"At times our own lights go out and are rekindled by the spark of another. We each have reason to think in gratitude of those who relit the flame within us."
I don't know who said that, but I'm not sure I've ever heard truer words in my life.
I know I said I felt I didn't have time for blogging anymore, and really, I guess I don't, but writing is my therapy in so many ways. Writing publicly, even if no one reads it but me, is like group therapy. Strange, I know, but sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction.
Maybe it's the topics that I was trying to write about. Sharing the deep, and often dark, parts of my soul with someone is a need in me that I rarely feed. Talking about the past is often hard, but it seems to be the only thing I really want to say. Maybe writing about my spiritual life will come in time, after I've completely exercised the demons of my past.
I used to avoid it for fear that one day someone in my family would read it and be hurt. Who am I kidding though? The person that hurt me the most is gone, the rest don't seem to care and are constantly brandishing their own version of the truth, so why not? Why not find the emotional release my tormented soul needs by sharing my truth?
Here are my darkest truths, laid bare. My family, meaning those who raised me, put the funk in dysfunctional. My parents never wanted me. My mother gave up her two oldest children, the oldest to adoption -- although there are rumors, have always been rumors, that he was sold for drug money or possibly died, and the adoption story was used as a cover -- and the other (me) to family. Her reputation and self-image was more important to her than anything save her youngest child. Why the youngest was blessed with her love and devotion while it was denied to us, I'll never know. She professed her love for us often, but the feelings that should have accompanied it were never there.
I was never truly jealous of the youngest in any way but that. No matter what he did, or didn't do, it was never his fault. He was never to blame. Someone else (usually me) was always somehow at fault. I, however, was the family scape-goat. Every bad thing in our family was somehow my fault.
I've come to realize that with my mother's passing, many people have broken what seemed to be a vow of silence. The stories I began to be told after her passing at first left me stunned, not quite sure what to believe, but after hearing the same, or similar, stories coming from so many different people, it became hard not to believe them.
My step-father and the youngest sibling cling to an idealized idea of who she was while I've had no choice but to see her for who and what she really was.
I suppose if there was a "best" too be had from her, they got it, but I never did. Maybe that's why it's been so easy for me to accept this new information while they continue to deny it.
My dark truth is that my "family" has tossed me away like so much garbage. Phone calls, voicemails and text messages go unanswered except by my sister (step-sister, but she's still my baby in my heart -- and she was treated nearly as badly as I was). Some have resorted to outlandish embellishments that turn innocent things into ugly ones, others have resorted to out-right lies. Already being branded unjustly and unfairly as the "black sheep" and a trouble-maker by my mother, I suppose it's made the lies easier for some to believe. A select few have attempted to defend me, but their reputations were like-wise tarnished before my mother's passing so their cries of injustice on my behalf fall on deaf ears.
In truth, it seems that most are more eager to believe lies than any truth on my behalf.
My dark truth is that the last year of my life has been a living hell and has only recently begun to truly heal with the help of people who became my family years ago through a marriage that didn't last, but a love for a lost and lonely child that did.
These people, these wonderful people, are healing places in my heart that I feared would be raw wounds forever. They are helping me heal that lost and lonely little girl that no one loved or wanted that still lives deep in my heart.
With them, I feel a love and acceptance I searched for all my life and thought I'd never find.
If you'd asked me, even the day before Tiger contacted me, how I felt about not having family outside of Draco, Dragonfly and the handful of close friends that I considered my extended family, I would have declared, quite convincingly, that I didn't need them. Didn't need any of them! I could have made you believe me too, because I almost believed me. It would have been a lie though.
The dark truth is, I was dying on the inside, my heart calling out for someone with a claim to actual family ties to love me and want to be part of my life. For someone, anyone, to accept me, faults and all, and love me anyway. I was so lonely and lost, searching for something I thought I'd never find.
The love of these wonderful people saved me from loneliness and despair. They saved me from the depths of my dark truths and with their love, I am finally becoming strong enough to truly heal.
It is a process. A long one, most likely. I've dealt with as much of it internally as I can and my heart tells me that the final step to healing these parts of myself is to talk about it. To put it out there for whoever finds this blog to read. To "shout from the rooftops" my truth and to hell with what they think or say. To tell them all that while I will not invade their lives with my obviously unwanted presence, that I will be silent no longer. I will not continue to protect the reputations of those that never even considered mine or my feelings.
I will share my truth, my life, as I have lived it. If any are over-come with feelings of shame or reputations are tarnished, then so be it.
I will say here and now that I realize everyone has their own experiences with people. Their experiences were not mine and I will not deny my right to speak of my past to protect any of them.
Some of my life has been graphic. I'm a survivor of molestation, physical, mental and emotional abuse and brain-washing as well as rape. I will tell my truths as I have lived them, not as others saw them or retold them.
I will not apologize for offending or contradicting anyone in my family. I may have gone along with the things I was told to say for years, but I never forgot the truth of the things I have experienced.
If anyone in my "family" finds this blog and realizes my true identity and does not want their memories of people tarnished or forever changed, I suggest you read no more because some people were not who you thought they were, including me.
I will speak my truths before keeping them secrets drives me insane.
Drakina
