I come back and still notice nothing, so I can resume my work on Helen Wambach’s videos that I will post shortly. One afternoon I start to notice some past life mood. I think of Katrina, because we are in August, and because the previous night I just watched a TV series in which someone dies in the trenches. August always weighs in my heart, at some point. It is like an oppression that won’t let you breathe. At the same time I keep thinking of Roderic, I wonder whether I already said everything in the most recent entry or I have something else to add. I suspect I haven’t seen all the mistreatment I was subjected to. I tell my guide I want to see it all, as always... though I don’t know if that would change anything, if it would change what I know I have to do, what I am already doing in some way: to shed tears for all that happened, all the things I didn’t cry for.
I lie down in the sofa for a moment and I keep feeling the past life mood, a sadness that doesn’t correspond to the present. I feel the urge to take paper and ball pen and write this:
Running in vain from a life of abuse...
And sometimes you even ask yourself whether you are exaggerating or “romanticizing” a story that perhaps didn’t occur as you want to imagine —as you remember— because everything seems too cruel, too tough to have happened in reality. We often forget truth is stranger than fiction.
No, maybe it wasn’t abuse enough to rape your mother in front of your eyes when you were just a child, or to kick you when you tried to stab a knife, grabbed in your little child's fist, in the foot of the man who was raping her.
No, maybe it wasn’t abuse enough to burn and destroy a whole village while you, also a child and scared to death, spent all the night huddled in a hiding place until your brother came to get you out.
No, maybe it wasn’t abuse enough to collect their taxes taking away the hunt you needed to feed your wife, who was nursing your only child.
No, maybe it wasn’t abuse enough to whip you publicly as a warning to all the rest, until you fell down half faint, because you had stolen a sheep to calm your and your family's hunger.
No, maybe it wasn’t abuse enough to slit your child’s throat in front of you while his mother shouted disconsolate and you were held down and beaten by three men.
Maybe all this doesn’t seem abuse enough for you to justify what you did afterwards. And you know there was more, there had to be more, as you are still looking for a reason so that a man like you wants to seek vengeance and so alleviate somewhat the grief that breaks your heart apart. You want to see more, know more, but is it really necessary? Do you still need an excuse to feel less guilty, when it was the others the ones abusing their power?
Listen to the song once again:
Running IN VAIN from a life of abuse.
You couldn’t escape the abuse. You were hanged. You were their prisoner from the start, because it was in their hands to put more and more pressure on you until you broke. And they did. You couldn’t run away from the abuse or the pain. But you don’t need an excuse anymore. You need to relive the past so that you can express that grief.
I don’t know if this means my guide is going to show me more images of the mistreatment I was subjected to. Sometimes I think all the pain and rage I carry inside are there due to something else, an abuse more extended in time, perhaps horrible things are still in the dark. But I may be wrong. Lately I again see in my mind a very specific scene from that movie I watched as a child that impressed me so much, entitled An eye for an eye (I think), in which a man is savagely tortured. Could they have done something similar to me, only to have fun? Yes, of course they could. But I don’t know if this diverts my attention from what is really important here: to accept the defeat, abandone myself to death, and weep at last for everything I lost.