Be a Protector of Children

It seems like every night the blog is getting harder and harder to do. One possible reason is that when something is working, Resistance gets pissed and turns up its tricks.

Max and I went to the movies tonight. We saw Into the Woods. It was one of the two movies he was open to seeing. The other was American Sniper. I won’t be seeing that one. Into the Woods was entertaining but also left me wondering if I’m not the only queen in the world who likes musical theatre but doesn’t worship Sondheim. Meryl Streep was brilliant of course. She’s starting to piss me off.

When we got home I helped Max with his homework. Math. It was a lot of word problems and fraction sequence problems where the problem required you to determine the rule. With most of them the first thing you had to do was convert all the fractions to having a common denominator. I didn’t even know that term was still in my brain but apparently it was lodged in there somewhere. I’m frankly kind of amazed I didn’t drink and drug every ounce of algebra out of my brain. He’s in the fifth grade and when I struggled a little bit with some of the problems it made me feel stupid. I’ve also discovered that I’ve forgotten at least a little bit of my multiplication tables.

I asked him at some point what grade he was in. I think I started wondering how the math they are teaching kids nowadays compared to the math I was learning at his age. (He’s eleven.) Then a cold chill ran over me when I realized that he is almost the age I was when I was molested. He seems like such a little kid to me still. He’s in the fifth grade and it was in the summer of my fifth grade year that Dale Palmer started molesting me. How could someone do that to a child? When I think of someone hurting Max in that way— well, number one I don’t even like to imagine such a horrible thing but if they did, I don’t know that I could keep myself from finding the perpetrator and killing him or her. I know that’s not what I’m supposed to think/feel but I swear that’s who I am. I’m the same about any kid in my life. Hell, I’m the same about any kid. When this happens to a child, the ramifications last in some ways for the rest of their lives. For me it set a precedent of shame around sex and also for care-taking the ones who hurt me. At forty-nine years of age (and after a terrible marriage to a man who abused me) I am finally become someone who does not cover for, lie for, or protect the sickos who hurt me— then or now.

My future looks bright and oddly part of it is because I’m behaving in a way that I used to consider being an asshole. I have become someone who will say “you can’t talk to me like that” or “no, I’m not going to do that.” It feels uncomfortable and weird a lot of the time but I’m determined to stick with it until it becomes automatic. Because the adults in my life let me down when I was that age, I am now stepping up and protecting that little boy who still lives inside of me. Anyone who intends to hurt me in a similar way will meet with the same Marine who would show up at the door of anyone who hurt Max or any of my other kids.

I’m going to get up early and do the blog first tomorrow before diving into the scriptwriting tomorrow. I also have to talk to y’all some more about the goals and about my impending move back to New York City.

That’s all for tonight. Y’all are in my good thoughts and prayers— for all the ways you are processing and moving on from the bad things that have happened to you in your life and also for your goals and dreams from this point forward. The truth of our past need not be the truth of our future.

See y’all tomorrow.