Time is a Long Game

Some thoughts as I pass fully into another decade

The maneuvering has begun. The House has voted, almost unanimously, and the Senate went all in. Is it that they smell blood in the water? If so, whose is it? There has been so much discussion, so much distraction, and avoidance. So much obfuscating, so many lies, so many accusations. So much pain suffered by the survivors of Epstein’s abusive behavior and crimes.

None of us who weren’t there, as either the abusers, or the abused will ever know all there is to know.

But here’s what I do know:
I was once a 15 year old too. 15 is such a strange age. You want to be taken seriously. You want to be a grown up, with all the desires and imagined passion for life, for love , but you are still a kid. You are unsure of your appeal, unsure of your acceptance among both your peers, and those you perceive as cooler than you. You are unsure of your place in the world.

And that is from the experience of a 15 year old who had a safe place to live, a perceived future. A 15 year old whose parents might not have been the most loving and accepting, but still…safe. Imagine for a minute, that you didn’t have a safe home. Maybe you didn’t have money, maybe your parents were poorly equipped to be parents and took it out on their kids. With all the inherent pressures of surging hormones, unrealistic expectations from movies and TV, if you had no stable base of support, how vulnerable would you be to a seemingly sympathetic stranger?

How quickly would your sense of self, the illusion of being wanted, dissolve into doubt and despair?

In this season of giving thanks, I would give thanks that I never fell under the influence of someone as evil as Epstein and Maxwell. I give thanks that my family kept me safe, if not always happy. I give thanks that I stumbled into friendships and interests that gave me direction, purpose and joy.

In the long game of time, I am not yet at the end, even if I’m well past the halfway point. I give thanks that my slips off the path resulted in nothing more than a bruised ego, more than a few nights of sobbing into my pillow, the occasional scraped shin. Reading the stories of survivors to sexual and emotional abuse makes me realize how badly my life could have gone, had I turned that way instead of this. Except by grace, I might have fallen into ruin.

If our lives are a path, mine has been through a forest trail, sometimes dark and overgrown, sometimes coming upon an open place, a break in the trees that reveals clear sky and sunshine over a vast open place. Sometimes you don’t know where the path is going to take you until you get there. Sometimes, just as you think you are going to slip on muddy rocks, someone gives you a hand up and pulls you up above the rushing stream and rocks below.  

With gratitude for your presence here…

All art by me.