Category: A Second Soul

Warning: Contains graphic content & adult themes.

“Do you swear to tell the truth…”

The dog belonged to one of my best friends. About ten of us slept over at her house for her birthday. We braided each other’s hair, stayed up late playing Truth or Dare…

“The whole truth…”

We were playing outside and the dog jumped on me. His paw brushed down my chest and his claw caught and left a deep scratch…

“And nothing but the truth…”

My friend’s mother cleaned the scratch and declared that I would live. I wasn’t sure I believed her, but once the pain subsided I was more upset that the dog messed up my French braid…

“So help you God?”

I do.

“Your Honor, Defense has already addressed the history of this witness and does not see the purpose of this questioning.”

“Your Honor, this witness is necessary to show the history of the Defendant and that the charges brought against him in this court are the latest in a habitual tendency towards abuse.”

“Prosecution, please proceed.”

My heart pounded until I thought it might burst from my chest. Dad, the scratch is fine. There’s not even a scar now. His fingers ran down the place the scratch had been and was now barely discernible. He examined it. He examined all around it. When I finally put my shirt back on and walked away, the feeling of wrongness stayed.

“Have you ever been examined by the defendant for bugs?”

A sound somewhere between a laugh and the remaining air leaving my lungs came unbidden from my mouth. God help me…

Yes.

“Can you explain, please?”

He said anywhere there’s hair, ticks can go. He said he had to check.

“And what did you do?”

I figured out how to check myself with a mirror. I didn’t like when he did it, but I was afraid I might get ticks there, so I checked myself.

“What happened then?”

He told me I didn’t check well enough. It had to be him.

“Did you ever have a tick there?”

No, sir.

I locked the door. He yelled at me. He came in while I was taking baths. I switched to showers. He came in when I showered. I showered faster. He came in anyway. I stopped showering unless someone else was home or he wasn’t. I got in trouble for being dirty.

I was eleven. I was dirty. I could be infested with bugs at any moment. I didn’t shave properly. I couldn’t be alone. My door could never be locked. My life’s mission became a simple one:

Never be alone with him.

“What was the first instance that you felt this way?”

The scratch. My breath caught in my throat and stopped. Nothing could get through into my lungs. I was back there… eleven and in pain… afraid and confused… why did he do that???

“Why didn’t you tell?”

He was always there. If I told, they would fight, maybe divorce… my fault… all my fault… The tears that were held back opened like a torrent. My breath stopped completely and I panicked. I couldn’t talk, couldn’t breathe…

So help me God…

“Were you upset when he left?”

I nodded.

“Please say your response out loud for the court.”

I gasp out a barely audible yes.

“Why?”

He’s my father… The words hung in the air like smoke. Now instead of no air, there’s too much. My head begins to spin and I hear the D.A. address the judge.

“Your Honor, please can we have a short recess?”

“Granted. We will recess for ten minutes.”

The District Attorney half dragged, half carried me to the back of the makeshift courtroom. What little composure I had left fled. Pale, shaking, and gasping for breath that wouldn’t come, I choked out an apology. No, he whispered, you’re perfect.

“No more questions for this witness, Your Honor.”

“Your witness.”

He smirked. I steeled myself for the worst. He called me a pathological liar. I was a part of a conspiracy against an honest man whose only mistake was asking for a divorce from a woman who no longer loved him. I was angry at him for leaving and jealous that he had a step daughter and a new daughter that I felt were replacements for me. Admit it, I just wanted revenge.

What are you talking about?

“Admit it, you were after revenge!”

No, I promised to tell the truth!

“How many children have you had?”

Tw- “Objection!”

“Withdraw the question. Defense is finished with this witness.”

The abruptness with which it was over was confusing. What had just happened? When I wouldn’t lie under pressure to bend to his version of events, he tried to use take the questioning in a direction that would show I was the whore he said I was in his previous statements. When the D.A pounced on the left turn, he withdrew and ended it.

My father sat perfectly still through the whole thing. No emotion, no reaction. The only trace of anything was that little half smile that said to anyone who knew him that he thought the whole trial was a lark. Total BS in his book.

Ultimately, the jury did not believe his conspiracy theory. I did not celebrate. This was no cause for celebration; it was cause for tears. I do not hate my father. I did not then, nor do I now wish revenge on him. I know what happened and in his deepest heart that he seemingly chooses to ignore, so does he.

For three days, my family and the new one he made after he left my mother sat together. Each of us in turn went missing for a time, to be shaken, verbally beaten, taken to the brink of whatever we called sanity, and then redeposited with the group to await the next disappearance. We all had different experiences to explain and in the end we all said the same thing:

Never be alone with him.

I forgave him. I do not fear him. I understand that he acted out what was first done to him. That is not an excuse but an explanation. I understand that addictions do not just go away. I know that he never trusted himself for good reason. We were the lingering bottle to the alcoholic. A teaser shot to the druggie. A glimpse of skin for the porn addict. He knew it was there beneath the surface and he did not cage that beast well enough. The state did it for him.

So help him God.

1986. That was the year I turned 10. From beginning to end, it was a roller coaster ride unlike any other period for me. For anyone who knows me personally, for me to say it was unlike any other is no small statement. Rather, it’s probably the beginning of a winding, twisting, upside down, downside up, corkscrew of a story. Yeah. 10.

January came in typical Georgia fashion when snow falls on daffodils and melts in the same afternoon because Mother Nature said, “Here, hold my sweet tea.” My grandparents were at our house for a visit. My brother and I were homeschooled at the time, so we didn’t have to worry about missing a opportunity to play a round of rummy or go for a walk. I could do my work any time during the day as long as my assignments were done.

I was a Junior in Girl Scouts, and to raise extra money we collected aluminum cans. Now, my brain did the math here and figured out that about 25 regular cans were right at a pound, which was fetching a long-time high of 50 cents. Each can made a 2 cent cha-ching in my mental register, and if I gathered cans from a certain area of the road we lived on, they were likely to be the bigger beer cans that had recently been introduced to the guzzler community. Those were almost the equivalent of 3 cents for a heartier sounding cha-CHING. Going for a walk along the mile and a half of dirt road was like picking money off the ground, so Grandpa and I took our daily stroll with plastic bags in our pockets. He walked along the road while I ducked and bobbed and wove my way through the brambles along the roadside, my mental radar pinging each time I spied another cha-ching just waiting for me to pick it up.

When we left the house, the world was normal. By the time we got back, it had exploded. The space shuttle Challenger had blown up, killing the entire crew and leaving the country shaken in its smouldering path. All day, we were glued to the TV. We got only two channels with the antenna my dad had rigged, but we watched as again and again the footage ran on a nearly continuous loop. It continued for days with interviews of schoolchildren saying they wanted to be astronauts now more than ever and their parents looking on proudly, silently pleading for answers as to what happened and why. There were then more interviews with scientists and NASA engineers and anyone else who had an opinion to share.

Memory is a strange thing. I don’t remember my grandparents leaving the next week. I know they did, but the event was minimal as compared to the news. I know that NASA was able to figure out what happened, but I can’t tell you what it was, at least, not without going back and reading the stories from the 32nd anniversary of the event. It didn’t matter. I know it mattered to those who came after in the space program, but not to me. I remember details that make no difference to anything, except to me.

The smoke trails. The piece that broke off and made that second trail. The image is indelible. It is absolutely seared into my brain. Gray and breaking, falling like a campfire ember back down to the ground that it was unable to escape. They stayed there too long, those streaks of shock and grief. They were painted onto that perfect blue canvas of sky as if they would never dissipate. For me, they never did.

After the grief, people started to joke. As an adult, I understand that joking can be a form of defense mechanism. As a nearly 11 year old, my response was,”Well, screw that!” I hated the jokes. To me, they belittled the dream of flying to escape the bonds of Earth and the wonder of life itself. Death is far too immense a thing to be mocked so. They made me angry. I didn’t want to be an astronaut. Not because of the Challenger, but because that was never what I wanted to be. I wasn’t one of those kids who decided that they would try to join NASA because they wanted to keep the dream of space travel alive. I don’t like heights (at all, ever), so for me to even consider being an astronaut would be down right silly. I freeze up in glass elevators, so trust me, that line of work is not for me. I believed though, that the people who made those jokes lacked compassion and empathy. In my mind, that was a travesty almost as horrific as the explosion itself.

So it began, with smoke and fire and tears. Cue deep narrator voice, “Little did she know, it really was just the beginning…”

To be continued…

They call me indispensable. Irreplaceable. Is there really such a thing? I’m not talking about the value of a human life. Life and death are not in dispute in my mind. I’m thinking now about a situation that I’ve found myself in that is very new for me. I’m changing jobs. That’s not what’s new, but the feelings that are associated with this particular job change have been unique.

The company I work for is a start-up. For anyone who has worked for a start-up, that is a loaded statement. Frankly, it’s a certain type of person who can do it successfully. First and foremost, there must be an understanding that it’s resting state is chaos. For people who thrive in routine and established certainty, a start-up is most assuredly NOT the place to be. If the policies and procedures must be tried and true, a start-up is not going to be a good fit. In fact, that’s a recipe for disaster.

I always say “Blessed are the flexible, they don’t get bent out of shape.” You can ask my co-workers. I say it. Always. Like a mantra. That’s the life in a start-up. Start-up status doesn’t go away after a year. Or two. Or three. It takes a solid five to seven years for the kind of establishment that holds stability in more than a mesh sieve. Steady-type personalities hear that scenario and feel nauseous. The two simply don’t jive and that’s totally cool.

There are those, however, who hear that description and think “dude, bring it on!” In my phone interview with the HR manager at the time, I remember her asking me if the thought of working for a start-up scared me. I told her “I just got laid off from a 25 year-old successful company. Ain’t nothin’ you got that’s gonna scare me.” I had the job within a week.

Here I am, four years later and about to embark on the next leg of my professional journey. I’m apparently the only one who’s cool with that. So what did I do? Well, I grew up. The instructions I authored when I first started are obsolete because change was the only constant, so I rode the wave and I understand it. I feel the rhythm of the business. It has come to the point that when someone new starts in some other department on the other side of the plant, almost any administrative question is answered with “have you tried asking KC?”

I have trained my replacement to the best of my ability, and I am a good trainer, if I do say so myself. Others have said the same. I know that the information I have to pass along is valid, useful, solid information and it’s what my colleagues will need to continue in my stead. So… why be called indispensable? Because my boss still asks me how to do things? That’s not impossible to replace. Difficult, yes, but I never said it would be easy. The knowledge is there and I’ve dispensed as much as I could possible give in the amount of time I’ve had. What are they considering irreplaceable ?

It’s not the work; It’s not the tasks themselves. Those can be done by anyone. It’s not the calling people by name from the CEO to the groundskeeper (his name is Ed, by the way). Anyone can do that too, and should. Helping wherever possible or pointing in the right direction… Nope, that’s easy to replicate. So, what is it?

Apparently, the ebb and flow of the business that I feel to the point that it’s a part of me, that’s what it is. No one hired on now can understand on an experiential level what those beginning days were like when there were six employees and we were building the business that was different each day. The understanding of the business that comes from being one of the last remaining “originals” is not something that they can replace. I get it now. It’s like having a hand in raising a child. I participated in building it. There’s pride there, and hope and concern and protectiveness and responsibility and… It’s not just a job.

There are going to be pains involved for those I leave behind. Growing pains. They will trip and they will fall, but they will also be all the stronger for it. They’re nervous to take it and run because I’ve always been there. So, no, they can’t replace me and what I mean to them, but they can certainly succeed without me by using what I taught them. My fingerprints will always be all over that place. They’ll learn to run, and in a few years they’ll learn to fly.

And so will I.

For someone who didn’t talk much as a child, my son J certainly grew to love his puns. Classified for years as “non-verbal”, we struggled against all odds and used any means necessary to get my boy to talk. Maybe, just maybe, we tried too hard.

It takes absolutely nothing to set him off. Don’t mention trees around him – you’ll get the “maybe I should leaf this one alone?” Or “She’s barking up the wrong tree.” We passed a broken sign this morning and he points out that “it’s a sign of the times.” The pause and inflection – yes, you know it well – is the mark of a truly awful pun and his delivery is always spot on.

My daughter’s drawing of a pink and purple unicorn brought out the “well, there’s a horse of a different color.” Adjusting a loose light bulb until it turned back on spurred the “Well, I hate to make light of the situation…” He also can’t manage to stop at only one groaner per situation. Often, it’s three or four before we tell him to stop before he hurts himself, and even then we might have to endure another one or two, complete with the sideways grin and the face that says “Eh? Eh? EH? Ya get it, right???”

His “Well, I guess…” in that tone of voice has become the ultimate signal for “yes, we’re about to get nailed with as many puns as he can come up with” and I’ll be the first to admit – I don’t mind a bit. Speaking only six words by age three followed by years of speech therapy and a constant upward battle of non-verbal communication, I’ll take his jokes and puns any day.

Every torrent of puns that floods forth is a victory for him, even though he doesn’t see it that way. He’s being verbally playful and I’m smiling. We won, one silly pun at a time and I wouldn’t trade it for the world…

There are times when something throws me back in time and it’s jarring to think where I was versus where I am. These moments frequently catch me off guard and can be triggered by something so simple as a certain smell or sound. It may seem simple, but the trigger is loaded chock full of memories waiting to be released into my mind in a torrent. Music tends to toss my brain around like a tennis ball for a jack Russell terrier. A few notes and I’ve got a decades-old ear worm that plunges me into what feels like a whole other life.

Smells do the same thing. I am particularly sensitive to smells, so triggers into memory lane can be pretty intense. From before I can remember, my family made the trek from Georgia to Ohio to visit my extended family. Each house we stayed in had a distinct smell. It wasn’t something short term like walking into a house where someone has just baked chocolate chip cookies, but longer lasting to the point that the smell of each was strongly associated with that place. I could lose my sight and still be able to tell where I was by the smell. One whiff and…

My grandmother’s house smelled like a blend of real butter and old wood. Years and years of the same sink into the fabric of the house until it is inseparable. The same brand of soap beside the sink… the same recipes cooked in the kitchen… the same people in the same place… That “sameness” pushes the connection of the senses further and further into the place. A whiff of one of those scents transports me back to the eleven year-old with a ponytail, sitting on the black padded barstool next to the roll-away dishwasher. Porcupines are baking in the oven and a Holly Hobbie glass is carefully placed next to me. It’s the one with the little kitty looking at Holly Hobbie, who is swinging on a homemade swing. I know it’s that one because that one is my favorite. There are pictures that my grandmother painted on every wall, mostly of flowers, though I really like the one of the frozen pond that all the children are skating on, bundled up against the northern cold with coats and scarves and mittens in the brightest of colors. If I watch it long enough, they almost seem to move.

If I was patient and not too pushy, I might be able to help put seed in the bird feeder. A rotating fan on the table pushed the white lace curtains back against the breeze coming in from the open windows, fluttering them back and forth in a windy pattern. Flowers line the corner of the dining room with a rosary plant winding its way through and around the windows and all the other plants. My aunts, uncles, and cousins are mostly within the block and come to the call of a family dinner, all laden with favorite dishes of their own to share. There is a box of pizzelles on the table that my aunt made this morning. She even used the vanilla! I shift my towel up around my shoulders like a cape and smell the familiar scent of the laundry soap and…

I open my eyes and look down at the towel I’m holding in my hand. My mind is reacclimating to its current surroundings and I remember where I am and what I’m doing. The towel… it smelled like that day after playing in the pool and waiting for everything to be ready for our family to have our picnic. Thirty years ago in a single smell and a moment lost in time. It might seem like another life in another world, but it’s in there, deep in my mind and just waiting for something to come out of nowhere and throw me back in time – just for a moment…

“They were so terrified, they said nothing to anyone…” There it is; right in the Gospel of Mark in reference to the women at the tomb of Jesus. That pretty much sums up my entire history of public interaction when the topic is religion. Jesus told us what would happen. Persecution comes with the territory, especially in this day and age. Even when I know something is true, or right, or good, I don’t lend my voice. On the flip side, when something is wrong, or dark, or evil, I am also hesitant to speak up out of fear.

I went tonight to a live theatrical presentation of the Gospel of Mark. It was a solo performance by a young priest (I say young, though he said he’s been doing this for twenty years, so he’s roughly my age or maybe a little older). He was taking questions during the intermission and I started to raise my hand to ask what prompted him to start performing this Gospel. He did not see my hand raised, but I realized that I don’t need to ask. I already knew.

He started for the same reason that the Gospels were written in the first place. He was inspired to spread the Word of God. It’s that simple and that complicated. Whatever the catalyst was, whatever planted that seed in rich soil, it was the same. To perform the Gospel the way he does, he has to love the Word. It was less of a performance than a proclamation. His job is to spread that seed where it may fall and let God do the rest.

I was moved within me. The experience was beyond words; indeed, none do it justice. “Let those who have ears hear.” Jesus knew human emotions. He wept, he was angry, he was filled with love. I can’t imagine that he would have been without anguish at his journey as it drew closer to the cross. He also knew to his Soul that God, Abba, Father would not leave him. Trust through His journey, and I’m worried about what people think? Maybe I should worry less and trust more.

Of course, we could all use a bit of perspective here. Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we were brought into His Kingdom. Adopted. Yes, having been a part of adoptions in multiple ways, I can attest that it is a beautiful comparison of them to our relationship to God. He loves us unconditionally and we are tasked with the same. With that powerful love, why should any of us fear to speak? In fact, how are we not crying out with joy? When moved by the Gospel, why are we not glorying in the revelation that we are adopted sons and daughters of the Most High? In what universe is fear stronger than God?

I have been witness multiple times to knowledge of the presence of God. Slowly, I have begun to tell bits and pieces of my story, and only to some people. Possibly I had to wait for the words to come and those with ears to hear. It was written that when the time is right, do not fear to let the words come. Preaching on the street corner is not my thing, but neither should I argue with those not willing to listen. Paths, rocks, thorns, and shallow ground are not the place to plant. I am gifted with words, but also with the understanding that those words should mean something. So I wait for the time and I wait for the ears to hear. Above all, when I am so terrified that I am tempted to stay my tongue, I must trust Abba and remember that all things are possible with God. Maybe, just maybe, the soil is ready for a seed and God is ready to do the rest.

Sometimes having a background in psychology is a mixed blessing. When I start analyzing my own writing, it occurs to me that I might be taking it a step (or two) too far. Have you ever heard the expression that goes something like “if you don’t like where you are, then move”? I’ve realized that certain characters in my books are what I wish I were.

Those characters are me without fear. Me without illness. Me without the feeling that I miss so many opportunities just because of where I am and what I am doing. Even without magic or supernatural powers, they are me without being the real me. They are the ones in the right place at the right time for opportunity and adventure. They are my escape. They are me “moving” from where I am for just a little while. For brief timespans, I can lift out of me and go somewhere that I do not have to fight with who I am.

Some of them even look like me, or at least the me from a few years ago when I was in shape. They are not overweight but typically sport an athletic frame. They are mostly my height or thereabouts. They typically have my eye and hair color, although none are covering up gray. One in particular does not get sick. I can’t even describe how I should be jealous of my own characters. They look like I would if I could choose how I looked or be whatever I wanted to be.

I’ve done all the dialogue out loud for all of my stories. I’ll go through any given “scene” probably a dozen times before it goes down on paper (if not more). Some are based on real life conversations and what I should’ve/would’ve/could’ve said… you know, if I were brave. It’s those great lines that I wish I had thought of at the time but inspiration came too little too late. They also haven’t sold their souls. Even at their lowest, my characters don’t give up who they are for the sake of a losing battle. They are strong and brave and are always ready for whatever comes next. They are the ones who always know what to say because I’ve had ages to find the right words for them.

Let me make this clear: I love my life. I know I’m not perfect and won’t ever be, but the drive to become better is always there. I know that I am not going to wake up one day and have some kind of special powers or whatever. It’s surprise enough some mornings that I wake up at all. No, what I want isn’t to be someone else; to be somewhere else; or to exist in some other way. I wish I could be me without the hindrance of the negative aspects of being me.

I envy my characters because though they have jobs, they are not consumed by them. They might get sick, but it doesn’t disable them for a season at a time. The ones with kids get to raise them instead of working 12 hour days. Yes, they have conflict; yes, they have problems; it wouldn’t be a good story if these things weren’t there. The difference is that they get to have some resolution to those things. Real life never pauses or ties up at the end of the story. If they want something, they go get it. I can write the means for them to get whatever it is or not if that is the story line. If I want something, no one writes it in for me. I don’t wish upon a star and have it happen.

So, I walk into a bookstore and the storekeeper tells me that he can put me into a story. He has the ability to place my consciousness into a book and let me live it as if I were the main character. The catch is that none of the stories are ones that I know. They are all written by authors I’ve never heard of and I do not know the plots of any of them. Say I suspend my disbelief long enough to try it. He warns me that if something bad happens, I will experience it right next to the good stuff that happens. I have to be willing to take it all together.

Sure. Okay. Bring it. He does his thing and places me into a story. I come to realize that the most amazing thing about reading a book for the first time is that I share something with the characters. It is something that no matter how many times I read that book again, I will never experience the same thing. Good or bad, neither they nor I know what is going to happen next. It’s not always a happy ending, and if it’s a cliffhanger, there’s no real ending anyway; just a breath between books. Who lives and who dies? Who wins and who loses? Who comes out on top but does so at a terrible price? I am experiencing the story without knowing what happens next. I share that once… and once only.

Such is life. Yes, life would be simpler without illness. It would be more balanced if I were working more normal hours. I don’t know what will happen next and that’s a good thing. There are things that are beyond my control and other things that I can influence. It’s not wishing upon a star, it’s putting one foot in front of the other every day and hoping that by the time my final page is penned, by the time my story is ending and the sun is dropping below the painted horizon on my last day here, mine will be a story that means something. Complete with the conflict, with the illness, but also with the love… truly a story worth the telling.

This madness is everywhere. The moment we seem to reach any kind of balance, something happens and the world is once again turned on its head. We are not a peaceful people. We are not patient. We are not kind. Bullies are everywhere and in every form imaginable. Crazy people… Broken people… There is no hiding from it. Why?

From Columbine in 1999 to Florida just yesterday, the news is horrific beyond words. Still, we tsk tsk and shake our heads at the horrors safely encapsulated on the television and internet. A few days later we are back to business as usual. Yes, yes, so sad… okay, break time’s over, back to work.

Should someone have known? Maybe. The signs were there: loner tendencies, trouble in school, fascination with guns… I’ve got news for you, we all create this. Setting aside how easy it is to get hands on guns; leaving out my opinions on the NRA and gun control; Yes, that’s a piece of the puzzle, and anyone who says it isn’t is not looking at the broad enough picture. No, the piece I’m concerned with is the deadly downward spiral of how we treat those who are beginning to marginalize themselves.

Our children are living in a battlefield. Psychological issues from ADHD, depression, and the expansive range of disorders and imbalances that plague our children and lock them securely in the cages of their minds are more prevalent than ever. The moment a child is determined to be imperfect in any way, they are labeled and stigmatized to the point that they feel substandard and broken from a very young age. Yes, psychological problems in children are very real, as evidenced by the news lately, but so is their ostracizesation. They are banned by common consent from whatever society deems too important or precise to include anyone considered broken or imperfect. Basically, they are collectively banned from any kind of normal life.

I’ve watched as people’s attitudes and demeanors changed when they found out my son had ADHD. As it turned out, there was more going on with him than ADHD, but that’s where it began. There were the ones who automatically assumed that he had little to no worth and the reason behind it all was my lack of decent parenting or that he needed a solid beating or strong drugs. One of his early teachers told me – her words – that the teachers trade off the inclusion class each year so no one gets the stupid class every year. Really? She labeled the entire class as stupid and treated them thus. He remembers that. They told him he’d never read or amount to anything. Just pass through and get a job pushing the button all day because that’s the best you can ever hope for. Well, dang, that’s bleak… Way to give the kid something to look forward to, huh?

They might as well have handed him a gun and said “Here, do the world a favor and shoot yourself. It might also be a good idea to take some of these other idiots out before you go, especially because they are going to bully and ridicule you all the way through your school career. Maybe a couple teachers, too, because let’s face it, none of us like you.” I know that this is not what she actually said, but the “stupid class” comment and the way she and his other teachers treated him, they planted a seed deep in his heart and mind. If that seed is fed and nourished and brought to fruition, it blooms out in blood and pain that is spread to anyone within a bullet’s reach.

We have a decision to make and it’s not an easy one. Do we become the beast that spawns those headlines? That’s the easy way. That’s maintaining the staus quo and allowing ourselves to be complacent. It’s ignoring when the situation when our kids tell us there’s a bully in the school or that they or someone else is outcast. It’s brushing off comments as adults that plant these horrible seeds in our youth. It’s not defending those who are defenseless, and I don’t mean with guns. I mean by addressing the problems before they leave the caged minds and show up on the evening news. We have the means. We know the signs, long before they become massacres. We think as a society that more guns are the answer. More jails are the answer. Corporal punishment is the answer.

The answer to what? Maybe if the question is “how could we possibly make things worse than they are already?” The hard choice is helping. I don’t mean psych evaluations to determine if the shooter was sane at the time or could be tried as an adult. I mean help for the children when they first exhibit the signs of trouble. These people don’t just wake up one morning and think “oh, good, today is Wednesday; I think I’ll be a mass murderer today.” This is years in the making; Years of hurt and shame and abuse at the hands of a world that, in their minds, doesn’t like them anyway. Who is willing to tell them any different? We ignore them, which validates the feeling of being out of place, which makes people not want to be around them, and on and on and on. We have to reevaluate how we interact with people.

I would like to say that people are generally good, though the cynical side of me fights the words before they ever make it to my mouth. I’ve witnessed some pretty terrible things. I have also seen people do acts of such stunning bravery and kindness that my heart swells with pride at just being in the same species. When we decide as a people to be kind and loving to those who need it the most, that is the outcast, the downtrodden, the hurt, the abused, and show them the compassion that withers the seed of evil that ridicule planted, we will begin to see fewer and fewer headlines like the ones from yesterday. We must have the strength of will not to just let it go and doom these troubled kids to this kind of fate.

In all the madness, can we even imagine this path? Can we will it into being? In this world of chaos, can we take those steps down that path of peace? Yes, we can. We have to. Our will has to win the day because the alternative is worse than unthinkable. Once and for all, we have to show that where there is a will, there is always a way.

People are people. We’ve been around for a long time. Amongst many other things, we’ve used our precious time on this giant spinning rock to come up with sayings that cover pretty much everything that could conceivably occur. Some of them we use without truly having any frame of reference for how they came about, and they are often particular to their originating cultures. I mean, how many of us have a horse to lead to water let alone worrying about if it actually drinks? Does that have meaning in any language besides American English? And though we might feel like it at times, we don’t actually burn bridges that we would not prefer to cross again. Most people are not that nuts (Yes, I qualified that) but it sounds a little harsh if taken literally. This scenario was a real conversation.

The place where I work has its parent company in Europe. When people from different areas of the world come together in one place for a common purpose, it’s not only inspiring and heartening, it’s downright entertaining. Sometimes it’s something simple, such as getting days mixed up and insisting that the meeting is on the 3rd when the date today is the 9th. What she meant was the 30th, but she couldn’t figure out why we couldn’t get our calendars straight. Ordinal numbers… The struggle is real. Another incident involved me asking someone to “chuck” something. That one earned me a cocked head and odd look. I had to explain that “chucking” something meant to throw it away. Local terminology is often lost in translation.

When my son was almost four years old and I was a much younger me, we went to Costa Rica for a language immersion program through my school. For six weeks, he and I bee-bopped about the country and learned that language and culture were far more complicated than we’d ever imagined. Dialects often change depending on which side of the street you are standing. I’m really not exaggerating. As examples, Guatemala has over 40 distinct dialects with varying degrees of Indian and Spanish mixed with colloquialisms and personalizations for each town or village. Eskimos have more than 50 different words for “snow.” There’s the wet sticky stuff and the light and fluffy flakes, the spitting glitter kind and the kind that falls so hard you can’t even see the insides of your own eyelids. There are places like Belgium, which is situated between several other countries. The local language is influenced heavily by the languages of the countries that surround it. People at my work frequently switch mid-sentence between Dutch, French, and German, and the transition is so smooth that the casual listener never realizes that they switched.

A friend of mine told me about a trip she took across several South American countries where she knew that the vast majority of people spoke Spanish, but she had not planned for the drastic differences between dialects and local cultures. She asked one gentleman to go get the “gua gua” which in her understanding meant “bus.” What it meant to him, however, was the equivalent of the F-word. She accidentally told him what to go do with himself. Whoops. That one took some creative communication to resolve.

When I looked up the name of my blog to make sure it wasn’t taken, I came across references to another literary work that states that learning another language is like having a second soul. While I agree to a point and appreciate the poetic imagery, I will go a step further to say that wielding language gracefully can touch another person’s soul. Because of this truth, the wielding should be done judiciously. So many words in so many places right now are flung as daggers, piercing far deeper than people realize. What we need more than anything is for each of us to remember that people are people. The only race is the human one, regardless of which languages lift from our tongues. We must consider that one person’s bus is another person’s…. well, you get the idea. It is time to build bridges rather than burning them, and language can help us do this. In all things, the most graceful use of language is the one where we do not lose each other in the translation.

Warning: Disturbing themes. Proceed with caution.

As a writer, I am periodically asked to write on various topics for various reasons. I’ve written “on demand” poetry, essays, theme examples, papers for psychological studies, and even papers in Spanish. They were for everything from schoolwork to teaching writing classes to pieces for different events like baby showers and going away parties. I’ve written reference letters and official proposals. Some time ago, I was asked to write a piece about childhood sexual abuse.

One might wonder why I was chosen to pen such a piece. As it turns out, I was chosen because I have experience on the topic and, more importantly, I was willing to talk about it. I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I consider the experience one of my defining moments. Not the experience of being molested, mind you, rather the experience of writing about it. The most difficult part of writing the piece was not the mechanics of writing or even the emotionally charged topic. It was saying out loud the sentence “My name is KC, and I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.”

The piece was set to music with my voice telling the events and their effects on my life. The pictures in the background were of me at various ages from birth to adult. There were pictures of me holding my cat Sunny B (don’t ask) and snuggled up to the family dog, Huggiebear. There were shots of me posing in ballet costumes and others when I was on vacation with a tan that would make an Indian envious. There was one photo in particular where I was looking away from the camera and the shadows of a nearby tree cast leafy silhouettes in chaotic pattern across my face. That was taken at about the age that the abuse began.

I was eleven and was so innocent that I was only just learning about the birds and the bees. My abuser was not a stranger as so many people believe is standard. No, the reality is that abuse is far more common amongst those who are familiar. My abuser was not someone who gave me the creeps when I’d come into contact with them. That feeling does not come into play when the abuser is someone that a child has been taught to implicitly trust. My abuser was not a transient, not a visitor to the household or a cousin or uncle that lived far enough away to keep all things secret. The abuse was not the “play” between exploring children. How much easier might it have been to deal with had it been any of these? My abuser was none other than my own father.

For my first eleven years, he seemed to be a great dad. It was as if a switch was flipped when an opportunity arose and he took advantage of it. From my perspective, it was initially subtle and always dreadful and every time something happened I was told it was for my own good. My health. My cleanliness. My benefit. It was really a classic line to get a trusting child to go along with something that they, even as a child, felt was wrong somehow. It was not something I could articulate though I was a prolific writer even then. Words failed me more than once. The internal battle was far beyond finding the right ones to use, though.

For more than six months, I tried everything I could think of to deter the incidents. I started with “accidentally” locking the bathroom door when I took a bath. When that got me in trouble, I stopped bathing unless my mother was home because I was reasonably sure he wouldn’t approach me then. That got me in trouble for being unclean, so I switched to showers. The incidents didn’t stop as I had hoped, they only changed in nature. I learned to take the fastest showers in the history of bathing. I even went so far as to “bathe” in the river with my bathing suit on. No, I am not joking. I literally took shampoo, conditioner, and soap into the river so that I would not be in my own house alone with my father when it was time for a bath. Really, how sad is that? Unfortunately, that did not stop the incidents. Again, it only changed their nature. I would say that every time I began to master a new kind of avoidance, he was right there with a new brand of adaptation. It did not stop until my mother was home more permanently from her excruciatingly long training program and I became so elusive and defensive that I was nearly put into some kind of intensive therapy program.

So, why didn’t I tell? That’s what everyone who hasn’t been through abuse asks in one form or another. If it was so bad, why didn’t I open my mouth and spill the beans? For the benefit of those who have not been in those shoes, here goes: I tried. My eleven year old mind did not know what the words were that would convey the myriad of emotions that surged through me every time I was in the same room as my father. Since words wouldn’t work, I used actions. I clung to my mother when she was home until she had to pry me off of her. My behavior swung dramatically. I was moody and any little thing would set me off. It was all attributed to the stress of my mother being away for so long, an idea perpetuated by my therapist father who wanted to make sure it all stayed secret. When my mother suggested therapy, he pushed for me to go to a colleague in his group. I refused. Not because I didn’t want someone to talk to, but because I understood that there would be no such thing as client therapist privilege and that this guy (who did give me the creeps, by the way) would tell my father every last word of our sessions.

I felt filthy. Nothing could wash away the stain or the secret. It felt so wrong and I was powerless to make any lasting change. Any step I took got me into worse trouble than the last. After all, what he was doing was to “help” me. He was watching out for me, he said. He was the only one who really cared about me because no one else was protecting me the way he was. I should thank him. He was my father. My very existence was thanks to his benevolence, after all. I owed him everything. All that I was and would ever do was because he cared enough to do the things that must be done. Filthy. Dirty. Ruined. Worthless. He was saving me. There was nowhere to run. No safety. No reprieve. Over and over and over…

I was torn from the inside out with my own logic. If I told my mother, one of two things would happen. She would either believe me or she wouldn’t. If she did, she would have confronted my father and they would have fought and probably ended up divorced because of me. No good. Too much guilt there. If she didn’t believe me, I would not be able to trust either of my parents and there would be no safety against his desires, which would probably get worse over time as I grew up and her presence would offer no protection anymore. No good. The situation would just be worse. If I didn’t tell, things would keep happening and maybe get worse over time. This was the epitome of a no win situation.

Ironically, my salvation came with his cheating on my mother. That sounds really terrible, but the following divorce was not my fault. I was free of the dirty secret he carried and it was not about something I had done or said. I was still conflicted, but a part of me was relieved to see him go. That is, right up until the divorce papers said I would have to go stay with him every other weekend and alternating holidays. In the lawyer’s office, I was adamant that I would not go. Nope, nope, nope, not this girl, not gonna happen. After major confusion mixed with assurances that even if I was angry with him for cheating on my mother, I would come to enjoy spending time with my good ol’ dad, I blurted out that he had molested me and I would run away before going to stay with him for a single night. Mic drop…

The lawyer assured me that I wouldn’t have to go if I didn’t want to but to leave the papers as they were written. Epic fail. Here’s a note: if a child EVER tells that they’ve been molested, further sweeping it under a rug does not undo the tremendous damage that is eating that child away like storm water on a soft stone. Bit by bit, that child’s soul is being carried away in a torrent of pain. I’m not being dramatic. I’m being realistic. The lawyer failed us. He failed me. He failed me as surely as my father had. He did absolutely nothing in a situation that has mandated reporting. He was required by the legal codes he swore to that he would report to the police and child protective services if this very situation ever came up. Epic fail. He thought it would be fine since I didn’t have to see my father any more.

He was wrong.

In a way, my life was already forfeit. What I understood in that exchange was that I wasn’t worth rewriting the legal documents. My moment of truth was met with what felt like a dismissive wave of the hand and a “you’re fine” and the feeling that it wasn’t really over. My mother was horrified and though she believed me, she was concerned with what to do to keep me safe and mostly what to do next as a newly-single mom with two teenagers. I give her a tremendous amount of credit for how quickly she switched gears after being completely blindsided more than once in rapid succession. What should have happened was that the divorce negotiations were ramped up to ensure my safety, immediate entry into therapy sessions for both my mother and me, and charges brought against my father, all brought about by the proper actions of our lawyer. What did happen was… well… nothing.

Since nothing really came of it, my father married the woman he cheated with, who had been one of his clients. Her daughter from another marriage was about seven. They had a baby girl together. The feeling that it wasn’t really over? Yeah. You probably guessed it. He molested both of them. He also molested their friends and a cousin and the next door neighbor girl. I wasn’t the first, either. There were others. Too many others. It was enough that just those few of us who came forward, very reluctantly I may add, earned him years in prison from multiple counts of child molestation and aggravated child molestation.

I could argue the what-ifs and should-haves until the world ends. What if I had told sooner? What if the lawyer had done things differently? What if I had succumbed so long ago? Should I have been more assertive? Should someone have picked up on the hints and clues I thought were obvious? Should I have accepted counseling? Who knows? Any tiny turn can change the course of the largest ship. I went through long periods of sadness and pain, but I can now say that I survived. I wrote the piece because people need to know about sexual abuse. People must learn the signs and understand what a child is saying without words when words fail. People have to know that rarely will an abuser stop at one victim.

Silence is allowing the abuse to continue and grow. For every one who speaks, so many more are still shrouded in secrecy. The silence must be broken before our children are. Childhood sexual abuse leads to so many problems if left unchecked or untreated, such as teen pregnancies, eating disorders, psychological disorders, victims turned perpetrators, domestic violence, the list goes on and on. The cycle will continue unless we stop it. We have to teach our children not just good touch bad touch, but the gray areas around them and in between and that if something feels wrong, they should trust that feeling. The abuse is not black and white. The effects are not black and white. The lines that divide right from wrong in a child’s mind are still forming and can be manipulated by those who are hunting for their next prey. Our children deserve so much more than this, and it is up to each of us to protect them. We cannot help them if we quiet their pleas for compassion and understanding with scorn or disbelief or impatience or indecision. The silence must be broken.

My name is KC and I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I am breaking the silence.