Red Sky

Red sky at night, sailors’ delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.

Just as the sky dictates the weather, so it is with life.

It’s been easy to follow my memories as they return to me because my life story was evident all around me. Anger was my father’s finest friend; betrayal of all that was good was my mother’s.

I didn’t want to look any closer than what I was forced to see when I lived with them. When I left them, I wanted to leave it all behind. Maybe I thought I had.

The problem: If I hadn’t peeked further into exploring those wicked halls, I would have remained a prisoner to it all.

I sometimes still struggle with despising what I know now having walked back through it. It was easier on some level to be in full blown denial, lost in the messages I’d been taught – lessons of forgetfulness. I was bathed in it.

Living in a mindless prison with no memory of my past kept me a prisoner. I had no rights, only privileges. The very thing my father spoke over me time and time again. I was fair game for any abuser that happened by because I was living on auto-pilot.

When I freed myself through my inner convictions and began to see the past in the full integrity of truth, I felt awkward and unaware of my next steps. I was unsure of how to now comfort my mind and relieve my soul of its anguish.

I was becoming a new person, in some means. Free now to explore just who I am and terrified at the very same time.

The beauty remains this: I now understand why I made so many terrible decisions. The injustice of not knowing what I had lived through was terrorizing me, kept me blind and imprisoned and dictated my steps towards more abuse and self-destruction.

The more I unearthed my horrific experiences, the more still I became. I began drinking less and setting boundaries with people who were abusive to me. I could sit now without the constant need to be in perpetual motion and mayhem.

That is why I had to return to my past!

Not to call out my mother and my father and all the abusers that happened by.

I returned because it was the only path that led me to freedom.