Boogeymen and monsters in my closet never frightened me. I never looked under my bed for the "bad man." Or worried about ghosts haunting my room at night. My nightmares came as familiar faces with "I love you" upon their lips.
Terror caught in my throat and chills ran down my spine as I heard my door creak open and my name whispered. Squeezing my eyes shut tight and clutching my teddy bear, I whimpered silently, "Please God make him go away" but it was not to be. Soon not even the light of day could protect me from darkness. It invaded my days subtly under the guise of love, trust, and friendship; I was oh so young and innocent then.
While sexual and emotional abuse come quietly, other forms of abuse are much more blatant, such as physical and verbal abuse. I would not be exempt from them either and much of my childhood and adolescence was spent trying to understand why love hurt so much. It was within these walls I built my ideas about love, basing it on everything false and negative, perhaps I needed to completely understand what love wasn't in order to begin to understand what it truly was.
I am NOT a victim! A victim is someone who is powerless, and I don't see myself like that. Who can really understand all the ins and outs of why people do the things they do. Surely, they do not realize the depth of the harm they inflict. I have to believe when people know better, they do better. I've never faltered from that point of view, and I don't think I ever will.
The trick has been, if that is what love is not then what is love really? And we have a choice...accept what we have been taught through our past experiences about love or write a new definition. This is my journey.
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