DEAR FRIEND, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE

I read a poem to a friend of mine. 

I think he thought when he heard I wrote poetry, that my poems were about ponies and rainbows and big sunflowers.

So when I read him the poem that I had just finished writing, he flew into his bathroom and locked himself behind the door. 

I ran after him. 

I didn’t need to ask what was wrong. 

I just didn’t know until that very moment that HE WAS MY POEM.

The poem wasn’t about cutting.  It wasn’t about being abused.

It was about not knowing how to LOVE yourself.

He told me he would come out of the bathroom if I promised not to look at him.  I promised. 

I stood with my back facing the bathroom. 

He quietly asked, “How did you know?” 

I said, “I didn’t.”

The truth is, I did know.  I didn’t know his story, but I knew his pain.  

I didn’t need to hear the details of how he barely survived child abuse. 

Which infected his radar for unhealthy relationships.

Which allowed him to recreate his childhood nightmare as an adult.

Which made him the perfect partner in a toxic marriage.

No surprise. 

What surprised me was he thought I had written my poem about him. 

I didn’t. 

I wrote the poem about children who suffer in silence, not knowing how to evict the monster that is implanted in us during our childhood, which is what happens when your body is raped, your mind is raided with hate for people you love, and in order to survive, you finally trade your soul for silence, which we are fooled into believing is peace.

Healing our wounds is not the passing of time. 

The ticking doesn’t fade away the ugly.

Time may trick us into thinking the pressure has been let out. 

The scars are not proof that we are healed. 

Growing old does not make us whole. 

The ticking will keep ticking.

And when triggered, the timer will blow, whether we are prepared or not.

This is not about what happened when I read a poem to a friend.

THIS IS about the lie that time heals all wounds.

And that our poems should be pretty.

And that our stories have to have happy endings.

Because they don’t.

And they aren’t.

And that is called real life.

True poetry is the truth.

That some of us have been attacked.

Some of us have been trapped.

Some of us have been raped and pillaged by thieves that come in the night.

Some of us have been assaulted with weapons and words.  Both intending to kill.

And some of us have tried to end our lives.  Not life itself, just the living misery that never ends. 

Not because we have no love for life, but because we do not know what it is to love life.

What is the point of living if the life you must live continuously brings torture, harassment and such deep emptiness that there is no comfort in breathing? 

I get it. 

Because I have been there.

Time doesn’t heal all our wounds.

So don’t count on time.

Rely on you.

We heal ourselves.

The healing that we deserve is not going to come from others. 

Those who have not known the torment tango that happens between the abuse and its survivor, won’t have what we need to heal.

And time is not the gift.

YOUR LIFE IS THE GIFT.

There is power in your pain, my Love.

Your pain has held you, FOR your life, not against it. 

Your life, as haunted as it feels, contains the love you yearn for.

Your love is your power, and no one else has love you need.

You can lay your pain down now. And pick up your power.

Your life is not your enemy.   Love is not missing FROM YOU.

Your life is the truth of how you came to be, but it is also the truth of who you get to be.  Now.

The truth is not a story.  It is a spring.  From that refreshing spring, we are renewed.

Within that well spring of truth is the love you have always had within you.

You ARE love and no one can steal it, kill it or extinguish it, but you.

So stop running. Stop hiding.

My friend, whose face I was forbidden to look at while you were hurting: I write this, right now, for you.