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Dear Victim
I hear your plea for justice after so much
time - a month, a year, 10 years, 30 years - that you have been waiting, hiding
your "secret" and wondering how many of the accusing eyes, that gaze
at you, really knew the truth. Perhaps what you saw were simply people
looking for the truth in your emotional distance, and lack of trust, and your
tearfulness present at the least prompting, the eating disorder, and nights
that came and went without sleep, and the wet bed, and the grades that just
weren't up to your "potential."
They could not see the demons that chased you in your sleep, or the waking
nightmares that haunted your days, in the eyes and faces of strangers, that
looked so much like "him." And I wonder, my dear victim, what
the cause that you remained silent for so long. What were you waiting for
that you finally came forward with your claim of the crime perpetrated so long
ago, against you?
Did it take the unanimous cry of the masses to recall the grievous sin?
Did you need the comfort of many voices crying out for justice, to urge you to
seek your own? Was it that he was your priest, or your brother, teacher
or uncle, or the neighbor next door and, in your mind, in your innocence, you
"allowed," and consented in some awful, terrible, silent way, because
he "wanted" you, when you felt that you had no place in this world,
in your awkward and fragile youth, already struggling to figure out who or what
you were?
Or maybe, more simply, you maintained your horrible, inexcusable silence,
because when you were 5 years old, he told your father what he had done, and
your father just laughed, and you knew, then, that you would have nowhere to
turn, and no one to turn to, if he who was brought to protect you, did
not.
So you retreated to your room, and into yourself, and they called you
"weird", in your unbearable aloneness, until the one voice inside of
you found the many voices of others, to draw forth your long-forgotten tears,
and the painful memories of the night - of nights - and you finally found the
strength inside of you to speak of the past, and of your pain.
Sadly, for some of us, the only comfort is in the karmic boomerang that took
his life, so young, before he could do to many more, what he had done to us,
and to others. And all that remains, in the nightmares that come after
hearing your words, are the echoes of his laughter, as we hug our pillows and
cry acrid tears, until we fall into uneasy sleep, to dream of hands and of
familiar, frightening, faces.
(c) 2004 For those who have finally found a voice
LeAne Austin
Email: LeAne Austin
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