By Christmas 2011 Kenrick and I had broken up. I was miserable and unhappy. Our breakup had happened the month prior and I had not been sleeping well. The plan was for family members to again share something at Christmas dinner. I turned to my staple, poetry. It was, of course, much different this year. I was moody and depressed. I don’t remember sharing the poem as we’d become busy talking and playing games. However, despite the way I felt I was thankful to be around people I loved and who loved me. So, although Christmas 2011 was sad, that’s all it was, sad. Within a few weeks Kenrick and I would be back together again and the heartache of the season melted into the past.
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For the Love of Family
Today’s poem is one I co-wrote with my soon-to-be husband on our way back from my 30th birthday cruise. It was Christmas Eve and that year we were all tasked with presenting something to the family at our traditional family dinner. I decided, since I enjoyed writing poetry, that we’d come up with a poem together. I love my family. I am blessed to have a family that thoroughly enjoys spending time together. We spend all the major holidays together and it’s something I really look forward to. I have an aunt and uncle who, with their tribe of kids (they have five between them), are always great fun to be around. I’m older than my cousins by at least a decade but we are close and get along quite well.
I know that it’s not often that people are able to say that they have a close-knit family. I’m incredibly close to my grandparents, parents and brother. I talk to my mom more than 3 times a week and the others with somewhat similar frequency. It wasn’t until my latter 20s that I began to feel this way. But now, I really and truly live for the time to hang out with them. We all know that if ever anyone is in need, all you have to do is pick up the phone and call.
And so Christmas 2010 was, as a result of the hard economic times, the first year we decided that instead of trying to get gifts for so many people, we’d share our talents with the people we knew would appreciate them the most. Kenrick and I presented our poem and the family of course loved it.
The Innocence of a Child
I can count on both hands the amount of times I’ve discussed this. However, since this is a poem that I wrote and the topic an important one, I’m not going to be controlled by the demons of the experience. I suppose in order to cope with it, over the years I’ve dismissed it even happening. I laugh it off or simply brush it aside. I think, hey, a lot of people have been through it, why should I be any different?
I was molested as a child. My memories of it are, for the most part, lost to me. However, I remember it happening. I remember where it was, what I wore, the thoughts in my head. His face is no longer known to me. Some things happened in my childhood that to this day impacts my view of life, sexuality, everything. I don’t allow it to define me nor do I use it as a crutch. Bad things happen to everyone. How we overcome them is ultimately the truth in one’s character. Abuse is never okay. Whether it is emotional or physical or both. I think that I should have been more vocal about it when it occurred, I should not have suppressed it. That would be my biggest regret. I think that had I sought help then, many of the missteps I made in my teens and early 20s could have been avoided.
If you hurt. There is no reason to suffer alone. Something like bottling up those types of events and feelings only does more harm than even the event itself. I’m a big girl now but that little girl inside me, the one that was a part of those horrible moments, she was stuck there much longer than she should have been. For a long time I felt like I was too smart to allow something like that to impact me. However, being abused has nothing to do with how smart you are or how good or bad a person you may be. My Childhood may’ve in some ways been tarnished but the abuse was not the entirety of what was still a wonder time in my life.
LaToya M. Davidson-Perez 