I can only fight one fight though I fall short of my expectations almost daily. So many injustices, man’s inhumanity to man describes them all, but I am encased in my own personal battle to rise each day and smile.

It is better with me than a year ago. A year ago it was better than 5 years ago and so on back through time to the beginning of recovery, the first time I faced head-on the reality of the “thing” that started me on my long, lonesome journey; incest.

I have no proof. Only my brother and I were in that room. My brother will not tell the truth about what he did to the little girl in the blue dress. He has no knowledge of my trauma that day or every day from that moment on.

Yet I am proof if one wishes to give me the benefit of the doubt and look. My life is proof if you want to see it. But most people will not look too closely. Some people are torn by loyalties. Who is lying? They sit on the fence.

I too sat on the fence in my mind, silenced with precision and arguing with only me. Did it happen? Did I get it wrong? AM I crazy? Am I just a bad girl? Born bad? Did I ruin the boys, Dad? And the other argument was memory. My only “evidence” against the growing insanity in my mind.

Eventually I had to get off my self made fence and take care of me. I had to face the truth.

I am still facing it. Radical acceptance demands it to move forward. Other people are not endangered by sitting on the fence or denying outright that my life never happened. They do not need to see it or feel it or do battle with the acres of damage to my mind and heart or the debris stretching out behind me as I struggled to just survive.

Where once I loathed myself for being me, I am now proud. I win.