hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul-emily dickenson
these are a couple of quotes i heard when was watching a movie and as simple as they are it rang deep within me and made me think.
in some ways i am a strong person, but for the most part i believe that i am anything but strong. for the most part i have always tried to be what i thought others thought i should be. i never have had the courage to stand on my own or to stand up for myself. things in life have never been easy for me and no i am not the only one. others have had it much worse than me and others haven't had it as bad as me. sometimes when a person has been through a traumatic event/events they repress the memories of it. it's a survival instinct and it's a way to cope. i blocked so many memories for so many years but that's not why i say i am weak. my parents did everything they could to keep me safe and protect me. they were and still are great parents. but like all humans they made mistakes. they sheltered me (with good intentions) so there were many things that i didn't know. not that i should have known somethings. the way i discovered that i had been molested was because of a book i read on stranger danger at the library. that's when i learned that the most danger comes in through your front door. it wasn't the strangers that you had to be careful of but it was the people you knew. i tried talking to my parents about the person that i knew that we knew. someone we trusted someone that was in our family.(you have noticed at this point i have given no names but it's for the people that i know and that i respect, i haven't asked them for permission to use their names and i don't intend to) but for mark stanley smith my ex-brother-in-law-who-is-now-dead i have no respect. i tried talking to my mom and to tell her what he did but i didn't know how. my parents didn't understand what i was trying to say and neither did i. so i buried those memories but it didn't work for long. i became more vocal as i got older and by the time i was 14 i did all i could to avoid him when my sister came to visit. my dad was insistent that i should forgive him and forget but i couldn't. i wasn't ready and i didn't want to. the pain was more than i could bear. and it wasn't just pain i felt. i felt anger,fear,shame and humiliation. one time when i was 14 it became too much for me to bear, so i ran..literally. i ran away to california. the second night i was gone i was raped. then when i was actually in california i was raped again. now the one thing that i am thankful for is that when i was raped my virginity wasn't taken from me.( i had already willingly had given my virginity to my first boyfriend) when i got back home it seemed that things got worse. my parents sent me to a mental hospital to try and find out what made me run away. in this process memories came back in a flood and i was drowning in them. i remembered all the things that had happened to me and what i had been through. i believed it was all my fault of course it was my fault. i was even told that i wasn't really raped it was my fault anyway because i led him on. i was 14 he was 29. but still the blame was on me.
i made my mind up that from that point on i never would be raped again. and boy the way i did it was beyond fucked up. i decided that since my power of no had been taken from me that i would say yes even if i really didn't want to. saying yes is easier than no because saying no only meant it would happen anyway. it was my way of dealing with the cards that i had been dealt. not the best way to do it but it's what i knew.
now i am a woman grown that has these memories and feelings from events and choices that are in my past. i made it through i survived. i was very nearly broken and almost destroyed. was i weak? am i weak? yes in so many ways, but i am still here. evil is a great thing of might and it is my weakness that confounded that might. it is my weaknesses that have shaped and formed this person that i am. i always knew that somehow i would survive that i would make it. is that what hope is? yes-hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul-emily dickenson
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