Foreword:

Let me preface this with a warning and a bit of an explanation. The following (rather longish) text was initially planned to be nothing but yet another exploration of my feelings and how they were created in the form of a letter to my primary abuser. If abuse, self-harm or self-hate are triggering topics for you I implore you not to read on, in fact please close this window right now.

I have tried to be as non-graphical as possible but some things can’t or shouldn’t be sugar-coated or circumscribed. To make it easier to avoid Triggers I have numbered the different parts and Part 2 is the one you may want to skip. Part 1 and 3 form a somewhat coherent whole that describes how I feel when I’m up or down and the fact that part 1 is much longer shows where I spend most of my time emotionally, but don’t let that fool you, what I felt when writing Part 3 was just as powerful and that parts shortness only stems from the fact that I was feeling good and got distracted by all the shiny things life has to offer.

If you chose to read on you will find that this text became much more than what I set it out to write and that the primary purpose got muddled somewhat. It does however express quite clearly what I felt when I wrote each part and in case you’re wondering, I wrote it all in one (long) sitting he singular exception being this foreword which I wrote last.

1

Dear Person,

there is nary a day that goes by when I don’t still feel the pain you caused. You hurt me deeper than I care to look because if I were to look down that deep I don’t know if I could get back out. Most of it is scarred by now, some of it healed by the works and words of greater people than you or I, but there is still some that is raw or gets reopened day by day by actions or words or thoughts. Scarce is the day when I neither feel the pain you left me with nor think about your actions or your words and those tend to be beautiful, colorful, care-free but most of all: rare and becoming rarer still. On these days however I experience the world as I should be able to, as it presents itself to the naked mind not burdened with thoughts of pain or doubt, and to the joyful heart not filled with pain and misery.

These fleeting moments of bliss, of happiness make the tumble back down to my usual resting place – in the shade of everything that is great and inherently worthy – all the more painful when I hit the ground of my reality because I know for a fleeting moment that lasts eternal that it could be better, that I could be better. The price I pay for experiencing the joy and beauty of life is the despair and sense of loss I feel after I visit a reality where it is worth living, breathing, where a smile on my face is not hollow, where words I speak have meaning, where my thoughts soar through the skies like birds and everything is as it should be and as it could have been.

But just as I inevitably fall after I rose, do pain and despair find me. Color bleeds from my surroundings, lights dim; hope falters, shattered by a single blow, almost carelessly and without effort, struck by despair who greets my like the eldest of friends, a trusted companion on the road of my life, reliable and punctual.

Shortly thereafter pain embraces me like a gentle lover, caressing me, covering me. Pain fills me and I need not worry anymore for I grow cold wherever pain touches me, inside and out; but soon I will forget the cold and wear my pain like an armor like a knight of old and wield it like a weapon and a walking stick. As long as I have my pain, no pain can touch me and I cannot hurt, nor do I want for anything because I have all I can bear.

So I walk. The road seems to be set in stone but made of mud. My surroundings are drab and lifeless, mist obscures distant shapes and the all-encompassing twilight only serves to barely illuminate the void around me.

I trudge on. But not alone, for despair never strays far. Sometimes waiting ahead, looming in the distance – sometimes lagging behind only to catch up when I least expect it. Carefully watching, tripping me when I skip a step. Pushing me down every hill I climb before I get a glimpse of what lies ahead. Promising a sweet release if I stay down and stop insisting on continuing ahead; but as much as I wish that I could simply stop and cease to resist, cease to exist, fade from this drab, grey world and become like the mist around me … I cannot for another friend appears.

Hate rushes in and knocks despair back, grips me and pulls me to my feet. Hate gives me energy and strength and will and so I walk on, stomping the road trying to hurt it as it’s sharp stones try to gouge my feet weren’t pain, my armor; scowling at the mists and kicking every rock I find. Hate carries me for a while and I feel it’s warmth within me, it’s wrath burning inside me for Hate has brought Rage and chained it up inside me. I hold the key to Rage’s prison for I am Rage’s prison. But I rarely let it out these days for I do not like what I become when Rage fills me, a sentiment even pain cannot soothe while despair grins wickedly because it knows it will always be waiting. So I keep rage at heel and hate is disappointed, it only wants to help after all and rage is his biggest gift. I cannot express my gratitude towards hate other than by luring rage and it is a cruel tease because I don’t intend to use rage, only to take from hate whatever strength and determination it has.

Lastly there is shame, slinking in the shadows, unable to bear even the twilight surrounding me. Shame and pain are like siblings, but where pain cools, soothes and protects me, shame’s touch hurts me to the core and makes me burn, consuming me from within until rage is the only escape because rage feeds on both shame’s heat and pain’s cool, becoming a better armor and an infinitely more frightening weapon that cannot be controlled, only wielded or be wielded by. Because of this I rarely acknowledge shame and it grows in my blissless ignorance and my fruitful avoidance. Shame feeds on my mistakes and one day I will make a mistake so great that I cannot shake nor ignore shame anymore, that is when rage will take over forever.

After I can walk on my own again and hate leaves disappointed, unfulfilled and ultimately unsated, I often notice the road seems to lead down; it’s destination I know not, nor do I care as long as I reach it’s end. As the years passed the mists lifted slowly and I began to see the peaks from whence I fell but the distance only increases with every passing day, with every step I make, with every breath I take even. I inhale the mist and it changes me inside, taking more and more every time and only rarely when I rise can I exhale the noxious fumes and cleanse my thoughts. But by doing so I poison others, break parts of the beauty above and inevitably shards cut me because pain is no longer my armor and the sting makes me stumble, the horror of what I cause in others and the shame over breaking the beautiful scenery and the lack of a road make me fall once more. And there it waits, pain, my friend and lover embracing me with open arms and despair is patiently waiting, the only one who is ever loyal and unchanging.

So I begin to walk on my road once more and despair falls in step; I look on the void around me, inhale the mists surrounding me and soon I forget what it felt like to have risen, as it should be, as it has always been and as it will be until the day when I stumble one last time and can walk no more. On that day I will reach the end of my road because there can be none other.

2

My dear beloved, hated person. How I wish you could know I feel both inside to make you suffer like I do and outside as I apply pain to your face again and again. It will never come to pass because I will never tell you and I will never let rage take over, but it is my wish, whispered by hate, fueled by pain, tempered by despair.

You molded me just how you liked it, built me up to tear me down again and again, made me cry so you could ridicule me, made me mad so you could punish me, made me cower so you could drill me to stand straight only to topple me when I did. You taught me to expect nothing of others, hope for nothing but be ready for everything and to take everything the world throws at me without flinching, reacting or caring because it barely gets worse than it was anymore. You gave me the tools to take on the world and criticized me when I only wanted to fight you. The world does not deserve to have me afflicted on it and you do not deserve the world, or any part of it.

As I grew bigger you loved me less and beat me more. It must have been painful to see the person I would become and it not be an image of you. I guess that is why you started to resent me more than you did already. Over the years I learnt how to take your blows, I adapted to this environment and I grew stronger than you ever could be as a person, after all I had to keep up with your arm and someday I realized that that is where all your strength lay and your blows stopped hurting me inside. You are a bully and a hypocrite and when I became big enough to be a threat you left, you ran, you fled and by doing that you ultimately admitted your weakness if not your defeat. I’m not mad about that, I will outlive you and I will do it with the smile on my face you could never put there and the smirk you tried to punch off, I will be the son you never wanted by becoming the opposite of you. This is my ultimate revenge.

In later years you faulted me for being lazy, for not striving towards anything for not reaching for anything but this is only because I shed the dreams and visions of a future you force-fed me just as I shed the values you beat into me. I am my own now, I am not yours anymore and never will be again except for one last shared moment when I repay and thank you for all you made me feel. But this is just a fantasy, a suggestion by my darker side, the last glimmer of hope or longing I can grasp when all else fails. Luckily, other than for you, all else rarely fails for me and if it does I have the courage and the kindness to only take it out on myself. Do you see what you make me do to myself? Do you care? Do you understand that it is your fault? Probably not. But I do not need you too, it only shows your inability to understand me. And one thing is clear, I do not need you.

Everytime I lash out at others I am reminded of you but usually only when it is too late, when things happen that cannot be taken back, only mended with time. I apologize a lot because of you, I hurt because I hurt others but that is a problem you never had. You never had to feel the pain you caused. I think you’re more broken than me. You’re warped and twisted but you hide it better than me and you effectively silenced the only witness until a testimony wouldn’t harm you. But I can speak now and scream and rant and shout and most importantly, express myself, something else you can’t. This comes with a price however, when I look at myself I see what you did and how I am built, it is painful and causes me much despair but seeing what is broken is the first step in fixing myself, understanding how I work and why is paramount in staying my hand and tongue when I want to lash out.

I have hurt others, that is a huge part of my shame and I despair when I think about doing it again but I feel proud when I don’t and everytime I don’t my future turns a bit brighter. I thought you had taken this from me, for years everything looked bleak and dark but there are lights out there, I simply didn’t see them until recently, could only guess at their existence and feel hopeless and a painful longing. Now I do and like stars guided sailors of old so do these lights guide me and do you know what? They become ever brighter as I get closer. And as I get closer they become grow in number.

I learned much from you and you were an effective task-master. The only thing I didn’t learn is that it is good to learn a lesson because your lessons always hurt and sometimes brought pain. You caused everything you hate in me and you hate me because you hate yourself. I understand now that you were unhappy and unsatisfied and needed to vent, to punish me because you couldn’t face yourself in the mirror that I became. I’m glad you drove me away but why won’t you be everything for me that I was for you? … Well, not everything. You crossed a line I will never cross and when I face you next I will finally be your size, except a bigger person, try to take me then. I wish you would but hope you won’t, but only for my sake because beating you would be like defeating myself and I couldn’t care less about you.

My sincerest wish regarding you is that I will stop hating you but not because I want to love you, no, because I hate hating you or anything. Hate kept me going so far but it is time to get rid of it, I do not need it’s support anymore and maybe rage will leave with hate or when pain becomes a distant memory or when despair lifts for the last time or when shame turns to acceptance and humility. Or never, it matters not because as I loosen the chains that bind rage it becomes ever easier to control maybe someday we will meet in the middle. Or not, but a bit of control isn’t a bad thing and in my opinion more people should exercise some. Like you.

This is my goodbye to you. You will never read this, will never understand but I, having written it do and that is what matters. It helped me to write of these things and the next time I speak of my past will be with less pain while you will stay in my past where you belong, you have affected my present long enough.

Now it is time for me to crawl out of the hole you dug for me and when I am out I will give you a gift, one you never wanted nor thought you needed and cannot see or touch.

My forgiveness.

3

For every handful of moments spent in the dark, shadowy valleys of my mind or soul there are the few that I spend soaring upwards. Color fills all, light reaches everywhere and the air is crisp. I feel like running and leaping, like climbing mountains and braving currents, I want to see, touch and taste everything because it feels like I never have before. I want to experience new things and re-experience the old in a different light. The first steps are always slow and hesitant but when I pick up speed and take more in I grow even hungrier for life. I’m not sure if this hunger can ever be sated, nor if it should be or if there are dangers waiting at the other end but it will be a blast to figure it all out and if I’ve come this far I certainly won’t let unspecified fear stop me. There is so much to see and do and the more I see and do the bigger this world seems, tightly packed with wonders big and small. I marvel at the beauty of it all and feel humbled and elated at the same time.

This!

This is what I want. This is what I strive towards, struggle for, suffer for. And when I falter and stumble and fall into a pit I hide these feelings deep within me and forget them for a while so that nothing can take them from me, but when I inevitably rise again it gets easier and easier because just as negative memories and emotions pile on each other so do the good ones. The difficulty lies in making the positive pile bigger than the other one.

The most surprising discovery I have made over the years is how rewarding it can be to share what little happiness I have with others. Surprising because I got used to keeping everything in after I realized I hurt people. The fact that it doesn’t have to be that way blew my mind while scaring me at the same time.

Life can be hard, painful, stressful, dark and bleak but also beautiful, colorful, joyful, vibrant, relaxing, exciting and most of all: worth living. Having experienced the darkness and the depths of it all makes me appreciate the good parts more and I am eternally grateful for every second of it. I may not see it like this tomorrow or even five minutes from now but that does not invalidate the fundamental fact that there is an up just as there is a tomorrow. The sun does rise after night is darkest after all and while my night may have been long and filled with things that go bump there is a dawn. It is here and so am I, there is a sunfilled day ahead and towards the morrow I go and run and leap.

Afterword:

I thank you for taking the time to read through all this and if you are a bit exhausted after reading all that imagine how I feel after writing it. But it feels good because it was a cathartic exercise. Many things mentioned above are things I have never spoken of before or even written down to myself. In my mind those things used to be huge and threatening but on paper it all seems less so. There is still pain and there will still be dark times ahead but so are the light ones and not only are light times brighter than ever before, they also occur more frequently and it becomes easier to pull myself out. I think this is called progress or recovery.

I felt somewhat crappy when I started writing this and feel somewhat giddy now, mainly because of all the caffeine I consumed to keep going but under that bounciness is a sense of acceptance and content that I rarely find, that in itself suffices as a purpose but for me it turned out to be much more.

There are a great many people I’d like to thank for getting me this far and to apologize for hurting them on the way here. Since most of them aren’t on speaking terms with me anymore or dropped out of my life by other means this will have to do for now and if there’s any justice in this world and Karma is real I hope that good will find them wherever they are now.

I will now spend a lot of time cursing my spell-checker and then put this up before I change my mind about the whole thing.

I hope this finds you well and if the ending made you smile or nod or think or shed a tear in joy, simply comment or send me a message if you want,
Feday