Seeking Forgiveness Even When It's Hard

how have your challenges shaped you? i came to ask this of myself as a result of coming to an unmarked stage in my life where i suddenly cared about the answer to this question. prior to that, it hadn't occurred to me to ponder it.

i know one day the idea of not doing it alone came to mind with a certain prominence. the idea of working, at whatever, i guess, because then as now, i have no work. not in the sense become when they think of it anyhow. Nothing I clock into or I'm paid for.

i never thought I felt like i was operating as part of much, let alone any team. the truth is i don't want to leave people or be in charge. not if anyone other than myself.

if i ever pursue the career, it was to be in music, writing songs and performing them with a band. i don't want to be the front person, nor do i want to direct people on what to do in a band. i don't want to run everyone and everything. this right here is the only solo artistry I want to pursue. which is funny and not the haha variety. because considering some of the types of challenges i faced and i'm addressing now.

i mean the one type that's probably affected me most emotionally. not the other, which is a story for another day.

it has to do with people who can't keep their hands to themselves. the very people want ought to be able to trust, who have made that very thing, trust, trusting others and intimate situations so hard today. i believe there's a way to relieve that. hang on, I'll get to that.

let me see that sadly, since I was a dang toddler family made the most appearances as sexual offenders on this particular shit list. there have been observers and appeasers who have done the opposite of stepping in to prevent my familial rapists and molesters.

it should come as no surprise that when i attempted to tell family what happened at an early age and with whom, i got blamed for what i told them happened. how in the world they convinced themselves that i had any power in the dynamic escaped me for years, but now i know exactly how they felt about me; that i was not deserving of respect. i was accused of saying it to get attention but, i was not. not the kind I was being accused of seeking.

at the age i was at the time it started happening, i didn't know what was going on. only that it was unsettling and seemed wrong. like it shouldn't be happening.

as I got older and a little wiser, and i did, and spoke up, i was dismissed and blamed. i really got to say, hey thanks adults, for thinking 8-year-old me was devious and sexually intelligent enough to be that kind of calculating, ya jerks. thanks for thinking i could make such a thing up for attention. i could say pretty awful things about them. they want to be thought of so highly, this person, and some do, but all the buried secrets we have inside, people don't even know.

especially when at the time i did, i and my band's faces were plastered over several pages of the l.a. times' entertainment section. there was that, me getting attention and plenty coverage. elsewhere too.

that being the case at the time, it was like, wow! what did that particular relative, sibling and mother to a pair of sexual offenders think I was as a child? just like theirs?! what does it say about them? that they need to do some self-repair. that's what I think. i was definitely precocious, but not at all sexually, not at 8 years old. hell, I'm pretty reserved today. i'm sure all of this is played a role in my development in human sexuality.

there have been other incidents but i'm not going to recall, relive them now. but every time, it was the dismissal that hurt. It was the other stuff too but the dismissal ow, painful too.

the dismissal of my feelings after being violated. did dismissal of the wrongness of the perpetrators actions and they're disgusting willingness to take their actions and do so without taking responsibility for having committed them. for not taking responsibility for the consequences of their actions on me. i feel like i wasn't the first to be the recipient of this type of attention, and isolation. and, yes, i have literally heard a few versions of don't tell anyone, or else.

here's why i didn't. i didn't tell, not out of fear of, or else. i didn't because had i spoken up when it occurred, my mom would have likely reacted in such a way that she'd have had to serve time. i knew i'd be placed in a family situation where I'd be unsafe. i had a dad but he was useless and had i told her what had happened while i was left in their care, trusting them to keep me safe? i knew it would not have gone well for them she or me. she'd have been enraged and rightfully so.

you know, i was angry myself, but the bad choices have i spoken up kept me quiet, and even though mom and i weren't always getting along great but you pick your battles. keeping it all inside probably didn't help matters, but i didn't know then what i know now.

believe it or not, i didn't share this to engender sympathy. it's part of my life, unpleasant but instructive nonetheless. the purpose was to illustrate that even the most horrible feeling experiences can be mined for wisdom.

i learned first, all on my own, that i neither caused nor invited any of it to happen. i understood that the ones who put their hands on me without my consent were the ones in the wrong. i came to better understand their motivations for committing the acts against me. it's hard to empathize with but i can intellectually understand. what actually felt worse was the victim blaming.

we can be so self-centered for what feels like the worst reasons. so that illicit needs can be satisfied or to feel no blemishes on them for doing what they did.

or more importantly to me, what they didn't do. they fervently want to believe that they bear no guilt and need no absolution. i'm here to say WRONG! it's all their fault, all of their flaw. for failing to care about what happened to me when I was interested to their care. because they don't want to look bad by association. it didn't work that way from my perspective. to me it looked like every word from their mouths were untrue and not to be trusted. these people i had to answer to and behave without question for. terrible week hypocrite! you understand i had to keep the sexual offender stuff to myself and also cover for the a-holes who not only didn't protect me but made it my fault. smh. i was a child. i saw the shitty little self involvement that would allow these adult disappointments to behave so.

it may not seem like it but, the conclusion i'm headed for here is forgiveness. i have forgiven and been reminded and re-angered over what happened to me and i always find my way back to forgiveness. it's just so hard to put the hurt away in the right place. a place of resolution. the memories never go away. at least each time i revisit them i learn something new, so maybe that's as it should be.

it's hard when i see grown men talking about women and girls as if they're nothing more than functional breeding units. there to look pretty and perform only to please man and not confound them with Independence and ideas of our own for our lives. for some reason that crap brings it all rolling back, angry and indignant as hell. we're just supposed to endure all manner of attacks against our persons without complaining and a damn smile. it's not right. they rarely turn that glare of judgment at themselves.

it sometimes having to witness the way women and childbirth and are related, and not, health is treated with such disdain. particularly irritating coming from men untrained in medicine speaking on things they aren't likely to understand and exerting what i feel is control undo them.

this is a destructive in plain old dangerous for the lives of women and girls and the children these men want, no, expect us to just crank out like it's nothing. what do they do? dismiss us in our knowledge about ourselves as if we aren't capable of understanding as much as that. we only live in these bodies. life is cheap to these people coming not solely men by the way, some women will barrel along behind these ill informed men, unfortunately.

however, all of it is how we experience life, in terms of the matrix and the role-playing game it's our chance to go above and beyond and forgive the attackers and the ones that stand by and do nothing to intervene and help. do nothing to prevent the abuse and not bury the ugly hurtful and uncivilized behavior.

they already needed forgiveness and someone, we, myself i guess, must be the ones to offer it, or give it privately to myself.

we can't, or i can't, keep spinning the vicious circle, someone has to be the reasonable person and be the one to forgive the vicious cycle or or the vicious cycle will have no end.

i'm sorry, sorry you feel like assault is what you have to do, i once again, forgive you.