It Happened

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ashes, confrontation, denial, dreams, fears, growth, imagination, key, memories, nightmare, reality, reclaiming all that was lost

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It Happened

I never told you did I? I didn’t even tell myself. It took a while you know to come to terms with all that happened and even now, thinking about it and actually daring to share it seems like a betrayal somehow – but I know that I have to speak and the time to do it is now. How could I allow myself to doubt that it happened? How could I think that making the link between then and now was totally unconnected when the very fibre of my being shouted, screamed, the pain was real, and not a figment of my imagination, but a nightmare stealing surreptitiously into my dreams, locking every door, tossing the master key into a river, rolling relentlessly into a sea of despair.

I’m not ashamed you know. I do not blame myself. I don’t expect you to understand. You didn’t understand then, so why would you understand, years later, when the passing of time has minimised it, diminished it, so that the ogre that it was, looming large, fearfully fierce, is reduced to nothing more than ashes in a dusty corner of your memory. Ashes which you refuse to sweep away. To acknowledge them would suggest you played a part so they lay largely undisturbed, the specks becoming spectators at their own show.

So here I stand, and I know it’s inconvenient for you. Why couldn’t I have chosen a better time? Well I’m afraid that with the passing of time, I grew. I choose this time and it belongs to me. I claim and reclaim all that was lost. I’m telling you now that it happened.

That master key tossed so carelessly on to the ocean bed glints gleefully in the sunlight, sparkling on the shore, assures me that my memory serves me well.

~Marie Williams – 2017

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Approval

Tags

acceptance of self, analogy, approval, birth, control, definition, denial, dictionary, family, guilt, mental health, metaphor, seeking approval, self-love, shame, siblings

Why do we seek approval?  Should we pay for it, and how much should we pay?  Is it cost effective, and if it is not why do we urgently seek it out, and if it is, why is it that it seems that there is not enough of it to go around?  Approval, how about we strike it from the dictionary completely and see if it is missed, and then contemplate the lives that have been affected by this word, a word which in itself begs for the very thing it may deny others.

As soon as we are born, although we do not know it, are not aware of it, we become the subject of approval: to be thought well of, commend, authorise, so the definition says, and that stays with us, weaving its way through our lives, lives depending on it, lives failing by it, lives denied by it, lives controlled by it, lives foiled by it, lives sadly wiped out by it.

We require approval from our parents from a very early age, and at that stage it makes us feel. Feelings and approval: cousins, sisters, brothers, it cannot be denied, these two are related and like siblings, first cousins, step children, they do not always get along.  They tussle, they squabble, they fight, they vie for parental affection, believing that they are the first among equals.  But sadly this is not so, because as we know, no parent loves one sibling more than the other.  Or so they lead us to believe.  But we know, approval tells us so!

Later on, when we are older, bolder, approval hangs around like a boulder: huge, solid, unmovable, it dictates the way we should go.  Approved of, we feel nurtured, loved and accepted.  Disapproval on the other hand, based on faulty premises, leaves us feeling like orphans, un-loved, un-accepted, lacking, unseen, in some cases, guilty and ashamed.

We need approval.  It appears to be essential for a life well lived.  But in order to live a life with no regrets, the only approval worth investing in, is the approval we give ourselves.  Let’s keep that word in the dictionary and approve its existence but with the proviso that it includes not only approval from others, but above all approval from ourselves for ourselves in order to live our best life.

~Marie Williams 2016