Would You Abuse A Child?

Would you abuse a child?  How about an abused one?  Would you spit in his face and push him away?  Burn him and shame him to the core?  Especially if this child showed up one day bruised and battered at your front door?

Would you kick him out?  Would you wish him dead?  Will you try to kill the child in your head?

We tried.  We tried for a long time.  We tried to bury him in our mind; forget him forever.  That did not work.  ‘He’ rose again to haunt us with his plague of guilt and shame.

So we tried to ‘kill’ him.  We barely succeeded and nearly succeeded in killing ourselves.  We took forty whacks at a time; sometimes eighty.  Most on our left arm.  ‘Cuz that’sclosest to the heart and easiest to self-harm.

That didn’t work.  It was like dropping a brick on my foot to take ‘me’ and my heart and soul off the pain in my heart and head.  “He” was killing us with his emotions and ‘we’ could not stand him anymore.

So I tried to kill myself.  ‘They’ stopped me in the end; just barely.  It turns out my resistance to overdoses is rather good.  (Thank you US Army and Drug Lords – and many a young pharmacist over time.)

It wasn’t until last year when I started to embrace myself that I started to learn: take care of ‘him’.  Treat him as you would your own if he came up to you, all beaten and abused.  Like a real human being taking care of a real life human child.  Loving him.  Taking him in.

What would you do if an abused child came up to you, crying and needing help?  Would you turn him away?  Or greet him with some love – some understanding of his needs?

You gotta grow up inside of you; learn to do what a parent – a GOOD parent does for you.  Loving ‘him’ and taking him in your arms, soothing his sore head, brushing his hair back from his brow and staring him in the eyes.  You gotta look into his souls and realize they are yours . . .

Not yours to have but to hold; to take care of most tenderly – just as you would a human child, that child you have inside.  The one you blame (would you blame a human child?) . . . the one you shame (would you tell a human child that what he did – taking ‘it’ or asking for ‘it’ or bearing the effects and shame was ‘wrong’?).

No, I didn’t think you would.  I think you would accept a real human child with a real human heart, and real human treatment and things.  I think if ‘he’ was to show up at your front door you would take him in.  You would love him – perhaps be confused by him sometimes – as you struggled to understand his troubles, his pain – why ‘he’ did what he did at the time . . .

and you would find it didn’t matter, this human child in your mind.  That all the shame was not his, no need to feel guilty anymore.

I know that’s what ‘we’ did.  ‘We’ separated ‘him’ some more – setting ‘him’ aside from ‘us’ and then taking him back in.  Embracing him as one of ‘ours’ – a hurt and human child.  A survivor stuck in time.  One who needed our loving and not our hatred anymore, and when we understood – well, when you understand that all ‘he’ was looking for was some affection and some love – some human happiness, as small as he may be – but a child being used by forces beyond his control . . .

When you realize that as a child all you were looking for was some human happiness and some love . . .

and you take that child ‘in’ . . .

you begin to forgive ‘him’ and love him as a real human child.

One who is a resource and a treasure.  One who still feels some pain (for he is an abused child after all).  But ‘he’ is a survivor and so are you . . .

Would you treat a survivor in this way?

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* Note: this is just a suggestion.  I found it worked for ‘me’.  “WE” all get along much better treating each other like real family – taking care of each other as best we can.
It has worked quite well.  For me.