Prelude: What's Past Is Present

Okay, okay! So here's why I opened the blog in the first place and why I've had such a hard time getting on task. I wanted to tell my story, at least what I know of it. I wish I could have the voices of the others involved so someone reading this might be assured that the writer was an objective source. But that's not possible in a biography, is it?

Why should I tell my story? After all, aren't most life stories pretty undramatic...normal? But the words of people wiser than I come to the fore: Don't compare. The things I've done, and the things that were done to me...well, they affected me and have had an effect on those close to me. I believe one of my first entries stated that this blog might turn out to be therapeutic. So, what I intend to do over the next few...well, who knows how long it may take, but I'm going to tell the story of how I got to where I am today... how I became who I am...and I also hope to give voice to who I may yet become. The story I'm going to tell is about a little boy who always believed that if he tried hard enough to be good, people would be able to recognize his worth as a human being and would never be able to hold anything against him. It is, after all, what he heard growing up from all the adults around him: we should all be good, but we are incapable of true goodness...and God made us this way.

So, if you choose to visit here, you'll read things that may make you uncomfortable. What I will describe is true as I remember it, as I felt it, as I perceived it. That's the best I can do. I have no apologies.

I was sexually abused as a child. My principal perpetrator was my father. I still feel awful for saying this. The nuns, the priest, my mother...everyone in authority over the child Gary told him that "Honor thy father and thy mother" was a commandment that must be kept. And so, when I was told "Don't make a sound" I didn't. I didn't begin to admit what happened to me until I met with a therapist about ten years after my father died. My father has now been dead for around twenty-two years. One would think I could have put all of that behind me by now. Would that I could. If you choose to visit here and read, you'll come across some screwy thinking. Again, I'll not apologize for it. I'll also probably bounce between a "first-person" account and a "third-person" tale. On occasion, I still refer to myself in the third person. It's a distancing thing, if not actually a sign of dissociation, which is a mechanism little Gary developed very early on.

For right now, this feels like the right thing to do. I'll return to this spot again. Comment at will.