I sit here and wonder: will my wounded heart ever mend? Will I wake up one day and finally be able to reach down into myself and never again fear having to puncture old wounds? Or will I have to learn to accept the broken places and be ever mindful of scars that threaten to gape open and come undone periodically?
More often than not, I wish I didn't have to look back. I want to be a life with no rear view mirrors. A life blessed with amnesia of painful past experiences. Yet, I know this is not realistic since their is much good that can and has come from looking back and exposing things that once caused great shame and guilt. I am being set free from the bondage of shame. It no longer has a hold on me. For that I am thankful. But does it have to hurt so damn much? God, grant me a tough layer of skin so when I look back and conquer the past I can find myself still standing whole and stronger than ever. I pray this also for everyone who has taken on the task and monumental challenge of addressing past wrongs; setting wholeness and freedom as their goal and just reward for the present hopeful condition of their lives. May we bear under the weight of such honorable accomplishments.
With that said, I take a deep breath and inhale deeply from the source of my victory and overcoming, and open that ominous door which leads to the past where pain, trauma, and suffering abounds. I am on a personal God sent mission: to deliver that little scared boy and scoop him up in my grown-up arms and bring him out to the safety of the light. For far too long he has cowered in the lonely and dark crevices, alone and destitute, whimpering and believing no one cared. Cry no more little one, help is on the way. You have been heard. You have a voice now. More so, you have a place of safety now where you can come to and never be harmed. Where I am bringing you to, no one will ever dare lay a hand on you. It is a place of abundance. A place of unmitigated laughter where the sun shines brightly and darkness is nowhere to be found. Oh, and even more importantly, it is a place where you never have to fear again, where truth is spoken in gentle breezes and complete acceptance is the golden standard, the only option available to those who are redeemed.
You see, my mother, in her misery, in her wretched pain at being in an unfaithful marriage where beatings to her tender pale flesh by a husband who would not and could not be man enough to take his marriage vows as a sacred oath and abide within its set boundaries; caused her great humiliation and grief more often than any woman should ever have to endure. I remember him never being home long enough to take care of the home front. He used our home as a pit stop to shower, eat a good cooked meal, change into his philandering clothes and head out the door to go be with his whores. And there she sat, seething in anger, full of resentment, feeling trapped in a loveless marriage. It was no wonder that this conduit of pent up loneliness and desolation would become an uncontrollable and raging channel of anger who could not see the pressing needs around her. We, her offspring, soon became tied to and identifiable with her deep seated resentment at being left alone to fend for herself. The joy of motherhood replaced by contempt and bitterness gave way to an onslaught of impatience which manifested into beatings and neglect on a daily basis. My mother lost her ability to effectively communicate with words and daily resorted to her hands and fists to let us, my sister and , know how much she resented us; the reason why she remained trapped in an unfruitful and decaying marriage.
This became crystal clear one rare evening where we sat down at the kitchen table as a family to eat dinner. Together on that rare occasion due to the fact that our paternal grandmother had come from Puerto Rico to visit and spend a few days with us. My mother had done what had been expected of her and prepared the evening meal. Don't ask me what it was but for whatever the reason I was in a finicky mood that night and refused to eat something that had been put on my plate. This was unacceptable. Unlike the Brady Bunch family, where if one of the kids did not want to eat or needed to be excused from the table, such a request was granted. Not so in the Rivera household. The unbreakable rule was you had to eat anything and everything served you and then you were granted permission to leave the table. This night I tested my mother's patience and looking back put her mothering skills to question in the presence of her mother-in-law because as we sat there and I raised a fuss about not wanting to finish my portion, my mother uttered those eternally damaging words no child should ever have to hear coming out of a mother's mouth. She looked at me and yelled: "I wish you had never been born!"... words that still resonate with the same intensity and devastation within my damaged emotions.
" I wish you had never been born!"
There. She said it and meant it. I looked up wide-eyed and waited for those seven words to reach over the table and do what no beating, as severe as they might have been, to reach me and puncture my soul. The words went deeper than any belt lashing ever could. Deeper than any insensitive and sudden smack. Even deeper than the worst of welts brought on by wire hangers or extension chords.
"I wish you had never been born!"
Hands down, the worst beating of my life up to that point. I remember looking around the table and searching the faces which stared back at me but did not come to my defense. My grandmother, with pity in her eyes, sat there silently. My younger sister, the only one who during those hellish an tormenting days of my childhood, was ever able to bring me relief with her sweet hugs and embraces, sat there frozen, knowing that a wrong move on her part might cause the curse which had just been unleashed and spoken, to be hurled at her direction. She looked at me, sadness filling her soul, feeling my pain, but unable for her own sake, to come to my defense. Yes, Cindy, my youngest sister, my lioness in pig-tails who always came to my defense in the school yard against the bullying of the older boys, but here, at the dinner table, she was completely unable and defenseless to come to my rescue. Finally, slowly, with innocent expectation quickly fading, I turned to look at my father, my last hope at being rescued from the curse of being unwanted and unloved. The man, the figure head of this broken and neglected family, never once reacted to my mother's curse and kept right on eating.
I put my head down and as surely as the tears are streaming down my face as I write this account, I sat there and cried, feeling the crushing weight of her words seep into my soul and take permanent residence in my young and hopeless life. Eight years old and already I knew what it felt like to be unloved and unwanted. Words that followed me for the rest of my life. Words that to this day make a grown man to this very day convulse and heave with way too much pain and sorrow at having to relive that moment in time where everything seemed lost; where the desperate need to be loved by a mother was denied him and caused what seemed unrepairable damage to fragile and sensitive emotions.
I cried alone that night at the kitchen table as the rest of the family watched in silence and hastily emptied their plates with little to no conversation exchanged. How surreal. They ate and moved on to the next activity while I sat there and let my tears fall onto food I refused to eat. My mother forbade me from getting up that night until every last morsel on my plate was gone. These were the days both my sister and I yearned for a Fido to come to the rescue and take our unwanted leftovers. No Fido came that night or any night and I sat there for hours alone with the cold food staring back at me and the spoken curse making its ironclad ball and chain weight felt deep in my psyche. No one came to say sorry that night. No one sat with me and took the time to explain what took me a lifetime to finally realize; that those piercing and hateful words, which had ascended from the pit of hell, were never meant to be carried and identified with. But what do eight year olds know of such matters? Isn't that what mature and caring adults are supposed to do; disseminate information and provide explanations? No one came back to the table that night to provide such relief. So I took on those words of death into myself and provided fertile ground for it to fester and grow like out of control weeds in an abandoned back lot somewhere where only vagrants and wild dogs roam and rummage through piles of garbage and unwanted objects.
To that place, that painful memory, is where I must travel back to this night. Armed with grown-up understanding and a good measure of God's revealed love for me, I go back tonight and make myself known to that little boy. I go with angels who with swords in hand cut through the thicket and darkness and provide me a path to safely go and retrieve what was lost and is now saved. As they fight and guard my every step I am left to concentrate on how I will reach out to that little frightened boy and convince him I come to rescue him and not cause him any further damage. He may not believe me at first. Many men have gone before me saying similar words only to take advantage of his defenseless spirit and trick him into going with them into dark places where once out of the prying eyes force him to his knees or to bend over and commit acts of sexual degradation and perversion. I must convince this little one that I come from the future, that I am he in grown-up form come to rescue him from the dark and shameful place he has been confined to. I will speak to him as I have been spoken to by the voice of magnanimous love and let him know he is at last free to leave that place and never to return.
I will speak gently and tenderly the very words spoken to me by my emancipator, my friend, my rescuer, Jesus, who has modeled for me how the work of setting the captives free is done. I will say to that little boy: " You are redeemed, you are not only wanted and loved, you are precious and fully accepted". I will sit with him at that table and finally take that plate from him and eat those leftovers for him. I will show him it is okay to feel what he feels and I will wait there as long as it takes until he is reassured I mean him no harm, that I speak truth and just want to love him with a love so pure and noble which will once and for all break the power of that spoken curse. Show him not only was he to be born but unto royalty and high esteem was he destined to be born into. Then maybe, after all that has been accomplished, he will see the value and worth in his life and in seeing it set out a course to boldly go back into darkness and snatch twigs forgotten and left in the fire of abuse and suffering.
May this life of pain and suffering be a catalyst for others to come into their own realms of self-discovery and freedom from the snares of shame and abuse. And one by one, every little scared boy and girl finally come out of the dark shadows and be set free to play and bask in the fullness of the light of acceptance and freedom. God's kingdom children free once and for all to run and play under the watchful and strong gaze of affirming love.
