I have been processing new information and listening to the tumblers click loudly into place. The saying, 'Things are not always as they seem' now holds a whole new meaning for me.
I grew up in a version of Dante's Inferno. I'm not complaining and I don't need your pity, it was my normal. It's just the way things were, though I never knew why the adults around me had built the inferno and forced us to live within it's walls....until recently.
I escaped. Not unscathed, mind you, but intact enough to see the madness for what it was and run the other direction. I knew what I did not want to be and became the kind of person that I wanted to surround myself with. That person was always inside me, I just couldn't let her out until I had escaped.
I have spent my adult years working every day to be a better person than I was the day before. I like it that way. There is always room for self improvement and setting a good example for our children. As an adult, even though there have been hardships, I have been blessed, but the greatest lesson I think I have learned is to take responsibility for myself.
Every word, decision, thought and action stem from choices that I make every moment of every day. No one can make me do anything. It's all on me. I alone own it. I alone am responsible for it. I like it that way too.
I have fought in my adult years to turn around and face my demons. I am aware that as I face each one, no matter how painful, they will no longer hold sway over my life and when I finally stand before God, I will do so with a clean conscience. I hope.
Someone once said that childhood is a thing that we survive. I survived mine and have spent a great deal of time picking up the pieces. Many of those pieces never fit into place. I didn't know it, but I had never seen the picture on the puzzle box so there was no way for me to put the pieces where they belong.
I never knew why, but three different times in my life, older relatives who were facing death apologized to me. One said, "I am so sorry that I never spoke up. You didn't deserve that." Another said, "I wish I had stepped in but I was afraid and I am ashamed of that. Will you forgive me?" One more said, "We all knew what was happening to you but it was a time that you just didn't get involved in a family's affairs. I should have, you were such a sweet little girl and I am sorry that I didn't help you."
I thought that all of these people were only referring to the abuse. I had no idea there was more to the story but 24 hours ago, someone that I barely know, who is also facing death, showed me the whole entire picture on the puzzle box and now all of those extra pieces are fitting into place.
It is a lot to absorb, listening to each tumbler click into place. I now understand that the Inferno was built long before I was born. I was just one more generation born within the flames. I was shown the lives that were destroyed by those who built the Inferno and those who, like me, were fortunate enough to escape but still carry the scars from the flames.
One thing that I will carry with me, even after all of the new information has fully sunk in and I am able to come to terms with the blackness that resides in the hearts of those who feign innocence is this; no matter who you are, no matter what has happened to you, no matter who has harmed you, YOU are the only person responsible for your actions. We each make hundreds of choices a day. Those choices should always, no matter what, reflect who you are as the person you strive to be. Good, bad or indifferent, you are the only person responsible for your choices. You don't get to blame someone else.
So make your choices and then own them. If you harm someone, own that too and make it right. If your choices cause good in another person's life, you get to feel good about that too.
We each owe a death in the end and whether you believe you will stand before God or just turn to dust, all you have left behind is the choices that you made and the lives that you either helped or harmed. How will you be remembered?
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