I Cried Because I Had No Shoes

Many years ago I had a friend whose father was extremely abusive. I had just spent the weekend with her and was horrified at his behavior towards his daughter. I was living alone at the time and it would be many decades before I worked my way through recovery from my own child sexual abuse. Those memories were so deeply buried that when I look back on it now I’m amazed at how long I failed to see the truth. I begged my friend to run away, to come and live with me. Having run away from home at the age of eighteen I considered myself somewhat an authority on the subject. She said she couldn’t leave her mother; that at times she was a buffer between her mom and dad. I asked how she was able to survive what I thought was severe abuse. She said every time she felt despair she thought of words she’d heard from someone many years earlier; I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man with no feet. Her comment sobered me up.

I have thought of this bit of wisdom hundreds of times in the ensuing years. It seemed like a bolt of lightning designed to help people accept their lot. Part of me knew there was great truth in it. Another part of me refused to accept it as a possible occupant for the wisdom room in my mind where I was beginning to stockpile other philosophical gems to guide me on this journey called life. I also knew how easy it was to confuse cleverness with sagacity. Some lessons were more difficult to reason through than others.

To me it came down to common sense (which isn’t really very common). Keen perception, discernment, foresight, good judgment and prudence were beginning to crowd out bits and pieces of words that had no place in my wisdom room. As a life-long Catholic ─ albeit a cafeteria Catholic ─ I had been trained early on to obey, not to reason. It was a deadly trap, one that set me up for many years of sorrow. Studying different world religions, and plowing my way through the Bible, the Bhagavad-Gita, Kahlil Gabran’s The Prophet, A Modern Priest Looks at His Outdated Church by Father James Kavanaugh, the Lives of the Saints, The Desiderata and countless other guides to why we are here and how to live a good life was becoming confusing.  I even studied Astrology for three years and used to erect astrology charts as a part time job. My brain became chocked full of everyone’s opinion on what is right and just. Coming from a background of strict organized religion with all of its rules and regulations hampered my progress. I kept thinking despite being the pope’s child somehow I’d figure out what was wrong with  I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man with no feet.

It took many years for me to realize I had a brain of my own and despite it brimming with bits and pieces of what was the truth and what wasn’t I didn’t need anyone to tell me what the truth was. It was a difficult transition to make the passage through living my life as other people told me and making my own choices. I went back and read the hundreds of poems I had written since I was thirteen years old (the year my father began his incestuous raids) and there I found my own inner voices. The truth had always been inside of me waiting to be set free. But first I had to work my way through all the Catholic voodoo business, my parent’s admonitions and falling into the same hole every time I took the same path. I had to give myself permission to make my own choices, to follow my own intuition and to sort out what was the truth and what was someone else’s perception of it. In time I came to realize that, as the Desiderata says, If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Everyone’s past, the good and the bad, are going to be seen through a filter. It has been said that there are three truths: the way we see ourselves, the way others see us and the way we really are. Our pain is our pain and should not be subjected to scrutiny that has no kindness. A sister-in-law of mine after finding out about my abuse from family gossip made the statement at a family gathering that, after all he only raped me the one time so what was the big deal. The only one I remembered before beginning my recovery was the first time. There were more, so deeply buried that as I moved forward on my bridge of recovery I felt as if I were a needle trying to dig out  painful thorns. It is too easy to fall in to the pit that weighs and measures one’s own abuse against another’s. My sister-in-law who dealt me such unkindness no doubt has issues of her own.

Never compare your abuse to another’s. What we’ve been through is the truth in our little world and deserves to be dealt with in its own time and space and not cluttered with another’s truth.

“To thine own self be true” by William Shakespeare is a prudent guide in our search for the truth.

I want to share with you a quote from Dr. Irene’s Verbal Abuse Site. It can be found at:

http://drirene.com/. She has reached a level of wisdom that few can even strive for. As our granddaughter Mary said to my husband when she was about three years old, “Watch and learn Grandpa.”