Survival Looks Like...

Truly. This.

They rage and rant, hit and choke submission to their almighty control until the very air you breathe is rented from them.

And then they wonder when you freeze and skirt the truth in order to avoid more bruises, more filthy vitriol flying from spittled lips.

Yes. This.

Any knowledge of you; your past, your dreams, your mistakes, the things you love most and hold closest and most dearly, the things that make you sad...all of it, used against you to manipulate, target, create chaos and suffering then sit back and enjoy the show.

Ahhhh, serfdom at the feet of the most pathetic human waste of skin to walk the planet. Tiny mind follows the small body and so on...at the beck and call of his own perversity. No finish, no committment, no loyalty, no intimacy...a king of nada...well wait, I suppose this is not entirely correct, nor completely truthful. He is also:

The King of cruelty - long live king Dave...

The King of Cheaters - long live the king...

The King of Psychological Torture - long live the little king...

The King of Sexual Abuse - long live the bastard king...

The King of Neglect and Abandonment - long live king of the goofs...

And oh, the big papa, the big daddy of them all...

The KING OF LIES...oh yes...lovingly fashioned, created, tucked away for future use, molded to fit just YOU...until the next supply comes into view and he hauls out the old template, the old formula used for years on end; tweaked here and there to fit the newest in a long line of broken women, stretched out behind him. Some more broken than others...some quicker to run far, far away...

One day this magnificent creature made of poison, spit, and disease will run out of women in his little hamlet of Fraser Lake...will run out of women within a 100 km radius...

Soon, very soon, the women will talk, will embrace knowledge and he will live out his days a bitter, old man riddled with STD's gathered over the many, many years of sticking his cock wherever it will fit. If it fits, it sits. If it breathes and has a pair...face as homely as the mack truck delivering rock on site, he would flirt and cajole with intent to harm, to hurt.

Oh...the machiavellian schemes created and tweaked to disastrous consequence once released, would fill a book.

It would fill an ocean until all would cry out against such a perverse creature living and breathing the same life-giving oxygen.

So...when survivors speak of the shame involved with uttering even little white lies, or hiding ANYTHING, even when you don't know its something that needed to be revealed, please listen.

And understand...life hangs in the balance; upon a wire so fine, a breath, a breath only, would snap and send it tumbling over the edge into bedlam and a violence so filled with hate it takes your breath away.

This darkness is what is lived with...every day my friends. There is no relief from the fear and this deep knowing that you cannot leave...oh you try, you try to leave and end up going back. Again, and again. Drawn back to the illusion of remorse and love...

As you isolate to larger degrees, having to lie about the bruises and stiffness, truth becomes stretched to the breaking point. Friends drop off...family turning away in disgust...so the lies must be true...I am worth nothing, useless...and who is waiting in the wings? Your savior, your monster made flesh...and back you go, trapped within a prison fashioned and created by a broken child lashing out at his mother, again and again....over and over until that child is a withered, mummified thing hidden away in a deep, dark corner, replaced by a creature no longer reminiscent of a human being.

Crippled and bent over by the weight of shame at the evil perpetrated each day, pockmarked face scarred with the acid flung upon his victims.

It is ugly and it lives within the one who harms you...the one who lives for your destruction.

It lived and lives still within the man I called Dave...within the black of his eyes lurked a loathing so strong it radiated out with something akin to an electric charge.

When I was favoured with these 'looks,' I would shudder and shake, way down deep inside.

Here is where Cognitive Dissonance rides in to save the day, to protect the mind from such hate.

Here is where confusion reigns supreme...just minutes previous, love was being professed and expressed...with the flip of a switch your abuser will drop the pretence away and show you who he really is.

Those moments are the true man (or woman) being revealed in all their ugly glory.

Those times, dear treasures, are not 'one-offs' or a momentary lapse...I am sorry to say, so incredibly sorry to say that what you are seeing, observing, digesting, is the real person behind the mask of charm, behind the lies and illusion he has spun.

Confuse, belittle, up-lift...drag down, kick, lift up...rinse and repeat as often as necessary.

My heartfelt prayer this morning is for the blinders to fall away...for the lies to reveal themselves as such...for courage in the face of such sorrow and shame...for determination and perseverance in finding a way of escape, safely...

You are worthy of all they promised and denied....

You are worthy of a magical kind of love...worthy each one.

May you stand tall in your confidence, in your self...may you walk with purpose of will...

May your sight be fixed on the far horizon as you follow the stars to where you should be, wherever your will and worthiness lead you.

God is able my friends...infinitely able to do that which we deem impossible.

He will make a way for you.