I’ve something building inside of me, something which smolders deep within but threatens soon to break out into a raging conflagration. I’ve no words for the swirling emotions evoked by the smoldering, for wasn’t I discouraged as a child (and sometimes forbidden) to speak truth, to use my words to express myself? Didn’t I grow up (it’s beginning to occur to me) in a monster’s lair? Oh, mother took care to make it as homey as she could, I will credit her for that. Nothing but the most modern of furniture would do, and she saw to it that we had all the comforts of a real home: running water, electricity and scads of Tupperware. She scrubbed night and day; why, we must have had the cleanest, most sanitary lair in 60’s suburbia.

There’s no getting away though from the fact that the Monster’s Lair was no more a home than the cardboard scenery painted as a background in a grade school play. We had a lot of the elements for a normal, proper family. We sat down every evening to well-prepared meals from the four food groups with clean hands and faces. We asked in civilized tones to please pass the butter and salt. Each week we piled into the car for church (everyone but my stepdad, for it’s common knowledge you can’t bring a monster to church even if he wanted to go, which this one didn’t and most of them don’t.) We shopped at the latest stores, kept our yard weeded, drove the speed limit and we kids even had regular chores to do every day like clock work. We weren’t heathens, for crying out loud! And yet: we lived in a monster’s lair.

As I’ve devoted more time to the writing of my story (mostly in poetry form), and the sharing of more childhood war stories with my brother, a smoldering wildness infuses my soul. Unadulterated grief for what was stolen from me, maybe. Anger, pure and holy which won’t be smothered out by decades of living outside that lair. Something inside of me prowls restlessly, refusing to lie down and stick to the agenda—my mother’s agenda, even after all these decades, of image management. Something inside of me roars in protest, picks at old scabs, scribbles discontented graffiti on the cold stone walls of my soul. Something (or someone) residing deep within my underground reality thumbs its nose at mother’s assumed air of refinement.

I lost myself within the walls of that brand-new lair; lost myself beneath layers of polyester and the monster’s hyena-like laugh, and my mother’s echoing laugh which was meant to placate him and to ensure that he was kept tame, as tame as any monster can be. Lost myself in early morning bathroom assaults as I readied myself for the new school day, and in midnight home invasions when the air was thick with darkness and around me the household slept, and the monster, always unchained, crept into my room with thudding monster steps (which you’d think someone would have heard, for they shook the whole house), and showed to me his true monster nature, hidden so much of the time beneath human clothing and normal human activities such as holding down a job and shaming children.

Every time I played jump rope or rode my bike in dare-devil, no hands style, it was a chance to redeem my normal childhood. I thought the other day how in spite of the perversions in my family I had some moments of ordinary life. But then I realized, well not quite, because those moments or hours of playing Barbie and Ken, or sauntering to the store to spend my allowance, were dulled-over and threatened by the haunting thought that soon it would all come to an end, and I’d have to go back home, to the lair, and be on guard once more, and fight for my life.

Yes, a smoldering has begun and I don’t think I could stop it if I wanted to. Too much has been stirred up; there’s no turning back. I chose this road. Somewhere along life’s journey I chose the road which leads to healing and overcoming. In doing so I turned my back on the much easier road which leads to self-pity, and to making a career out of being a victim. There’s no sense in complaining about every pot hole in the road I’ve chosen, they come with the territory. If my childhood abuses were devastating what makes me think that healing from them will be a pleasant journey?

I’m staying on the road, for I’ve sojourned too long to turn back now. There is nothing to turn back to. Will I turn traitor to myself at this leg of the journey, turn cowardly when there is so much to gain by persevering? More than this, I’ve many behind me who are depending on my sure-footed steps as a guide to their own. Some have barely begun their journey and aren’t convinced it’s worth making. They need someone a bit further along the way to inspire them with the confidence of one who has set her face like a flint, and won’t turn back. In a sense I may be carrying the well-being of future generations on my back; if so, so be it. Better, I think, to carry that kind of a burden than the one forced on me by my mother and her pet monster: the burden of non-worth.

Hi-ho-hi-ho, then. I’m off again, pushing off in the early pre-dawn light. Let the smoldering continue, let the conflagration burn up all that is dross. My journey awaits me; I’ve no time to loiter, lingering in the muck of the past. I’ll deal with it as it comes up but I can’t put my journey on hold to do so. I must take the next step in front of me, and the one after that, because I’m a soldier fighting for my soul’s freedom.