don’t give yourself away

The final assignment for this course was to write in any genre. I worked with two pieces, one fiction, one non-fiction, wanting to leave my options open. In the end, I went with the non-fiction, for one simple reason: I had something I needed to work through. And the only way to do that has been to face it, head on.

And I can honestly say, I did.

Perhaps it was best that hubby was on the other side of the world cycling up incredibly high mountains (like 3275 m mountains). I have never believed in my ability to survive without him to catch me whenever I tried to work through my past.

I was wrong.

This was a REALLY hard week of emotional work. I could not get comfortable in my own skin. Midweek, the tears came: sadness, joy, victory. It was all there.

It was such a relief.

Back in the early 1990s, I testified in court, in support of another victim who was suing the Calgary Board for negligence. After testifying, I stood outside the courthouse, looked up at the sky, and felt like a superhero.

A man who had sat through my testimony approached me and asked me why I didn’t just tell someone.

My super powers left me, my super hero cape flew away.

I found those powers and the cape again this week because the piece I wrote was different in a fundamental way. I acknowledged the ways in which systems and people let me down.

Self blame is an exhausting way to live and as unnecessary as assholes confronting witnesses on court house steps.

I know that there will still be days ahead in which the past comes back to bite me.

It’s okay; I’ve got a cape for that.

***

As is often the case for me, I had a song rolling through my brain all day, Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now. The most important line:

if you care, don’t let them know, don’t give yourself away