Find Your Way Home, Beloved Friend...

Someone I hold very dear is suffering; held captive in chains of despair. I so desperately want to help her; to somehow penetrate the cocoon of self-imposed isolation that encapsulates her, woven ever more tighly with the passing years by a multitude of others with strands of indifference, frustration, empty platitudes, well-intended but enabling sympathy, and all too often, callous and brutal maliciousness. We are like Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan, she and I, both of us cast into the same dark void ~ and I long with all of my heart to help her find the path leading back to the light.

Hers has been a lifetime of struggle; a chaotic odyssey fraught with horrific highs and lows that propel her at whim from the summit of joy and achievement to the deepest bowels of perceived failure and despair. The nightmare that was her childhood sliced deep into her precious heart, mind, and soul, crushing her psyche and spirit beneath its merciless tread. She never knew the touch of a loving mother's hand, nor was helped to grow and flower in the nourishing soil of unconditional, untainted love. Instead, her fathomless wellspring of goodness, insight, and immeasurable potential was abused, neglected, and ignored. Survival at its most basic level hinged upon secreting her essence so deeply within her that, though silenced and in bondage, it could at least be guarded and kept safe.

In the turmoil of adolescence, she took up the armaments of anger, feigned indifference, and dependencies, all of which served only to compound her pain and immerse her deeper still into a septic quagmire of anger, low self-esteem, flawed choices, and self-sabotage. Expressions of rage utilized to reign in and dull her pain only exacerbated already festering wounds. She'd become a victim not only of her abusers, but of victimization itself.

Victimization ambushes innocence; neither sought nor deserved, it blindsides body and soul. It offends all sensibilities, decimating inner peace and leaving life's equilibrium tattered in its wake. It's shock waves crash in upon us with perilous might, stripping away the cloak of numbness that shields us early on to whip the naked spirit raw. Ultimately, though, victims reach a crossroads bearing the promise of recovery; a crucial turning point at which a clear choice may be made not only to survive, but to jettison poisoned anger and rage, let go the pain, and allow our wounds to finally and forever heal. Such a choice should in no way be confused with the glib and dismissive concept of "just get over it" so cavalierly proffered by clueless onlookers ~ it is instead a real and tensile-strengthed deliverance by which purloined lives and self-esteem are rescued and made whole.

Those who attack, abuse, and victimize rob us of much when they strike, the greatest of which is power and control. They feed on others via their acts of domination and subjugation for their own unspeakably dark and ugly gain. But despite the toxicity of these assaults, it is their survivors and not their perpetrators who have final say in their own ensuing destinies ~ victims retain the sole and exclusive right to renounce and break free from the stranglehold of victimization and wrest back the power from the victimizer's grasp. For every survivor, the options of reclaiming one's power and control or forever abandoning it to evil's grip both require surrender; the first to reclamation and rebirth and the second to hopelessness, pain, anger, and despair. Choosing to heal does not mandate excusing or forgiving an assailant or abuser ~ it does, however, emancipate the heart and soul from the futile, exsanguinating, and self-defeating pursuits of assigning blame, exacting punishment, and hungering for acceptance of responsibility and a show of remorse that will never be forthcoming. Such endeavors perpetuate victimization by enslaving us to want we cannot satiate and rage we cannot dispel. Hurling the battered spirit at a fortressed wall of evil exacerbates a victim's pain and suffering; denouncing and scaling that wall frees them to heal the wounds and soar free.

We are like Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan at the pump, my beloved friend ~ both of us know keenly the anguish of abandonment, abuse, spiritual devastation, and overwhelming loss. But I found the way back ~ and want with all my heart for you to find the path that will lead you home, as well. For waiting there is the the treasure that you truly are... and have always been. The gold therein bears no tarnish from the hands that sought to steal it, sweet girl ~ it is yours to polish to a gleam and bestow as you see fit upon the world. Claim it once more and share it only on your terms ~ with those who will honor and cherish the gift.

I love you ~ as do countless others. We will wait for as long as it takes for you to come home.

© Copyright 2006 Of Fire Born ~ welcome, 2012! (UN: of_fire_born at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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