by Henry Joseph Buell III

Created on: August 13, 2009   Last Updated: August 14, 2009

Abusing a young boy or girl is no different than abusing a key, and later expecting it to fit the lock of society as if nothing had happened. It is a vicious cycle that perpetuates itself. Once the chains of abuse have been laid upon a child, few manage to break free. Those who do bear deep scars and festering wounds they carry for life. Abused children, like abused keys, don't always fit.

From the outside, abuse is only another prison, something those who are not sentenced with can never understand. It is a place where filthy demons and decrepit skeletons crawl from beneath buried memories, rattling chains and bones from behind cobwebbed doors. Wicked and ravenous hungers assault innocent children here, as midnight beatings are delivered from beneath the tainted breath of a father's alcohol-fueled rage. Half-packed lunches identify hungry boys and girls, whose poor school performance and hidden bruises are the aftermath of a mother's addiction and a young mind's inability to comprehend. Terror creeps nightly down dark hallways, sibling rivalry forgotten by children petrified with fear as caregivers replace trust with caresses worse than the touch of any imagined monster.

These footsteps in the darkness of an awakening mind mark paths through places the privileged rarely trod. Silent forests of ash await the innocent children of this hell. In place of a parent's love and affection there are deep wells filled with abuses more fearsome than even the most twisted imagination could bring to life. It is an evil place where sunlight and shadow carry the same threat, and monsters wait both in the light and the dark. It is a place I know well. The strong here are twisted beneath it. The weak have the very life choked from them. Like the scars of vines upon a young tree, even freedom does not erase the stain these marks leave.

My freedom as a child was found across unkempt fields, hiding in the tall weeds from one father's physical abuse. In my later years I escaped into weeping forests, seeking answers to another father's mental abuse. Unknown to me, my hiding places were shared with the ghosts of American Civil War veterans, men who had fought and died for freedoms my young mind knew nothing of. I only sought safety, and at times escape. Eventually I learned the story of these unknown soldiers who had hidden here before me. I wondered at the paradox between my running from home for safety, and their running to home for find it.

As I grew older and escaped into the maze of modern society, I found that freedom had still eluded me. On one side rested the unyielding walls of institution, offering conditional support funded with political or religious zeal. On the other sat the fault line of industry and family expectation, gilded with titles and pandered approval. Like a hungry wolf I watched the wealthy and poor alike as they followed the shepherds of their lives to green pastures, free from fear. Sadly, I could not join them.

For too long I had wondered how far a child could run from home. I know now that for the abused child it is never far enough. Too late, I discovered that each step run carries you farther from society and the understanding of those who have not been abused. Now in the afternoon of my life, I lift my voice and cry sorrow to the heavens at the loneliness abuse has left me for a companion. In the distance others join my cry, our freedom from abuse a prison we can not escape.

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