It is hard to stand in our space around the perpetrators of our pasts.

It is hard to stand in our space around the perpetrators of our pasts. The internet tells us to avoid all “triggers.” That we should live in perfect bubbles. But isolation does not beget health, and there are attachments worth having.

So I go to the weddings of innocents. I support and love them as they support and love me. And I avoid the bone breaker’s attempt at connection and touch. Self-help has not yet dissipated his anger. And I ignore the ally of the emotionally broken, who asks everyone else what my problem is with the man who made me small. He has gone the other way choosing blindness. And I am cordial to the ones who buried their experiences so far down they cannot fathom mine, or perhaps their time in our past was not as hard as mine. It is not mine to determine their healthfulness.

I go to witness and celebrate the ones who held me when my grief mixed with rage. I go for the one who told the ally of the emotionally broken that someone had to teach me to hate myself. I go for the ones who didn’t let the bone breaker off the hook with boys will be boys. I go for the ones like myself, the ones who see the briar patch, the ones who got out, and the ones still trying. I go for the lovely ones. For the ones I love.

I go, and take up space, “the black sheep” of the family. The one who quit numbing and started feeling and became empowered. The one who doesn’t believe the past excuses anything. Who learned that boundaries are hers to keep, internal definitions, not weapons to control others. The one who will not return the attacks or plant her garden anywhere near the briar patch. One of the ones who sought healing, and found it, not in a blithe life of no stress or pain, but in the resiliency to withstand it and not turn it against herself.

It is hard to stand in our space around the perpetrators of our pasts. It is hard to take up space, to feel and not numb. But we do it, until everyone is escaped. Because there are attachments worth having.