Lies and the Light

The real villain is the abuse. Not even the abuser - I have a certain sympathy for what my mother must have suffered when she was a child. The abuse is a set of lies that she made herself believe, a set of lies that wrapped around her pain. A set of lies she accepted because her pain was so much worse.

One of the hardest moments was for me to see that I carry that abuse in me, too.

In order to survive what I suffered as a child at my mother's hands, I wrapped my pain up in lies. I told myself the same lies she told herself. Maybe the lies of the abuse are like a computer virus, in this sense: an infected computer will spread copies of the virus to any other computer it comes in contact with. She created a situation where I had to take the lies into me in order to survive. Just as my grandfather had done to her.

There is a difference between us, of course. She surrendered to the abuse in a way I never did. I think perhaps the only difference is that I had hope where she had only despair. I can only speculate what she felt, but what matters is that I never totally surrendered to the lies of the abuse. Even though I carried them in me head for most of my life. All I did, all I was capable of doing, was just this: I didn't give up.

There is ... something in me that knows right from wrong. The soul, the heart -- any word I can come up with is going to sound hokey. But I have always known something was wrong, even when I couldn't admit to myself that I knew. There was always something calling to me. Something that told me there was a better way to be me. That I could be a better person -- it wasn't even a promise, it was a knowledge, something deep inside me that recognizes who I could have been. It knows Who I have always been and who I could still become.

And that ... light, it drives me to act brave when I don't feel it, to be kind when I have no reason to, to hope when I just want to despair.

I believe, I have faith that we all have that light in us. It is the thing in us that calls us to be better people. It's the bit that knows beauty, the part that hopes.

Some have learned how to ignore it, and that's tragic. Like my mother, they give up, and become capable of great cruelty and evil. Perhaps they believe that is all there is in the world.

But I know there is always a path, for anyone, to set aside the lies, to face the pain they conceal, and to heal. Maybe it takes longer the more pain there is, maybe the way is harder and the steps smaller. But the call is always there. For everyone, always.

That's how I view our world:
On the one side the lies of the abuse, that lets people believe that their cruelty is just.
And on the other, a call to truth. A light in the human soul that recognizes who we are, and will not let us forget that.