I can’t remember

I know I played little league football. I played soccer for three years.  I grew up with friends as other kids did.  I did childish things and played childish games.  I know at some point I had good things happen to me and I laughed and smiled as only kids can.

But I can’t remember.  Those things float across the void.  I see them as you see the forest, not as you see the trees.  I know they were a part of me, but the details are gone.  There is no room in the life of a victim of childhood sexual abuse for those things.  They are weaknesses that must be kept outside the walls.

A child has no idea how to be an adult.  Even when he is thrust unceremoniously into the role.  He pretends in his prison, thinking himself beyond the suffering.  Unwittingly trapped in the poisons that killed who he was.  The acrimonious acids eating into his flesh producing a skeletal facsimile of a man.

I can’t forget the details of how he changed my life.  I wonder what course things might have taken if not for him.  I look at the major decisions in my life that his actions dictated for me.  I know I should find acceptance for where I am, that even the bad choices have led to some good things.  But dissatisfaction battles with happiness.  The person I am now, trapped himself in a cage for safety’s sake.  Safety from him? Safety from myself? But a caged bird never sings songs of freedom and he never truly learns to fly.

So here I am trying to live my life like I have found healing.  It all seems to be a series of sacrifices. Compromises with what I’ve built, losing the blueprints of my dreams.  I guess Icarus was never meant to fly.  I can’t remember, he took that from me. So now I need to find solace in where I’m at, with what I’ve gotten, with who I am.

I can’t remember, I can’t forget