The Well Trodden Path

Walking down to the beach through the bush , we all walk the path that has been cleared, the easy route , free from overhanging branches with the small trees and shrubs removed. We walk the path that is laid before us. We step into the footprints  like they are the maps of our lives, our compass ,showing us the direction others have followed This is often how history repeats itself . There are many proud families with generations of Doctors , or teachers who followed the path that was laid before them, a legacy they hand down and one they are rightly very proud of. On the flip side people often wonder how abuse can be generational  and sadly it happens exactly the same way.  Walking down that path that has been cleared for us , the same direction the others went yet we never get to that beach, the reward.

Often I would wonder what it would have been like to have been raised in a home where abuse was not a part of our lives , in order to have done that I would expect we would have had to go back generations to eliminate this legacy that has been handed down to us.  Even if my father did not abuse me , and my ‘uncle’ did not abuse my sister we would still have been abused , abused by the ghosts of abuse that lived inside my mother . Abuse changes people , we never got the best version of her because that was stolen from her, stolen from us . Abuse is like cancer , you can keep cutting it out and it will reappear somewhere else , then it gets cut out again and you may be lucky and they tell you they got it all . They tell you you're in remission but then it shows up again and then again, they will give you some treatment  but it is laying dormant and it changes you because you know it is there , just below the surface , waiting , people might not see it but you know you have it. The only people who know what that feels like are other people who have it , just like abuse only we know. Instead of cancer, our disease that is laying dormant is shame. 

We have made failed attempts over the years to carve a new path for ourselves, some stay stuck on the only path they know. The invisible pavers of familiarity , the ones that keep us in our place , walking to the beat of the drum, we know the rhythm we can walk it blindfolded. When you think you are making progress , cutting through the scrub you can hear footsteps from the old path and then booming ' Who does she think she is ?" That's how they keep you in your place. The voice in your head reminding you where you came from and driving it home that you are nothing. "Get back where you belong?" .

Well I have stood at the beginning of the path contemplating, the path that has been cleared and I have followed where it leads over and over again. The path looked easy to travel down and parts of it were very familiar but I decided to pick up a machete with both hands and hack a new path. My hands are bloodied and blistered but I won't stop swinging. I lift and swing with riled fury for every boy , for every girl who was made to feel afraid and whose trust was violated .Those children who were used as a muse for perverted curiosity I swing hard for you and sob between each swing that you have suffered.  I have torn up my map and am going in a different direction. No one else will be walking down that well trodden path , not on my watch.

‘Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything.Maybe it’s about unbecoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place”-Paul Coelho