my conscious mind are enough to create one of the scariest movies ever known. From the starring role of my father as the snake, to the smells of his breath masquerading as onions, garlic, and seafood as he forcefully tells a little boy to shut up and take it like a man. If such a movie was made, no one would believe it. No one would even dream this up for no rational mind could create such a scene. My mind though knows this is more than a movie.
As you bring in the supporting characters of my mom and two brothers, you begin to see the story unfold. There I am crouched down behind a chair hoping to not get what I had coming to me for whatever it was that I did. No one was home at the time of course so he had his free way with me. There was no one to stop him. And as his breath flooded the smells around me, my eyes wanted to cry out in tears. As the tears began to well up with me, I felt his big hand slap me so hard, that it was all I could do to keep track of where I was. It was as if I had been knocked into another dimension waiting for some spaceship to come rescue me. There was nothing of course that I could do. It was my cross to bear and my existence to obey him for that was what God wanted me to do. God was love after all. God was in control. God was my heavenly father as seen through my eyes of my real father.
Moment after moment, it hurt. He didn’t stop. I can remember it as if it is happening right in this moment. No, I didn’t forget it. Sorry Mr. Snake, I didn’t forget it. You wanted me to and you begged me to. In fact, you commanded me to. But my body remembered, my mind remembered and my heart shielded it for an eternity. I wanted to beg you, plead with you to stop but those silent murmurs would be met with a heavy hand of God’s discipline and love.
I want right now just to beat the shit out of you. I’d like to see hurt just like you hurt me. I have absolutely no use for you. The world has no use for you. You horrible excuse of a human; if you can be called that much.
And then the movie continued on taking in its role for the supporting actors. Little did they know what to expect when they arrived home that day. They thought it was just a shopping trip into town not expecting a thing. The gasp of screams they let out when they walked in the door. The horrors only known to the worst of criminals were unfolding before them. They couldn’t look away quick enough. They couldn’t run away quick enough. For it was right there in plain sight whether they wanted to see it or not. The horror they must have felt if they felt anything, would be very difficult but of course I’ll never for sure.
I remember my mom screaming, what in the hell are you doing as my dad stopped for a moment. The weight of his body on mine was crushing in defeat and silencing to my breath. For a moment, the pain subsided but it didn’t go away. All I remember hearing is for my mom to tell my brothers to go to their room and my father telling her to leave him the fuck alone. She wasn’t about to listen though and that was such a dumb thing for her to do. For I knew what was coming and there was no sense in the both of us suffering through the pain. But finally for a moment, the pain stopped and the weight of his fuckin body eased. I caught my breath and laid there exposed to the world not wanting to move an inch, not being able to move an inch.
As he got up, I saw him in all his ugliness as he tried to pull his pants up. In the process, I saw him remove his belt and take a swing. One swing, two swings, I lost count. She went down to the floor covering her face from the blows. She screamed out in pain. She gasped for a breath. But he didn’t stop. He continued yelling and telling her that she had no business trying to stop him. She would learn not to ever do this again. She just cried and cried and cried in between the screams and the gasps for breath. He did not stop until he was exhausted.
I wanted to stop him. I couldn’t stand to see her in this way. I couldn’t stand to see him hitting her and it was all because of me. If she wouldn’t have walked in on him doing what he was doing to me, this would not have happened. She’d be home scott free with no pain. What did I do wrong to cause this? What did I do to deserve this?
To this day, I can never apologize enough to my mom for the hurts and pains she endured. I cannot take it back and make it stop, nor could I then. But yet, she was trying to stand up for me and look where it got her. He was in the starring role of the movie as the snake. The snake that was so cunning is stupid. The snake that would startle your world at a second’s notice not knowing what God was going to do to you at that moment.
My eyes have cried many silent tears during my life but as I write this, my eyes are so filled with tears that the screen is difficult to see. And yet there are not enough tears to soothe my aching soul or my painful body. There aren’t enough screams to fill the void this has left in my life or the absence of my mom. I’m left with an emptiness of what should be in life and a longing for what I so badly needed then and now.
Is there any way to make sense of this? Most likely there is not! Is there any way to justify what this horrible excuse of a human did to me? Most likely there is not! Somehow, I’ve got to pick up the pieces of my life if I can find them, and piece them together into who I really am but do not know. I long for the design of my life but yet, the instructions are in some unreadable language – the language of pain.
The journey I’ve walked down has led me to a better moment but the pains, the fears, the unknowns still lurk beside my path. I’d love to be able to say, that all of this no longer impacts me and I can just let it go but when the pains rear their ugly head within my body, I’m once again reminded of something I’d rather forget. Can I forgive him? I want to speak words saying yes, I can because I need to but somehow in my heart, the pains I endured fuel a vengeance of disbelief and confusion towards him in what he did. The mind of a little boy is still confused and the heart remembers just as the body does.
Now as my writing closes, so does the pain ease that has been flooding my body each moment.
