A Confession. *TRIGGER WARNING*

As you all may have noticed, I have been writing a lot lately. A lot more than I usually do, especially considering it is generally poetry or a short story. Recently, it has been essays and blogs, mainly because I have felt the need to write them, to reach people, as well as me writing my first novel. I'm proud of that fact and how I have expanded my horizons with my writing lately.

 

A lot of my essays and blogs have been concerning compassion, love, mercy, faith, hope, and forgiveness. The foundations of my faith that I do have. It has been observed that they are very astute and accurate concerning human nature along with correct on each foundation. I do have a confession though.

I can't credit that knowledge to anything throw what I have read or come across in music or in research. While those themes are present in many works of art, literature, and music, that is not where I learned about them. All three have strengthened my belief and my foundation in all of them, but where I first began to apply them was within my own life.

 

Many people who know me personally say that I am a happy spirit and bubbly. That may be true, but as with us all, there has been much pain and sorrow in my life.

 

And this is where those lessons that I have written on lately have come into play.

 

My journey with essays and blogging began with We Occupy Jesus and a post I shared on there back around Mother's Day. I believe it was a few days after Mother's Day, in all actuality. No matter!

 

Anyway, the topic of that was those mothers who are not celebrated on Mother's Day. The mothers who had had children and given them up for adoption for whatever reason or may have had abortions for whatever reason or miscarried their child. They are the ones that are often shoved to the back. Mothers like me.

 

I did not have an abortion, but I have miscarried a child and I did give up my daughter for adoption. I had her when I was eleven years old, because I was raped for two years and sexually abused for two years before that. I was too young to raise her and was truly afraid for her life and well being. I didn't want her to be in the same situation I was and wanted far better for her.

 

I did not know I was pregnant; I didn't miss my period or even gain weight. Perhaps it was due to me being so young. They still don't know how nothing ever showed I was pregnant.

 

The thing is, I have a lot of health problems from having a child so young. I developed a blood clot less than a year later, due to a birth defect where a main artery and a main vein in my leg are crisscrossed. The artery compresses the vein, making me prone to blood clots. The pressure from the pregnancy, coupled with the state mandating that I be put on birth control, caused me to have a blood clot from my ankle to my mid thigh. I was twelve years old at that point.

 

The blood clot was dissolved, and I was put into martial arts to learn to defend myself, and maybe help with self confidence. I was also put into counseling for what my dad called shell shock which we call today PTSD and depression.  I was told that to have another child would kill me and the child, because I would be a high risk for a blood clot during the pregnancy, and the stress during labor and delivery could cause me to "throw it;" what that means, is that it would break apart and go to either my heart, brain, or lungs.

 

For a while, everything was fine, medically speaking.

 

And then I started developing cysts at eighteen years old.

 

They went untreated for 2 and a half years, and there is a lot of scar tissue on my reproductive system. I was also pregnant at the time and I miscarried when I was diagnosed with the cysts. So, they had to do the uterine scrape for the cysts and then a D&C for the miscarriage. The doctor that did the surgery and diagnosed me, when finding out how young I was when I had my first child, theorized that that was what caused my hormones to basically go crazy and caused me to develop PCOS or poly cystic ovarian syndrome. She said that my reproductive system was covered in cysts and that there was a lot of scar tissue from previous cysts which could have and probably was caused by the hormonal imbalance created by the pregnancy and then the birth control. She also said I would be lucky to be able to even conceive or carry a child to full term.

 

The person that raped me lives with the guilt and my family is sorrowful over what happened. They are sorrowful over what I have had to endure and he (the rapist) feels responsible every day. And I forgive him. I do. I wish him no harm at all.

But I am struggling.

 

In all of this, I didn't have any choice in it. My choice to bear a child of my own, to go through a pregnancy, was taken from me because of two medical conditions that resulted from a pregnancy that was from rape. And, while I forgive him, and I forgive some family members for blaming me, and I forgive others for telling me it was my fault, there is still the fact that so many choices were taken from me and that I have medical conditions and mental health issues that resulted from his choices to objectify and abuse me.

 

I have said before that we are often so short sighted as to how exactly our freedom of choice and free will works. And we are. We think that our choices are ours alone and they affect no one else. With what I survived, he objectified me and that, in his mind, took away any consequence from me. It was about his choice and nothing else. But his choices had consequences, not just for him, but for me as well. And my consequences are life long and have affected parts of my life that should have been affected by my choices, not someone else's.

 

I said in a writing last night that there is a saying that we are free to choose, but we are not free from our choices. I also pointed out that it should be said that others will feel consequences from our choices as well, because of how we are all interconnected. While that is true, that barely scratches the surface of it. In instances like this, when we think our choices, our beliefs, and that we ourselves are superior to others, this is the result.

 

You affect someone's entire life by taking away their choices.Which leads to my confession.

 

My confession is this:

 

I forgive, I am not bitter, I am not angry, and I wish no harm to those that have harmed me and taken away my choices like this.

 

But I am sorrowful because I don't know how to handle this. I look at the decisions that were yanked away, and wonder how to get beyond having my choices yanked away from me. Forgiveness is not easy and neither is the healing, and that is where I am at. How do you get beyond having your choices yanked away and your life completely changed? How do you come to terms with that?

 

One of my dreams was and is to become a mother. And, yes, I realize I can adopt. I probably will, one day, once I can provide a stable home that will be worthy of a child or children. But that may be the only choice that is available to me or that of a surrogate mother.

 

A choice was yanked away from me along with fairly good health as well.

 

I don't know how to come to terms with that.

 

But I do know I am trying to each day, that I am trying to move forward.

 

I'm not going to say it's not fair, or it's unjust because then I am throwing a pity party for myself and I can't allow myself to do that. I have too much to do and a lot of work to go forth with.

 

I am going to say this though.

 

What I went through and survived was pretty bad. But there are many many children in this country and around the world who endure and survive far worse things. This is an epidemic that needs to be stopped.

 

Choices, people. It always comes back to choices.

 

With what happened to me, I choose to forgive, and hold compassion and mercy for the person who raped me. I choose to try and love them, as I love myself. I choose to try and move forward with my life, rather than letting this define me, even though I am struggling to come to terms with some things. I also choose to fight and raise awareness for those children that are in the situation I was in and in far worse situations.

 

So, I challenge you, readers. Do this. Choose another path other than the one of pain and sorrow. Don't let it define you. Choose to move forward and to forgive and love. Simply because it is better for you spiritually and mentally and it also can open the doors for others to let goodness and light in.