I purposely urged myself to get off the bed (in a motel, you see) and sit at this little table with the purpose of writing.

I feel disjointed. My mind is healing slowly. My body follows according to how many cups of veggies I consume daily. Some days I get out of bed raring to go and looking in the obligatory mirror as in every bathroom I suddenly want to dive under cover again.

I can’t think about that now. I must write my book. I have as many starts as I have doubts. I doubt my ability, my determination, and my fortitude against all naysayers whose messages to me I have created from old tapes as familiar and cutting as ever. Family of origin tapes never wear out. They wear on the nerves, they wear down your body, and they appear wearing ghastly balloons to warn me when I speak.

I must speak. It is all I have left of me. My truth is all that stands between the dark colors I paint myself and the bright glow of vindication. I want to set me free as much as I wish to offer freedom to others who came before and follow after on the abuse recovery journey.

I will offer it to my children. Perhaps they will hear me, it is their choice. Freedom for them is my goal, to undo the perceptions of who I was and am. My actions will always tower over me with fingers wagging and a smirk wide as an ocean. I will not excuse or stave off accusations, but if I can make the correlation between early childhood sex abuse and the person who plowed through peoples lives at a whim then I am somewhat redeemed.

Perhaps I am at a crossroads where mind and heart and body vie for a leadership position to carry me forward. Perhaps I secretly wish to return to my smashed state shirking entirely my responsibility for myself. I don’t know where I am on my path. I know I am not trash by the side of the road as I once believed. When you are trash by the roadside it follows that you will sit in self pity waiting for the next kick in the head.

How do I mark the journey and what is the destination? Who will I be when I get to say who I am instead of some agenda driven cretin?

I do not have answers and indeed, there may be none. I know in my head and heart I am a better person today than I ever dreamed I could be. I am glad that in 1988 when my head and my heart were agreed on suicide and my body begged for peace other options came from that teensy thing called hope.

Hope is what I hold now. If you need some, take some. If you have extra, spread it about like Dandelion fuzz in a stiff breeze.