Secret Sacrifice

Children are so vulnerable, offering pure, unconditional love with no expectations. Their minds, blank slates, where joyful memories can be tenderly etched or trauma burns itself onto the slate like a brand on the skin of an animal. How does a child cope with life devoid of a sense of well-being? As an abused child, I learned to trust my instincts, much as the blind and the deaf do. If you can't believe your ears because people's words differ from their actions; you learn to listen between the lines to what they don't say. If you can't believe your eyes because you live in a world where nothing is as it seems; you learn to look past what your eyes see and dwell in the spirit. If you can't feel, in someone's touch, when they say they "love" you; you learn to sense the energy of their being from a distance, escaping any undesirable contact. Life, for me, consisted of trying to create an existence in the place between what was real and what wasn't. The developing sense of my being was thwarted with each heinous innuendo and gesture that my abusers tortured me with. As time went on, I managed to live with the fear. I really had no choice. Children were to be seen and not heard. In a world of adults, an abused child suffers in silence, trying to avoid trouble and even worse, alienation. Adults stuck together in thought, word, and deed. It was impossible to try to figure them out. All they did was lecture about what's "right" and what's "wrong". Children were supposed to do all the right things but adults could do all the wrong things. Who did they have to answer to? It didn't seem like God was paying attention.