By Veniece Wesson
Being a writer I converse with many people, lately I have noticed a pattern of ugly behavior, maybe it has always been there & I am just now becoming more aware of it. But the pattern of living in the past, & holding on to things that happened a long time ago is so detrimental to one’s pursuit of a meaning full life that it needs to addressed.
Being a writer I converse with many people, lately I have noticed a pattern of ugly behavior, maybe it has always been there & I am just now becoming more aware of it. But the pattern of living in the past, & holding on to things that happened a long time ago is so detrimental to one’s pursuit of a meaning full life that it needs to addressed.
So that I won’t step on any toes, I will use my own life story as an example; some of you know that I was sexually abused growing up. But what many don’t know is the adverse effect it had on me growing up & how that carried over into my adulthood.
I began being abused at age four by relatives & then by my neighbors. The abuse laid dormant for about a period of two years when my mother (who died never knowing about the abuse) & I moved to a different neighborhood, then I was mentally tormented & sexually abused by my mother’s boyfriend at the age of twelve & that ceased when my mother ended her relationship with him. But unfortunately, it picked up again when we moved to back to our old neighborhood when I was fourteen, from there the abuse continued until I was seventeen years old from some of the same neighbors who would abuse me when I was in elementary school.
I tried to cope everyday & go to school & pretend everything was okay by being silly, witty, & funny. But in the background, I would see those abusive perpetrators at school smirking at me. I never told anyone because I feared that my daddy & my two uncles would kill the two abusers Charles & Donnie (since Donnie was a close friend of one of uncles & was like family) if they found out & would wind up in prison, so I never told them.
Soon thereafter, I figured out why I was being abused (or so I thought) I concluded that there must me something wrong with me, that is why those Charles & Donnie abused me frequently & then Charles would menacingly laugh about it afterwards. I looked at other girls I knew who were pretty & popular, & I thought if I were more popular & had more designer clothes then people would love me, & the abusers would see this & thus leave me alone.
I was never more wrong, But my nevertheless, my pursuit for misguided happiness began.
In the tenth grade, I began hanging out with the most popular girl at school named Connie & totally rejected my best friend Brenda who was the only person who first befriended me when I moved back to my old neighborhood. I soon got my wish & popularity enveloped me & I was truly happy for a brief period.
But what I didn’t know was that my new best friend Connie was a poor student who was failing in school miserably who eventually got expelled & eventually dropped out of high school. I was now alone; I didn’t dare go back & hang with Brenda, even though she would have probably let me. My esteem dropped, my grades dropped & ended the tenth grade with five F’s& one D. Needless to say my mother was livid & could not understand how her intelligent & bright daughter who always excelled in school & always brought home A’s& B’s could bring home such a report card.
But my mother realized there was a problem, but I was still too afraid to tell anyone because I did not want my family to go to prison, so I still told no one. My mother transferred me to a different high school & with a lot of effort, I made up for lost time, & got back on track with my grades, but I still never dealt with the shame of being abused.
A couple of years later I was at a picnic with many old school friends & ran into Leslie from my old neighborhood (Leslie & I grew up together & hung out in the same circle but were never really friends). Leslie began coarsely telling me how Brenda confided in her how much I had hurt her when we were in high school & Leslie made it clear that she day that she wanted nothing to do with me. I just walked away, knowing that in a way that Leslie was right, but I also knew that she did not know the reason that I behaved as I did growing up.
But throughout the years, Brenda was still cool & would still invite me to spend the night over her house, & go on outings with her & her family even after everything that occurred.
Several years later, I finally told Brenda & her mother why I had behaved the way I did growing up; they let me know that they knew something was wrong, but they could not put their finger on it. That was the end of it & we never spoke of it again, & to this day Brenda is one of my dearest friends & her family is like my family.
But till this day, Leslie still despises me not knowing the whole story, why am I telling you this?
Because there are many people who are harboring anger from the past, & some of it stems from what happened in high school.
Now I am going to tell you how I had to deal with Charles & Donnie, the two males that abused me from elementary school to high school.
A year ago, I was at a jazz event with an old friend of mine named Tanya & she mentioned the name of one of my abusers Charles, (not even knowing even knowing about what Charles & Donnie had done to me growing up). She told me about Charles’ wife & his family & about how successful he was financially. She continued telling me about all he was doing for his teenage daughter & how he treated her like a princess.
At that moment, you don’t know the thoughts that went through my head, I wanted to curse him out, slap him, & hurt him the way that he hurt me, but then I thought about his daughter. I thought regardless of what he & Donnie had done to me growing up, that I didn’t want Charles’ daughter or any other female to ever go through what I experienced as a girl. So I decided to let it go & forgave Charles & Donnie cold turkey.
And then recently William, the man I was dating mentioned Charles’ name not knowing anything about what went down between me & Charles. But he did not mention Charles’ name in a favorable way, it was obvious that he despised Charles when he called him a punk & few other names. Which would have been perfect fuel for fire to get those hurtful feelings from the past kindling once again. But again, I had to let it go.
I don’t know what was going on in the psyche of my abusers lives back then, they could have been having serious issues of their own, but I knew that regardless, it would not benefit me, holding on to those painful memories as if those memories were my life raft after the ship had sank from being abused & I lost my innocence & the freedom to enjoy being a girl & not be afraid. I am not denying what happened, because that would have be pointless. No one can bury pain, it always finds an avenue to vent, & if it not handled properly, it will explode violently with sometimes dire consequences. But I refuse to allow those memories from the past keep me captive in the past & deny me the pleasure of enjoying the present. And I have to also realize that Charles & Donnie’s name will come up from time to time since we all grew up in the same neighborhood & I have to deal with it without letting it get the best of me.
Are you holding a grudge against someone from back in the day? You don’t know what was going on in a person’s life from back in the day that hurt you. But I do know that sometimes the pain can be so bad that a person must find a way to cope. You may have suffered while someone was coping. But now many of us are in our 30’s, 40’s, & 50’s still tripping over what so & so did back in 1984 or 1991, or 2002, or whatever the year or the case may be.
And it is sad because many of us are now parents & some are even grandparents, but your behavior denotes that of a child whose mind who has not fully developed. That should not be the message that we send to our children. Those who are harboring past hurts against others should focus their energy on their dreams & goals. Decide what you want in life, focus on that daily until that becomes your passion & pursue it with fervor. Your passion in life should not be living the past. Because if you continue to make jealousy, bitterness, gossip, anger, & resentment your life’s goal, that will be your legacy to your children, emptiness.
If some girl stole your man, get over it. If someone broke your heart, get over it. If someone hurt you so bad that you felt like dying, sweetie, you have to get over it or it will eat at your core (your soul) the rest of your days on this earth. As bad as it hurts, you have to get over it, let it go!
(Names have been changed to protect individual’s right to privacy).
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