Grit Uplifted

The high pitched wail of a siren awakens me.
Sleep, thick and heavy in my eyes as I try to see.
What an odd dream I had, all dead people, it seemed, but alive and well.
I’ll tell Jim about it when I call him.
Suddenly I am wide awake and know that Jim is also dead; Dan too.
There is a pressure in my chest that is not physical and I clear my mind as I dress.
I expected that as a matter of course, our ages being so far apart, I’d outlive them.
But who expected them to go so suddenly and in such a short span of time?
I sip my morning coffee and think about the day ahead, a COVID day.
I could go for a walk; the coffee shops and restaurants are open now, but I stay clear of them.
Checking emails and Facebook doesn’t lift my spirits.
Who can I phone for some pleasant, and distracting, conversation?
No one, really; it’s all text messages these days.
A few years ago I had four brothers, three still at the beginning of this year.
Now I have one.
I have so much time to sit and think such thoughts and how distant I’ve grown from most family.
The downside of living alone.
This is nature running its course; my turn will come.
I pick up my book and turn to the marked page.
My steadfast companions.

The rain continues, steady but not hard.
Cars swish by on wet pavement, the sound rising and falling.
My mood does the same, more down than up.
I know how to fix it but can’t bring myself to do what is necessary.

Life seems simple in my mind sometimes.
Do this and this and gradually results will follow,
but so many times I have made progress in the past only to fall back.
Is it a fault of my thinking or is it the life I’ve been dealt?

I gear up to try again; need to; have to.
My listless laying about has been affecting my body.
So out of shape I lose my breath at the thought of exertion.
Overweight and scruffy looking.

My Christian faith tells me not to quit;
My Stoic reading tells me these are things in my power to control.
My life experience tells me I can do better…for a while.
My heart asks me, “Do I try again?”

So…once more into the breech.
Walk more, eat healthier, smoke less, take control.
Write more, read more, make my faith and reading truly my way of life.
My heart answers, “Yes, try again!”

The snow crunches underfoot.
Knee deep, it takes effort to walk.
The sound carries in the forest.
I see puffs of my breath.
My nose is cold and I sniffle.

Jim and I choose a tree.
Despite my youth, my vote counts.
I feel important, a part of the work, though Jim swings the axe.
The steel head of the axe bites into the tree and the crack echoes.
Snow cascades off the branches with each blow.

The tree is down and we wait for Jim to catch his breath.
We grip the branches at the large end and drag the tree out of the woods.
It leaves a smooth path in the snow behind us with our footprints on either side.
At the car, I am too short to be much help getting the tree onto the roof, but I try.
We talk about how it looks like a good tree.

I enjoy being alone with Jim.
Home is not my happy place, but he is always kind to me.
And he reminds me of our home before I went to live with him.
I didn’t want to leave there, didn’t want to move in with Jim and his family.
Life happens that way; kids don’t always get to choose.

The trip to the forest is the real experience of the season for me.
Just me and my big brother, alone in a snowy forest, cutting down a Christmas tree.
I participate in Christmas celebrations at Jim’s.
The Christmases when I was with my dad and my brothers and sisters were around, those are memories.
What I remember most about them was the joy of being around them all.

But I am young and resilient, I will adapt.
New memories don’t replace the old ones, they are just good new ones.
What stays the same is what I take pleasure in.
I will remember this Christmas not for the decorations or the baked good or the gifts.
I will remember trudging through the snow, voting on a tree to take, and spending hours alone with my big brother.

TRIGGER WARNING: Writing below contains discussion of sexual assault.

This is one of my most powerful pieces to date. I only wrote this yesterday and shared this during my writing class. It left people stunned and they didn’t know how to react. But I’ll be going back to Grit Uplifted every week to challenge myself. Hope some of you get a chance to read this <3

GRIT UPLIFTED EXERCISE ON OCTOBER 21st/2017
Writing prompt: Write a first person response to the Emma Forest’s quote, “We all perform. Its what we do for each other, deliberately or unintentionally.”

I know it’s been a week since the Harvey Weinstein allegations came up. As a social media influencer, I see the tweets and posts 24/7. Of course, they
Trigger me, but at the same time I know I need to speak up and act up on this.
Since, I was 5 years old, I was kidnapped and sexually abused by my biological father and was forced to work in the sex trade because of him. Since I lived with him throughout my
Whole childhood, I was forced by him to not say a word. For 15 years, till I left his handcuffs and “snake” torture I got from him, I never was to speak about it. In my culture, incest is acceptable, but sexual abuse is taboo.
At about 12 years old, I came to Canada to meet my biological mother and her husband. I was going through puberty, and found from my mother and stepfather that I was born a hermaphrodite (intersex). (NOTE: I am a person who wishes to reclaim the old gender and sexuality terms)
When she explained that to me that was a complete mind-fuck. I confided to her that I always felt as a girl, since age 5. She took that and used it to her advantage. She ended up sexually assaulting me and she denied everything. She is a child psychiatrist and at the time, had the power to commit me in a mental institution.
In 1993, she send me back overseas to Cyprus to my original abuser.
In 1994, I experienced abuse from a Greek Orthodox priest, who was a friend of my fathers. I began struggling with my faith and decided that I hated the doctrines of Christianity with a passion. Not the people who are Christians. I need to make sure that I make people understand that I don’t hate Christian people. And reiterate that it’s the doctrines of the religion and the people of power in this belief system. According to this priest who did the damage, “Children are lambs and need to be sacrificed for Jesus and God.”
Since then, I have continued experienced multiple assaults, with the most recent one happening February 27th / 2017 under the Labatts bridge by a stranger here in London, Ontario.
I had to fake it for all these years till the latest dreadful experience that I had last February. I said “No mas”, which means “No more” in Latin.
Since June 2017, I joined Opening the Circle, which is a peer support group that I began peer support work with and I began breaking my silence. I am tired right now. Everybody needs to know that times have changed. I as a survivor feel that we shouldn’t perform to please the world. Some of us suffer and hurt during this process, and we need to stop the silence due to the fear of sexual abuse. By telling our stories and enforcing the #metoo campaign we do this for each other. Definitely not deliberately or unintentionally.

The last month or so, I have been taking writing classes. Grit Uplifted has been an amazing group that has been challenging me. This is my way of flushing the past. Through writing. This exercise was something that I have struggled while writing. If you see the options, I chose to do it and base it on my biological mother. This is another of my most personal pieces to date. Hope you enjoy <3

GRIT UPLIFTED EXERCISE : OCTOBER 21st/ 2017
WRITING PROMPT: Write an exercise from a HE/She or They perspective.
The OPTIONS were
1. A parent seen differently through the eyes of his/her son or daughter
2. Someone suffering from insomnia