9

(Sunday, 14OCT07)

The question that is asked in the end, for every human being that has been through Hell, the question that decides if they have been damaged or not, is: Is the world good?
If they answer yes, then they are still good, because they will still take the time to take care of themselves and the goodness that they are, and if they answer no, then they are going to be lost for awhile, until they can find their own goodness again and remember how to appreciate it.
This one who is supposed to ask me questions, like: are you okay?
Why are you breathless running up to the House?
What just happened in the Mustang?
What just happened out by the wood shed?
This one who is supposed to know me well enough to 'get it' when I try to explain.
This one who was supposed to grow up with me so I wouldn't have been all alone all on my own in that Hell place.
This one, he never happened, he was never born. He only came for me once, that kid I keep thinking was my brother except he couldn’t have been.
They were weak. And they were harmless, because the strong were not bothered by them.
So it was okay for them to be weak for whatever reasons they had.
Then they had a strong baby. Me. And they found a way out other than becoming strong.
They could be weak and powerful at the same time. They could be powerful enough to abuse. That’s how they were able to abuse the strong while the strong remained the strong, and the weak remained the weak, that is how the weak managed to abuse the strong, because the strong was only a baby, a baby that, according to American Law at the time, was their property.
I know how to see W__ and F__ and their lives.
I just take my one night as a teenager, my one night as a preteen, and that one Sunday at the ballpark, and I just spread them out, so that they are more than one, until they are all the days. And depending on whom I'm talking to, is how much spreading I have to do so that I can relate to them.
W__ listens to himself. In the end that is what living becomes, listening.
If you've spent your whole life listening to what's going on around you so you could survive, then you'd be lost once you were safe because you had no idea that now you were to listen to yourself instead.
The stories are not for telling to others, they are for you first. You're the one who still has a chance, the stories are for you to teach you to show you, your story is for you, I think to myself.
I always assumed they must be for other people and I must be just the teller because I couldn't possibly still have a chance. This --- all this --- is for you. A whole life, just for you, B.