In my last post I spoke of the joys a man may know that support him. In this post I'm going to tell of the sadness that has re-invaded my life that others may understand the nature of what it is to truly forgive injury and trespass that healing may follow. I am not claiming I've succeeded in such a work of forgiveness, but it is a work underway at best effort.
As of this writing I have no foundation under my life. None. I'm floating my life on the attitude control jets like a landing spaceship riding the rockets. Fortunately for me I taught Sulu how it's done, as long as I don't have to do it for so long I run out of fuel I'll set it down flat and intact. But this is totally nerve wracking work from which I can allow no rest, there is that fuel gauge to be considered.
There is a folk saying that goes 'men are what their mother's make them.' I hope, I pray to God that is not the literal and absolute truth. Why? Because in the last weeks I've been compelled to admit what I never wanted to admit concerning my mother, and deal with a lifetime's worth of ramifications for my self and my siblings.
After forty some years of searching I'm compelled to admit the most likely answer for the cruelty I and my siblings suffered to the will of our mother is that she was a practicing member of the bdsm lifestyle from the late '40's coming forward. As I've said in a recent post in the months past I've actually gotten to know several who are members of that world, and as my understanding of them has grown so have the inescapable comparisons to my mother.
In every essence of her persona she was a perfect fit to their world of brutality and secrecy, their world of misery enshrined as justification for misery reflected onto all around them. The fit is to perfect to deny. There was —something— she confided to my wife as my wife was attempting to comfort her in her dying deliriums that Barbara would not tell me, said she refused to remember it lest she use it against her with cruelty. There was the time my Uncle opened his mouth to say something, something rough enough to put his face into an expression I knew well as his combat mode, and my Aunt shut him down hard. The hints have been there. There were several comments heard from my father during my childhood in a voice so cold as to burn that very well might have been his reaction to knowing as fact what I can only speculate as a forensic reconstruction. In re-reading my personal journals I've realized I'd deliberately ignored this possibility at several points, I didn't want to think so low of my own mother. I'd approach the obvious, and then back away. My mistake, I should have had more courage.
The question now is do I have enough courage to forgive what was done in the name of love perverted? There is a rage that has lived in me for many, many years. Since the second grade to be specific, which is when the first of the blatant assaults occurred. It has always been a submerged rage to hot to touch, to hot to acknowledge, a rage that tormented my dreams for years. It has never been more than half a heartbeat away from taking control of my life and actions. It is submerged no more, it is now full in the open and demanding satisfaction.
Satisfaction. If my life has taught me one thing it is that there is no satisfying such rage. Oh, the temptation is there in spades, the temptation to use any and every thing I've ever learned of the physical world to extract a blood revenge from the modern iterations of the same sort of perverts. Twenty plus years working industry and I know plenty of ways to work wholesale lethal intent. It would be so easy, so very easy. But it would not satisfy the rage, all it would do is feed it and set me even lower than the most pathetic of the creatures I'd be ending. After a whole lifetime of denying that rage I'm going to gamble what's left of my life, and theirs, that I'm strong enough to leave it on the surface and convert all that hatred and contempt, all the utter revulsion and bitter disgust into something non-destructive, hopefully something to be called positive.
How? By always remembering that if my eldest brother Jesus was able to forgive the complete and entire fucked up mess of humanity then I should be able to forgive the minor percentage of perverts who worked harm on my family. Once I'm convinced my strength is adequate to the task it is my intent to wage war on that perversion, not with lethality but rather with compassion and honesty, to walk among them and expose the lie that holds them to misery as a way of life. To kill them would be to easy, to help heal them is by far the more demanding challenge, by far the more powerful stroke against the wickedness. May God Almighty grant me to cool my rage using it to warm my compassion, that I might work such healing, may he grant me the wisdom to bring this intent to reality in His sight. Such is my intent for whatever is left of this life.
