This Time

 It's something strange that seems to have come from finding all the old court documents from my case.  It seems to be more about me and my feelings.  Even the feelings are different, like they just are, there is no running from them no trying to make them something else they are just what they are and that is something very hard and something that I am not sure I have experienced before.  I have experienced things as little Callahan, or for someone else.  My feelings are already for someone else, this time they feel like they are for me. All the things I feel are mine.  Even in the feeling as unsettling as they are it feels like a season and not a forever.  So many of the things that are going on even in the hard truths and realities there is a calm, that these feelings are ok, right and even deserved.  I have a right to be sad, I have a right to feel these things and not have to explain them.  That is something I have never experienced like this before.  I am not sure if these words are even going to make sense or do the thoughts and justice at all.

I remember the days of my case and being so afraid all the time and getting so angry at myself.  I wanted to feel stronger, I wanted to be brave and all that I wanted to do was climb in a hole.  Feeling has never been something that I have been comfortable, I always had to avoid any feeling because they were never ok.  They are not fun, they are still more than comfortable but at the same time, they feel necessary and almost welcomed.  It feels like these things should be embraced and cherished.  It feels like the final steps to finally put this piece away.  It's like these are the feelings, these are what they are and my heart hurts.  I feel I have a right but this time it's not crushing, it's still more than sad but these things are sad.  There are no pretty boys or any kind of words that can make them anything other than what they were.  No daughter should have to press charges on her father, to try and protect other children.  This is so new.  This is so new and so different.  It's an acknowledgment on my part that I was hurt and that my feelings are valid and excuse my French but fuck you if you can't handle it.  I was told so often that the things I was feeling were too much or unnecessary and it was exactly the opposite.  These things were the most necessary and it's taken me all this time for that to be ok. All the things that caused me to press charges deserve to be felt.  Everything that he did was more than hurtful and somehow there is a feeling that finally I have a right to be sad; that it ever happened to little Callahan.  All I can think of is the sad that I have for those tadpoles and not being able to save them, is the same kind of sad that I feel now for that 5-year-old girl who lived through hell.  That 13year girl so ashamed for the things that she did.   No excuses no amount of explaining will ever make the crimes that my father committed ok, no matter the outcome.  Whether it was a felony or a misdemeanor that changes nothing that happened to me.   

I know that I felt it before, but this time it's so very different.  For the first time ever it feels, like it's me, every cell that feels this wants it to lose the weight that it possesses. It's like instead of fighting it I am finally making space for it. This is always going to be a part of me.  What I did all those years ago, was the hardest thing and the rightest thing that I have ever done.  It was the most emotionally painful experience, doing it on my own, being questioned, having no one to lean on.  At the time that I pressed charges, I was in my mid-twenties I had just started UNT, and I was working as a live in Nanny.  Life was crazy and full.  All I ever wanted was to keep Angela safe.  Today it's more about me I am so sad that I never felt any relief, that there was no justice for me.  Pressing charges was something that felt so far away and it's the closest that it has been, and for once I feel like I am strong enough to feel the emotions, be grateful that I came out of the experience and look towards the things that are next.  I am not sure that I am explaining this correctly, it's so new and something so different for me.  I have never been ok with feeling and something about this feels necessary and even ok.  I should be sad; those things were unquestionably hard and someone should have been there.  There are so many things that should have been during the time, but they weren't and it's ok.  It's ok, it's all ok. 

 

I heart your heart