What I Have Learned This Year: Letting Go and Walking Tall

Okay, I admit it. I hate technology. I hate the way it has, for all the positive connectivity, virtually disconnected people to the point that human beings sit in groups in restaurants all over the world amid live human beings also attached to their gadgets talking to other human beings from afar – in some cases merely blocks apart. I hate how even a phone call has become such a problem for so many. Texting and emailing at their convenience is the only thing they want to do.

I hate the way we use acronyms for sentences and how manners have nosedived to the point where pardon me, please, thank you and you’re welcome are considered “extra niceties” instead of the norm.  I hate the way the world has become what I can only observe as dehumanizing so that we must now discuss kindness, there are books on it and everywhere we go we hear about kindness.

Why must we discuss to the bone something so fundamentally right about being human that it is like overplayed songs on the radio.  Shouldn’t kindness be a given, or as a comical friend of mine says,  “a gimme.” It sure was while growing up in our house. Neighbours helped neighbours. Friends helped friends. Without question or being asked. It was just what you did. Shared your food, your time, your love, your skills, your help, whatever you could give.  Many don’t even know who their neighbors are anymore.

I think I was born in the wrong century.

For years I resisted writing a blog. I did not want to get connected up in all that machine dependence.

I’ve learned so much this past year.

For the entire month of December you can find out what people have learned by logging on to: http://www.ressurrection.wordpress.com You can also submit your work as a guest blog.

I’ve learned that when you are down and troubled, as the song goes, and need a helping hand, the hand most likely to reach out isn’t those you’ve come to rely on or think love you best but a stranger from half way around the world in the middle of the night, a good old-fashioned pen pal in the form of an internet angel who may not even understand you or what you are going through, yet unwittingly utters the simplest of phrases that keep you alive, even inspire your forward, onward… upward to another day.

I’ve learned that those you think love you most in the real world are also the most willing to put you through the worst nightmares of your life for their own selfish indulgences or gain. Or those you thought most likely to support you through hurdle after hurdle just blatantly ignore your pain when you experience nightmare after nightmare at the hands of loved ones you also once trusted with your emotional, mental and physical safety.

Abuse is abuse and ignoring people is a form of abuse.

Ask any therapist.  Next time you think ignoring someone necessary, try talking. Communication works wonders.  Hurting, paining people should be visible, validated and victorious one day because they did nothing wrong. Why shame them further over the bad choices of others? I suppose some just like to hurt others further just because they can. So sad.

I’ve learned that if you are in a bad car accident, that’s okay. If you suffer a catastrophic illness, that’s okay. If you break your leg, that’s okay.  If you have an ongoing physical disorder, that’s okay, too. If you have bruises on your face, even strangers empathize. But just try having invisible scars.

If you suffer an emotional breakdown because you are relentlessly driven there by heartless thugs no better than the bullies who drove Amanda Todd to her death, there is something wrong with YOU. Or so those bullies would have us believe.

Nothing wrong with those who were so cruel. Nor those who treated you so vilely. According to those doing the hate mongering and ridiculing because it IS YOU who must now go for help because there is no one safe left to turn to.

What are we becoming? What have we let people become? I know we can’t control the world but being a loving, steadfast human being in our own little corner of the globe truly ripples out. Well, that’s what I believe.

Most of us realize that ill patterns of behavior are often so inter-generationally entrenched, all we can do is create an awareness. If that is at all possible in such an insidious mode of functioning that it is almost impossible to discern and thus, impenetrable, by order of the “pack mentality” deeming themselves correct.

My firm belief is that sensitivity training is required. For all human beings. It should start in schools where manners, life skills and social skills create an awareness so strong that a child will know the difference between living in a healthy or unhealthy home. A safe or unsafe home. With safe or unsafe adults. A Safe or unsafe world. A safe or unsafe internet world. What good are math and reading if you are not safe because the safest place you’ve ever been in your life is school?

Don’t think I’m putting this all on schools and teachers because I am not. But tell me where else a person spends most of their waking hours before they start spending them in their work career? It just makes sense to use those hours in a way that prepares humans for more than adult careers, to me.

I’ve also learned that even if people love you and know better, they may someday become your worst, most vile nightmare as happened with my former best friend.  Over an almost incestuous sexual indulgence with my ex, she not only kicked me but stood in my own kitchen where we had chatted together, eaten meals together for years, making crazy hand signals at me instead of simply leaving when we BOTH asked her to.

Not surprising given her stubborn history and his own words, “She f*cked me, I didn’t f*ck her. She got on top of me and f*cked me!” I didn’t care about his justifications and told him so. He owes me no explanations, we are finished so it matters not who he is with or what he does sexually since I am NOT party to his shame any longer. I did and still do, however, care very much about the loyalty, love and safety of my friendships.

Apparently, from her very own behaviours and determination to “win” (as he told me she said of me – what a disturbed immature mindset that statement illustrates) she does not know the meaning of the words: LOVE, LOYALTY, SAFETY, TRUST, KINDNESS. Nor does he or he would not be able to knowingly hurt me in the face of so many other losses I endured.

Who knows, maybe it was going on before and they planned it all this way. There is no way of knowing because they have both lied to themselves and others including the police for so long now, it will be hard to ever know for sure. I thought the cruelty stopped when I left the marriage.

I was wrong.

I wonder what they both won. Well, I used to wonder. I don’t anymore.

She knows why I had to leave the marriage. She knows I tried all I could to save my marriage. For years.

What I didn’t realize is that she was busy “collecting” when I was innocently “confiding.” Even after I left, she continued posing/acting/manipulating as my friend and siphoned information off me to carry back to him. Imagine. She is an emotional and mental RAPIST of the worst violating order.

Yet in her own handwriting deems me of “no character value” all while dubbing herself, in her own handwriting: “of virtuous character.” I am not a religious person, rather, I am spiritual. And I believe our Creator sees her and knows her true dark colours but she does not know our Creator. Or she could not behave so horridly.

I’ve learned that those you thought most unlikely to hurt you will betray your confidence, your trust and your purity of friendship for their own sick, selfish and desperate needs. Even if it is killing you, your spirit, your love, your trust, your being.  Because it nearly killed me.

I’ve learned that people will lie to themselves and the world to try to make their own wrongs against others right to the world and to themselves.

 Most of all this year, I have learned:

IT IS NOT MY FAULT.

I’ve learned that deceitful people do tell us who they are before they know they’ve done it.  Connecting the dots of who people really are isn’t rocket science but it does take some learning and time. The trouble with liars and abusers/users is you don’t know they are lying when they do it.

The damage occurs later when you realize you were deceived, that their duplicity was masked by an agenda you could never even fathom let alone anticipate. Still, this is often how we learn to connect those dots of character together.

If we don’t suspect an ulterior motive, it’s challenging to piece together. Even for an adult. I was duped and doubly duped by the man I loved while living with him and then by a woman I loved who, I thought, loved me as fast and genuinely as I loved her.  I can’t imagine the plight of an emotionally or physically abused child, the sensation of having no safe place in the world to turn, to run, to feel safe.

I was one once that child and I was recently that woman. In fact, being that child is exactly why I became that woman. Somehow, despite the blows, that purest part of me survived to tell. Telling is instrumental to the healing process for most of us. Not all of us write. I do and I believe it has saved my life as has the writing community on wordpress.com. That I still WANT to is a miracle to me. Writing forward, I will get back to myself again, I just know it will take some time and healing.

Told I still have a child like sense of wonder about the world by three different people in the past three years since I left my long time marriage, I am proud to say I have retained this quality in the face of life’s nasty curve balls.

I’ve seen a lot, done a lot, lived in remote settings, dug trenches alongside men, approved daycares for children and established services for victims of violence.  I know humans can behave VERY poorly – so cruelly – toward one another you would think them utter savages and even after apologizing for treating you so inhumanely, they will do it again.

Still, no victim of circumstance nor martyrdom for me, a true survivor who has already achieved much as a key player in establishing two province wide programs,  working part time for my husband’s business while working full time for provincial, civic government and social ministries, attending night school, serving on boards of directors, championing causes both in and out of the line of duty despite while processing personal life challenges/shocks that rival Academy winning movies all while writing my award winning works (fiction, non-fiction and poetry) though my 110 page novella written in 3 days was only short-listed, lol, I have, as the famous poet says “miles to go before I sleep.”

I write even in my dream time… 🙂

 Breathing and writing. The two things I must do in life. No matter what.

Values and morals are not merely words you spout to achieve a hidden agenda – they are a visible, unwavering integrity that shows up in the way you walk in the world.

Walking softly and carrying a big soft cotton swab … I have grown to love technology and am so grateful for my community at WordPress.com.  I was a doomed passenger on the Titanic but now I sail with them and on storm threatened days when I cannot write, I read something here that inspires me so I must write something even if only a reply to another post. Thanks, blogging community, I love you.

Here I sit writing on the very technology I began telling you I disliked.  Oh, I said, hated didn’t I… lol.

That’s technology for you.

What starts out as something wonderful becomes something you no longer even recognize. Or, like many wonderful miracles in life, it starts out as the unknown factor you can’t imagine ever liking.

Then you find yourself connected with others who hold similar life values, walk tall in life and help everyone they connect with as much as they possibly can, their kindness not a new way of being to be discussed at length, rather a simple way of quietly being that is so amazingly beautiful, you are humbled to tears of joy and gratitude for those so naturally kind, you realize no books, discussion or paying it forward will ever be necessary among these people. It is simply, sweetly, humbly who they naturally are.

And you realize…

Isn’t that what we are all here for?

Merry Christmas 2012, Everyone.

JAM ©11Dec2012 auroraMorealist.wordpress.com

When I was invited to guest blog on what I have learned this year, I struggled to think of something different to write and then a friend said, let your heart go. I did. It may not be wonderful but it is me. Unplugged writing! Thanks for the opportunity to share what I have learned this year, Ressurrection. May love, light and laughter always shine your way.

NOTE: This is a GUEST BLOG on Love, Life and Relationships: Overcoming Emotional and Child Sexual Abuse. Please subscribe ——>