Talk Thursday: The Journey

Have you ever stopped and just thought about all the negative events, people, and actions in your past? I mean really sat down and thought them and their impacts through. While I’ve not stopped, set, thought and listed each one, I have contemplated some of the worse events in my life and realized that I am far better for them. Where as delight and joy abound as happy memories, it is the contrary events, people and actions that have been monumental and formative in my transition.

A righteous man is one who has never been tried. I’m fairly certain that is my paraphrased version of some sagely adage. But I find it true. Although maybe it should be a righteous man is a one dimensional – vanilla being. Don’t get me wrong, I love vanilla and it’s great on chocolate cake, but I want to be multi-dimension, tried by the fire and come out heat tempered.

People’s treatment of me has molded my treatment of others. I remember once Dennis Vincaguera kicking me so many times in the butt that I was wearing a thong (in the sixth grade) decades before everyone else. No I didn’t fight back, and I’m not sure why – except I don’t believe in violence. But I did learn that you can’t expect others to treat you justly or fairly, you just have to treat people the way you want to be treated yourself. Everyone just watched, my reaction in later years- I have become proactive when I see someone being abused. Maybe everyone watched without helping me because they felt the way he did, or maybe they were afraid their underwear would become a thong like mine, or maybe they just didn’t know how. I didn’t’, but I do now.

I am woman! And I over come adversity.

In October of my junior year I was raped. Not brutally raped, but raped all the same with lasting mental scars as a reminder. What I have is more than that- I have the strength of survival. Years later I thought I’d over come all aspects of that October night in 1972, until my 20th class reunion when in he walked with his wife and I turned into a quivering mass of human jello. This really disgust me on so many levels. In truth I am furious over this power because: I doubt he knows who I am, I doubt he did then even though we went to school together. I doubt he has had a second thought over the brutality and domination of that disastrous night. He had months to face it, apologize, to regret before I moved to Oregon. Nada, and I don’t expect it, because I know more about rape and the reality of life after and realize that anything more than what I have now is a pipe dream. And what I have now is everything I gave myself. I learned that in my work a day adult world I am a survivor who has over come, conquered, and live to love another day. A niggling reality is this: while I have survived I am still terrified of him. Very humbling to acknowledge, but in the same breathe I have learned a little bit of compassion for those who have been raped and not survived. Oh, a shell of what they could be walks in this world, but because they continue to be victims every day of their lives they are less than their potential. Thank you mom and dad for making me durable.

Share your smiles, they are returned tenfold when given freely.

I have long since made it a point to tell people thank you for what they have meant to me. For the impacts they made on my development. In the words of John Edward, I communicate, appreciate and validate those in my life everyday. I horde the members of my heart, my families, my loves, my teachers.

Why regret the negative actions, people and events of my life? Without them I am not who I am. I am not a righteous being, I am a learning being who is embracing the people and lessons within my life. And I like it. It’s not about the final destination; it’s all about the journey and the events along the way.

Please share your journey.

Sith,
Cele