Hello World,
Today I was talking with my little brother's girlfriend and within our conversation, I shared with her some of our family history; secrets. I was talking to her and saying these things without emotion, but then suddenly, the sheer MAGNITUDE of what I was actually speaking hit me. I was telling her about things so horrific and so traumatizing; not just for me, but my mom's history, my brothers' and how what we all experienced separately, yet wholly shaped and affected us.
While talking about it, I was brought to tears and I realized that the points of my emotional collapse were when I spoke about my mom and the abuse and degradation she suffered, when I spoke about one of my brothers being in a cage locked up and everyone sees him as an animal never knowing that as a child; a baby!!, he was beaten and hit and attacked and now that he is bigger and stronger than everyone, his experience has taught him to never, ever, ever be that beaten, helpless little kid again. My tears fell for the cycle of what we allowed to continue and I was struck by how even as I share some of it all, I have never shed tears for myself. I don't see myself as a victim because I do not always see the ways in which I will never be 'normal'.
This started me to think about relationships and how so many men and women judge immediately that women are scarred from the men in their past when really, it started way before that. So many women hold onto secrets forever and take them to their grave and never reveal what has happened to them. Be it shame, or the inability to connect it to relevant present situations, or even that they have buried it even from themselves; women in our culture tend to HAVE to be strong and cannot be safe enough to be vulnerable and expose their truth! This is wrong and this is harmful.
I want to tell you a story that is not mine to tell but I held the missing piece to bring someone comfort and it helped me to understand that we all need that. We all need to KNOW what brought us to who we are. We give kudos to teachers and other key figures who 'made us who we are', but we forget the haunts that shaped us also into what we are capable of. What we all keep hidden; be it to protect someone or be it to maybe protect ourselves, is sometimes so monumental that it becomes a poison. Liken it to a wound. Any doctor will tell you to let the air hit it. Of course we put a band aid on a wound, but we have to eventually allow it to breath and expose it, and if we do not, it will leave a scar. It will not totally heal. It is so very simple...
My mom and my Aunt Jackie are both passed on, but my Aunt Joanne is still here and she always has held a special place in my heart. While so may others and even me at times, see her as harsh and fanatical, and even cruel, I always always hold her in high regard because she was a safe haven for me to escape the night times at home. Without question, I was welcome to spend the night, the weekend, the summers, at her house and she never knew that she was one of my few refuges away from my nightmare. She was an angel to me when I was a kid and a teenager and even as my mom and Aunt Jackie and other family members criticized her for her disregard toward my Grandmother; their mother, I instinctively knew there was something behind it...
The other night we were talking and as you get older and become an adult, you form and reform those bonds with family members. What was once an Aunt an niece relationship shapes into me seeing her as a woman and she realizing me as one. Don't get me wrong, there is both good and bad in this growth because many times what we idealize in adults as children, often have a different perception when seen through our adult eyes. But this is not a story of hate, it is one of hope...
We came to the subject of her sisters; my mom and Aunt Jackie, and their differing relationships with Grandma Gloria. She told me that she always had a resentment toward my Grandmother, and always thought Aunt Jackie hated her and she felt all of this because they left her. My Grandmother took Aunt Jackie and mommy to live with her when they were kids, leaving Aunt Joanne behind in my Grandfather's house. This was a house where sexual abuse ran rampant. They were all abused sexually to one degree or another but there was one difference that signified this deep decades long span of discord that was finally healed this very night. Aunt Joanne was abused by my Grandfather. No one ever knew. She never told. She married at 16 and got the hell out of there; the escape she saw for herself. But Aunt Jackie DID tell. Aunt Jackie ran away and took my mom with her. Aunt Joanne came home from school and overheard the confrontation between Grandma and Grandpa and from her childlike perception, all she got was, Grandma~I'm taking my daughters to live with me and you can't stop me. And they left. She wasn't asked to go. She wasn't invited along. She told me this night how she never understood why her mother rescued Saundra and Jackie and not her. Oh how I cried for her misunderstanding! How angry I was that for so many years she was forced to act out her pain and confusion that as a child was never given a voice! Of course she resented Grandma! How could she not? But all is not what it seemed and so many years after that moment that changed her life, I was able to bring her comfort and closure because I know what so many in my family before me were never given the opportunity to test; That what is hidden will never ever heal. We owe no secrecy to those who degrade us and belittle us and abuse us! We owe no shame to those who steal our innocence and our childhood! I refuse to ever be a victim. I am not and never was and I was able to open the door to understanding for her and at the same time, so many facets of her personality and actions over the years were revealed to ME as well.
What really happened was Aunt Jackie and Mommy talked to one another and shared their abuse with each other and my Aunt Jackie being who she always was, refused as well to be a victim. She took mommy and ran away to her mother and told her what was happening. In her childhood innocence, she never knew that Aunt Joanne was suffering all alone in her own room, surely dictated that way so that the secrets of that house could be varied night to night. My Grandmother was threatened by my Grandfather to bring his daughters back and what Aunt Joanne walked in on was Grandma going to the house and face to face telling my Grandfather that she knew what he was doing to the girls and she was never sending them back to live with him.
Of course he did not say, 'save Joanne too, I'm abusing her also!' and sadly, she did not say 'please help me, I need rescuing too' So she was left there to suffer years more of what Mommy and Aunt Jackie were saved from; and she was not the only one, but this is her story.
When I told her what had been relayed to me by Aunt Jackie so long ago in one of OUR many tender moments, I SAW the pain and shame of how she treated her mom and how she was so distant from her sisters flood her face and her eyes and run down her cheeks in a river of missed opportunities, missed relationships, damaged bonds, and unrelenting misunderstanding. SHE thought she was the only one. All this time she thought she was all alone in her suffering and that no one could ever know, yet all the while they all were keeping the same secret. I could see the comfort the reality of what really happened brought to her and I was so honored to deliver this peace to her, and at the same time I was so heartbroken at the regret I saw in her as well. To understand the tension, the hate, the broken trust between these sisters, one must understand the gravity of how heavy this secret; this kaleidoscope of shared but hidden secrets, really was and still is!
I hope that by telling my story and inadvertently telling so many others in the course of it, I will bring closure and comfort to others and my intention is to break the cycle so that mothers and daughters can truly connect. So that Aunts and nieces and cousins can overcome and be more empathetic to each other. So that the fathers and Big brothers in my family will know what they are risking when they walk away from their kids and are not there to protect them and shield them and guide them!So many of us are not what we seem and so many of us are so much deeper than we can even begin to share, yet all we are capable of is showing our scars and putting on our shields. That is what we are known for. Our armor. But today, after reading this, take the time to chip away at someone, discover their depths and don't just tolerate their surface. What we cover up for so long is often times so ugly when light is first shed upon it, but like anything set out in light and glory and met with love, understanding, and acceptance, it will simultaneously blossom and shine, and the ugly of it will shrivel and decompose, shed itself from its' host... and free them. Trust me, here on Cracey's World, we expose it all, and we are better because of it.
~Cracey
No comments:
Post a Comment