Spring Cleaning

I suppose we hide it well, like cobwebs our mothers hasten to dust away before an aunt comes to visit. But, it's there, silently knocking at the door. It waits to come in. Such is the residual wound of abuse and the horrid tales that accompany it. It leaks into my conversations sometimes, but mostly now it stays tucked away.

It does not take much to rescue a child, but I fear more people are willing to not see what is before their eyes. Why should they be responsible for a child someone else chose to have?

I wish too many did not cling to this mindset.

"I just did not know what was going on," is often relayed in later years. And, I wonder, how did you not? I rushed through childhood blaring the sirens.

I suppose, this is why all hero's die young. They never save you. Everyone I admired in my youth has since lost such adoration as my mind sharpened into adulthood. I saw, quite quickly, just how much they could have done. They chose inaction over me, over being an actual hero.

I suppose it's far easier to comfort than it is to save. And, maybe people lack resources or directions themselves. But these excuses never feel like more than dismissal.

Perhaps the cycle of trauma is so ingrained into my family roots, that the alarms seem as common place as morning bird song. But to say, "Well it happened to me too and I am alright", is to dismiss and lie. If I stub my toe, I do not wish for the next person passing the sofa table to stub theirs as well. And, to say they are alright? What a laugh. I see how they process their anger and how their fingers clutch for a fresh drink.

I have worked hard to console these feelings of betrayal as I age into a more capable and attentive adult. Should someone come pounding upon my door, alarms screeching, I have the money, the resources, the time, to stop and help. I see how much I can easily do with only the slightest of inconvenience, and I seethe inside. Help does not require a great feet of strength or wealth. It requires very little of one particular person. Yet, it never comes for most.

And, all of the adoration I packaged for most of the other children close to my age has dissolved as well. They have become mediocre adults at best, and at worst fallen prey to the cycle themselves. We do not speak of the horrors that pushed us here nor do we blame them. I think to hear another use that as an excuse would ignite my temper. Though, my temper means little more than a sharp look. I am not my father, and that is a choice that I made, not a path that I happened upon by chance.

They hide it, probably more than I do. Their secrets and traumas are tucked away in a closet deep within their mind somewhere. Or, worse yet, denied as ever exiting. I watch the ones who deny it, repeat it or marry it. They seem forever captured in a struggle to break free of what they faced.

My own nightmares flare up at inopportune moments. During a particularly good week, I might suddenly feel as if the world is upside down. Cold sweats rush over me to form chills and bile builds in my throat as my head thuds away. I feel hot and sick, and like everything around me is a dream about to rupture. And, I know how to process these emotions, but often times I bottle them away instead. I take the whole bunch, every memory and thought connected to the pain, and shove it down into blue or green glass, ram a cork into it, and shelve it at the back of my mind to open at a time of my choosing.

I have fought for that level of self control. It has been a long journey to become a responsible adult. And, with it, I decide when I want to process the darker emotions in my heart. I decide when the trauma and grief will impact me as more than just a feeling of lost gravity.

I suppose I am not ready to cry again just yet. Not over the things I have spent my entire childhood weeping over. It feels as if I have already wasted too many tears on the subject and on the people in those memories. It frustrates me to know my heart would dare to care or grieve for what ifs that never stood a chance against reality.

I feel anger at the people as well. That I would be left with the scars of their actions, and that they would dare to attempt and maim me. The anger is like a festering wound I continuously doctor least it becomes necrotic. Eventually, it will be tended until scabs form over the anger and close it away permanently. But, presently, it still freshly bleeds.

I suppose these are all good things. It is better to care enough to grieve and weep for what others did not choose. It is better to see what a healthy relationship we could have had. I can mourn what was lost and move on, burying what will never happen the same way a loved one is placed into the ground.

But, I open those bottles on my own time. I carry them up high into the mountains with me, where the world is too beautiful to truly feel like these events have any pertinence, and let them loose there. With Neptune blue lakes before me and cool air kissing my skin, it is difficult to find fault in the world.

These things have not stopped me in my pursuits, from running through fields of wildflowers singing, or from having all I yearned for. I am exactly the person I want and choose to be. So these memories and emotions that lay with them, however unpleasant, are truly of no consequence. They only serve to show me the way I will never go.