Happy Ever After!

 I was talking to someone who was interviewing me about childhood clergy sexual abuse. That is something I have done a lot, ever since I "came out" as it were, it was a choice I made.


I knew that to stay silent wasn't working for me, and it occurred to me that I may help others if I spoke out.
That was a long time ago, and a story often told. I don't care for doing it, but sometimes it is necessary. 

But I was overwhelmed with this particular  interviewer's naiveté and his complete missing of the point!
He was very quick to keep pointing out that after everything I told him that "I was alright now" that everything was "now ok" and there was a "happy  ending". Wasn't I "lucky"? This was  of course, a religious interviewer! 

I am seventy now, and while it is perfectly true that I have a very different and fulfilling life now, and I am grateful for that, I am, like many others like me, mystified why these people do not recognise the LOST years, the ones we cannot have back!

The early teens when we should have been forming friendships and alliances instead of hiding away our "secrets", sabotaging relationships rather than showing our wounds.
Instead of being able to talk to our peers about our blossoming womanhood, we could not allow anyone to see the sordid reality of our lives.

These early years are so important, you can't "catch up" you cannot go back to being ten again and start over!
When other girls were dreaming of Elvis Presley, I was having nightmares about a fat drunken smelly pedophile in a cleric's collar, and fearing he may come after me again. I can't recapture  those times, and make them rainbows and buttercups!

I cannot go back and be a better parent to my children, instead of a clueless one!
I cannot "undrink" all the booze or "untake" the drugs!!

The inadequate pedophile and his narcissistic church  took away my PRIME years, as a teenager and a young woman and I cannot have them back.

I was damaged, abused, alone, afraid, mentally and emotionally disturbed. It was only sheer bloody mindedness that I survived at all!
And now I am in the "twighlight" years, and I am very happy in my personal life,   my default position is still unworthiness and guilt, and despite any of my successes, I still consider myself to be an alien in this beautiful world.

That's what a "happy ending" looks like you stupid sanctimonious   prick!