Incestuous Abuse The view from 50,000 feet
There was a boy, all pristine and perfect, born on an ordinary day in an ordinary place with ordinary expectations of the world. Shortly after, bad things began to happen to that boy. He grew up with anger and confusion all around him. As that boy became a young man, he started to put up walls. He also began putting on a uniform, piece by piece, bit by bit. A jacket here, a shiny boot there, a golden badge. One day a thick heavy plate of armor. This boy/man was filled with rage and resentment for everything around him and learned that this world was made of wolves and sheep. That the only way to prevent himself from becoming a sheep, was to become the wolf. For decades, this confused little boy/man went out to the world not with an open heart, but with blood in his eyes, seeking out opportunities to prove he was a wolf. So, the uniform became more and more intricate, his armor became more and more effective. This boy/man had many harrowing adventures, hurting more and more of the people around him, taking solace that he was a wolf of epic proportions, after all, what other option was there.
Along the way he encountered another hurt child, a girl who had walked the same path and in some ways, they understood that they belonged together. He recognized the same wounds in this woman/girl that he carried himself, the same pain and weight they shared. He married this hurt girl/woman, and together they sought out things that fed their world view. He was a wolf, and she was a sheep, and they fed on each other.
Somehow, they managed, in between their violent and hurtful pursuits, to have cubs. Pure as they were, the wolf felt he was not worthy, not worthy of love, not worthy to raise these cubs, so he worked to stay at arm’s length from them. Leaving his cubs to be raised by the girl/woman, the sheep he deemed more worthy of the task. At the same time, he did everything he could to ensure they would be raised as wolves, through hard lessons, cruelty and abandonment of action and on an emotional level. After all men are not born, they are forged through cruelty and discipline. This was the wolf’s mentality.
So, in every way, the wolf learned he was alone. Walking the world, a wasteland, a desert of harshness. This boy/man lived in a world of danger devoid of anything beyond the superficial. Avoiding connection, avoiding trust, avoiding anything beyond the desire to be the wolf. The armor hardened with time, the persona he worked so hard to project, became stronger and stronger, the boy became smaller and smaller until he was no longer present. The Uniform was all that remained. Shiny boots, pristine corners and the ever-present hard armor on the surface. The soldier walked on through the desert alone, without remorse, and without feeling, step after step. From the outside an invincible unstoppable force. Medal after medal, achievement after achievement, his list of accomplishments and accolades grew with every cold heartless action, reinforcing the important stature of the wolf he believed himself to be. After all, this was the pinnacle of achievement for this wolf/man. Everything told him so, everything reinforced this, everything said this is the way.
But it was all a lie. As the wolf walked through this wasteland with pride and proficiency, the boy, buried deep inside, was breathing his last breaths. You could see it from the outside if you knew what to look for. Over the years the wind and sand beat at the threads of that pristine uniform. The harsh sun beat down on the wolf, fading the cloth of that once perfect uniform. The red sands wore down the soles of those perfectly polished jump boots. The ribbons and badges became thread bare and tattered. Through it all, the wolf/man/zombie walked on, with blinders. Unable to see what was happening. So set on his unstoppable path, he was unaware of what was really happening around him. So blind in his thinking he could not feel the decay begin to set in. The zombie didn’t even feel it when the beret fell from his head, the sun leathered his skin, and the corners began to fray. The wolf would be furious if he could see the state of his armor, but he couldn’t see, he couldn’t see anything anymore. The rage and his own actions had hardened more than his armor, it had blinded him to even the possibility of mercy, of love, of rational thought, beyond the need to march on, through this wasteland, through his own personal hell. It had become all the wolf could see. Reality had faded from his narrow mind. The boy had become the wolf, and the wolf had become a zombie, marching blindly across the desert pretending he was still the wolf.
Deep down inside, as the zombie marched endlessly, the boy screamed out at this zombie above. Those polished black jump boots remained shiny. The only piece of the zombie’s uniform that hadn’t gone to tatters. From the bottom, just above the tattered worn souls, the boy screamed up to the zombie, he wasn’t dead, but he was trapped. The child could see what had become of the wolf, he could see through the blinders, and what he was a terror. The zombie had deteriorated beyond what could be described as human. Great pieces of him had fallen off, the uniform was a collection of rags threatening to fall off a skeleton with only small remnants of flesh clinging to it. The badges, the ribbons, all gone along the wayside. White bone permeated his visage, but the hard plate armor remained. The hollow eyes still looked forward, seeing nothing, feeling nothing, marching toward a horizon it could never reach. The zombie longed for an end to the march. The zombie wanted it all to end, before anyone noticed he was no longer the wolf, before he could tell the armor was gone, before he had to admit it was all a lie. Confident that he should have died in a pile of brass before reaching this point. The zombie just wanted it to be over before he lost the last piece of himself and could no longer march on. The zombie prayed for death.
Out of the unrelenting wind, a voice pierced the harsh sound. The zombie stopped for the first time. He couldn’t see, but he could hear it. A cub, now a wolf, who had learned the lessons the zombie taught when he too was a wolf, was speaking to him. The wolf, seemingly far off, whispered to the zombie “I am walking your path, I am following in your footsteps, I am behind you, but I’m following your tracks. I want you to know that I too began as a hurt little boy. It wasn’t you who hurt me, but I saw what you did with it. I saw that the only way though that hell was to follow in your tracks. I am a wolf now, are you proud of me? Did I learn the right things? I’m trying to catch up to you but you are so far away. Be proud of me, I’m trying.”
This stopped the zombie in his tracks. In decades the zombie had marched on in silence. In solitude, in determination and sole mindedness. Words could never reach him. But this was different, this cut like no knife could ever do. Those words penetrated the tattered armor he had carried his entire life. Like a bolt of lightning, those words cut through the wasteland and right through the zombie, down to the pristine boots standing in the sand. The boy, that the zombie thought long gone, screamed up at what was left of the wolf “look, look around at what you have done, look around at what you have become, look at what you have done to those you are supposed to love, bear witness to the boot prints you have left behind you, the damage you have brought, the world you inhabit, you are a monster.”
And for the first time the zombie attempted to turn its disgusting decrepit boney head and dared to look. The empty sockets, still contained something capable of seeing, nerves that had died long ago fired, and the zombie saw for the first time the desolation a lifetime of damage had done. Most of all, the zombie could see that what he had done wasn’t a result of what was done to that boy. No, this wasteland was a creation of his own making. A painting tailor made to fit the monster he had become. This tableau was in keeping with the world that the boy envisioned the world to be, an expectation manifested through determination and will. This was a world of his own creation. The world the boy felt he deserved, and so created a prophesy manifest in darkness. Exactly what that little boy believed he deserved and so created.
Then the zombie could see that this nightmare he created wasn’t empty, his cub, now a wolf, was following him, creating his own desolation. Manifesting his own hell on earth, and the zombie knew somehow, deep down in those boots, that this too was his failure. He took another pure innocent boy and set him on the same path, his cubs were following that well-worn path step by step, action by action. The zombie could bear his own pain, his own sentence, his own punishment, but the idea that his own cubs would one day find themselves here, at this point, was a blow too powerful to ignore.
In that moment, the zombie looked around with rejuvenated eyes, and saw that he had not walked this far alone. He was wrong, his ever-faithful partner was still there. Visible next to his tracks were another pair of tracks, she had been there the whole time, she had walked beside him through this wasteland all the way.
The dried leather husk of a wolf in the shreds of a uniform felt something. Something real, an emotion, then another, then another, and they began bursting through what was left of him. The voice from within became louder, building like thunder. Screaming at him, and he heard it. Panic set in, this invincible zombie doomed to walk until he fell, was feeling too many things at once. As if the nerves sprung back to life and couldn’t handle the intensity of emotion coursing through him like high voltage lines. His shriveled brain fired with one resounding uncontrollable thought. From within came the words “You are a fool, you screwed it all up, and you deserve to die this way, but they do not, and you owe it to them to fix as much as you can before your miserable life ends, not for you, but for them.” Those words, those simple words, became the zombies’ mission. For the rest of his miserable life the zombie would do everything within his power to undo the wrongs he had brought with him from the day that little boy came into this world to the day his cubs yelled to him.
The wasteland is no longer empty. The boy/zombie wanders on, but there are many overlapping tracks now. The new mission keeps the zombie moving, but no longer in a single direction. The boy/zombie stumbles, not toward the horizon, but in circles, searching the spoiled sand for things. Pieces of himself, for answers, and for a new path. Overlapping his boot prints are the prints of others, here and there, passing his own. He sees them now, other wounded zombies, wandering in search as he does. At yet, his tracks are no longer solitary, his partner walks with him, meandering ever closer to their cubs who call out to them both, with words of encouragement and love. Piece by piece the zombie is finding remnants of himself. Remnants of his love for his wife and those cubs he abandoned so long ago when he blindly marched on. The boy/zombie thinks he is doing what he must do according to his new mission, and that is true, but his real motivation is to stop those cubs/wolves from following him into the wasteland. He knows, because he can now see, that to allow them to follow his previous path would be a sentence worse than death. That is intolerable. So, he searches on for ways to divert them, he knows his teachings were strong, but now he has to find a new way, and the only way he can come up with that might work, after all, they are wolves, is by example. They are helping themselves by helping him.
The zombie is still searching, still wandering, but he is no longer a skeletal husk. He is something more now. Not quite a man, he may never get there before his time is up, but he doesn’t care, he has a new mission, finally a mission that is right, worthy, and feels good. Something foreign to the zombie. The little boy still whispers to the zombie to stand up when he stumbles or questions his path. His wife speaks words of encouragement in his ear and the zombie feels more than companionship. Those words have something powerful behind them, something amazing. He can feel something that was at first, faint and elusive, but now powerful and obvious. Love is in those words, and so the zombie is learning to accept them, believe them, and want them. This husk has been shown that there is something beyond, and like a junkie, he wants more. It drives him on, it inspires him to believe that maybe someday he can be worthy of the faith those around him demonstrate. There is a better way, and maybe to spite the world he created, the damage he has done, that maybe he can accept that love is real, and that in some small way, he can even prove himself worthy of some of it.
So, I walk on looking to the light, listening to the wisdom of my wife and my kids. Learning from them what life can and should be. The light is no longer harsh and grating, full of sand, it is warm and inviting.
And I walk on……
Along the way he encountered another hurt child, a girl who had walked the same path and in some ways, they understood that they belonged together. He recognized the same wounds in this woman/girl that he carried himself, the same pain and weight they shared. He married this hurt girl/woman, and together they sought out things that fed their world view. He was a wolf, and she was a sheep, and they fed on each other.
Somehow, they managed, in between their violent and hurtful pursuits, to have cubs. Pure as they were, the wolf felt he was not worthy, not worthy of love, not worthy to raise these cubs, so he worked to stay at arm’s length from them. Leaving his cubs to be raised by the girl/woman, the sheep he deemed more worthy of the task. At the same time, he did everything he could to ensure they would be raised as wolves, through hard lessons, cruelty and abandonment of action and on an emotional level. After all men are not born, they are forged through cruelty and discipline. This was the wolf’s mentality.
So, in every way, the wolf learned he was alone. Walking the world, a wasteland, a desert of harshness. This boy/man lived in a world of danger devoid of anything beyond the superficial. Avoiding connection, avoiding trust, avoiding anything beyond the desire to be the wolf. The armor hardened with time, the persona he worked so hard to project, became stronger and stronger, the boy became smaller and smaller until he was no longer present. The Uniform was all that remained. Shiny boots, pristine corners and the ever-present hard armor on the surface. The soldier walked on through the desert alone, without remorse, and without feeling, step after step. From the outside an invincible unstoppable force. Medal after medal, achievement after achievement, his list of accomplishments and accolades grew with every cold heartless action, reinforcing the important stature of the wolf he believed himself to be. After all, this was the pinnacle of achievement for this wolf/man. Everything told him so, everything reinforced this, everything said this is the way.
But it was all a lie. As the wolf walked through this wasteland with pride and proficiency, the boy, buried deep inside, was breathing his last breaths. You could see it from the outside if you knew what to look for. Over the years the wind and sand beat at the threads of that pristine uniform. The harsh sun beat down on the wolf, fading the cloth of that once perfect uniform. The red sands wore down the soles of those perfectly polished jump boots. The ribbons and badges became thread bare and tattered. Through it all, the wolf/man/zombie walked on, with blinders. Unable to see what was happening. So set on his unstoppable path, he was unaware of what was really happening around him. So blind in his thinking he could not feel the decay begin to set in. The zombie didn’t even feel it when the beret fell from his head, the sun leathered his skin, and the corners began to fray. The wolf would be furious if he could see the state of his armor, but he couldn’t see, he couldn’t see anything anymore. The rage and his own actions had hardened more than his armor, it had blinded him to even the possibility of mercy, of love, of rational thought, beyond the need to march on, through this wasteland, through his own personal hell. It had become all the wolf could see. Reality had faded from his narrow mind. The boy had become the wolf, and the wolf had become a zombie, marching blindly across the desert pretending he was still the wolf.
Deep down inside, as the zombie marched endlessly, the boy screamed out at this zombie above. Those polished black jump boots remained shiny. The only piece of the zombie’s uniform that hadn’t gone to tatters. From the bottom, just above the tattered worn souls, the boy screamed up to the zombie, he wasn’t dead, but he was trapped. The child could see what had become of the wolf, he could see through the blinders, and what he was a terror. The zombie had deteriorated beyond what could be described as human. Great pieces of him had fallen off, the uniform was a collection of rags threatening to fall off a skeleton with only small remnants of flesh clinging to it. The badges, the ribbons, all gone along the wayside. White bone permeated his visage, but the hard plate armor remained. The hollow eyes still looked forward, seeing nothing, feeling nothing, marching toward a horizon it could never reach. The zombie longed for an end to the march. The zombie wanted it all to end, before anyone noticed he was no longer the wolf, before he could tell the armor was gone, before he had to admit it was all a lie. Confident that he should have died in a pile of brass before reaching this point. The zombie just wanted it to be over before he lost the last piece of himself and could no longer march on. The zombie prayed for death.
Out of the unrelenting wind, a voice pierced the harsh sound. The zombie stopped for the first time. He couldn’t see, but he could hear it. A cub, now a wolf, who had learned the lessons the zombie taught when he too was a wolf, was speaking to him. The wolf, seemingly far off, whispered to the zombie “I am walking your path, I am following in your footsteps, I am behind you, but I’m following your tracks. I want you to know that I too began as a hurt little boy. It wasn’t you who hurt me, but I saw what you did with it. I saw that the only way though that hell was to follow in your tracks. I am a wolf now, are you proud of me? Did I learn the right things? I’m trying to catch up to you but you are so far away. Be proud of me, I’m trying.”
This stopped the zombie in his tracks. In decades the zombie had marched on in silence. In solitude, in determination and sole mindedness. Words could never reach him. But this was different, this cut like no knife could ever do. Those words penetrated the tattered armor he had carried his entire life. Like a bolt of lightning, those words cut through the wasteland and right through the zombie, down to the pristine boots standing in the sand. The boy, that the zombie thought long gone, screamed up at what was left of the wolf “look, look around at what you have done, look around at what you have become, look at what you have done to those you are supposed to love, bear witness to the boot prints you have left behind you, the damage you have brought, the world you inhabit, you are a monster.”
And for the first time the zombie attempted to turn its disgusting decrepit boney head and dared to look. The empty sockets, still contained something capable of seeing, nerves that had died long ago fired, and the zombie saw for the first time the desolation a lifetime of damage had done. Most of all, the zombie could see that what he had done wasn’t a result of what was done to that boy. No, this wasteland was a creation of his own making. A painting tailor made to fit the monster he had become. This tableau was in keeping with the world that the boy envisioned the world to be, an expectation manifested through determination and will. This was a world of his own creation. The world the boy felt he deserved, and so created a prophesy manifest in darkness. Exactly what that little boy believed he deserved and so created.
Then the zombie could see that this nightmare he created wasn’t empty, his cub, now a wolf, was following him, creating his own desolation. Manifesting his own hell on earth, and the zombie knew somehow, deep down in those boots, that this too was his failure. He took another pure innocent boy and set him on the same path, his cubs were following that well-worn path step by step, action by action. The zombie could bear his own pain, his own sentence, his own punishment, but the idea that his own cubs would one day find themselves here, at this point, was a blow too powerful to ignore.
In that moment, the zombie looked around with rejuvenated eyes, and saw that he had not walked this far alone. He was wrong, his ever-faithful partner was still there. Visible next to his tracks were another pair of tracks, she had been there the whole time, she had walked beside him through this wasteland all the way.
The dried leather husk of a wolf in the shreds of a uniform felt something. Something real, an emotion, then another, then another, and they began bursting through what was left of him. The voice from within became louder, building like thunder. Screaming at him, and he heard it. Panic set in, this invincible zombie doomed to walk until he fell, was feeling too many things at once. As if the nerves sprung back to life and couldn’t handle the intensity of emotion coursing through him like high voltage lines. His shriveled brain fired with one resounding uncontrollable thought. From within came the words “You are a fool, you screwed it all up, and you deserve to die this way, but they do not, and you owe it to them to fix as much as you can before your miserable life ends, not for you, but for them.” Those words, those simple words, became the zombies’ mission. For the rest of his miserable life the zombie would do everything within his power to undo the wrongs he had brought with him from the day that little boy came into this world to the day his cubs yelled to him.
The wasteland is no longer empty. The boy/zombie wanders on, but there are many overlapping tracks now. The new mission keeps the zombie moving, but no longer in a single direction. The boy/zombie stumbles, not toward the horizon, but in circles, searching the spoiled sand for things. Pieces of himself, for answers, and for a new path. Overlapping his boot prints are the prints of others, here and there, passing his own. He sees them now, other wounded zombies, wandering in search as he does. At yet, his tracks are no longer solitary, his partner walks with him, meandering ever closer to their cubs who call out to them both, with words of encouragement and love. Piece by piece the zombie is finding remnants of himself. Remnants of his love for his wife and those cubs he abandoned so long ago when he blindly marched on. The boy/zombie thinks he is doing what he must do according to his new mission, and that is true, but his real motivation is to stop those cubs/wolves from following him into the wasteland. He knows, because he can now see, that to allow them to follow his previous path would be a sentence worse than death. That is intolerable. So, he searches on for ways to divert them, he knows his teachings were strong, but now he has to find a new way, and the only way he can come up with that might work, after all, they are wolves, is by example. They are helping themselves by helping him.
The zombie is still searching, still wandering, but he is no longer a skeletal husk. He is something more now. Not quite a man, he may never get there before his time is up, but he doesn’t care, he has a new mission, finally a mission that is right, worthy, and feels good. Something foreign to the zombie. The little boy still whispers to the zombie to stand up when he stumbles or questions his path. His wife speaks words of encouragement in his ear and the zombie feels more than companionship. Those words have something powerful behind them, something amazing. He can feel something that was at first, faint and elusive, but now powerful and obvious. Love is in those words, and so the zombie is learning to accept them, believe them, and want them. This husk has been shown that there is something beyond, and like a junkie, he wants more. It drives him on, it inspires him to believe that maybe someday he can be worthy of the faith those around him demonstrate. There is a better way, and maybe to spite the world he created, the damage he has done, that maybe he can accept that love is real, and that in some small way, he can even prove himself worthy of some of it.
So, I walk on looking to the light, listening to the wisdom of my wife and my kids. Learning from them what life can and should be. The light is no longer harsh and grating, full of sand, it is warm and inviting.
And I walk on……
