Be Afraid - Power House Creatives Contest
This is a letter I have written to my fifteen year old self for a Power House Creatives contest. It was quite a journey to write this. I hope it doesn't offend many of you, but I believe it is a conversation that very much needs to be had.
Hello.
Meen foovasta.
If I knew how to properly write that phrase, I would. But I, like you, have only heard it spoken, and not often enough. Our father said it to me in his kind moments, which were too few. He says it to you. He calls you Kookla just as he once called me, and just as he will your daughters, albeit rarely.
He also uses some very unkind words, and not all of those are in Greek. "Stupid", "goddamn", "lazy", "cheater", and "liar". These are a few of the unkind words that he flings in your face as he removes his belt, that he yells into the faces of your siblings as he gulps down his martini, and even sometimes into the face of your mother, my mother too, as she quietly continues to sip hers.
There are days you think you are shit, you MUST be shit, or he would not have been so cruel to you.
It's not easy for you right now, I know. Been there, done that.
Here is a 50 word story I wrote about you, one of the very first stories I ever wrote:
The child gripped the tree’s fattest branch, heaved one leg over, and scrambled up.
She climbed until she had to listen carefully for cracking sounds from the thinner branches, and to press her body to the tree’s trunk.
The treetop bowed with every breeze or shift of her weight.
Safe.
I know you pretty well, even though we have never met and never will. I know you do lie about practicing the violin, I know you do help Susie C cheat, and I know you feel stupid because you have no opinions of your own. I know sometimes you pray to god to not be damned.
As hard as this seems now, you can handle all of this. You ARE handling it now with your long walks in the woods, your time high up in trees, your remaining silent when in your own home.
Here's some good news: You are kind. You are smart. You are beautiful. You are not shit and you will be fine, as fine as any human born in this era can be. You will learn how to give things, important things, to yourself. You will learn how to give things, precious things, to others. You will be whole, and you will be healthy.
How do I know all this? I am you my dear, the person who knows you best, writing to you from your future fifty years hence. You/I still love words like hence, where one thing follows logically from another. You/I still love to drive around in rural areas just to look and listen to the peace. You/I still love to be alone.
I have some advice for you. It is hard advice to follow, because it is hard advice to believe. Many people will call you stupid, lazy, lying and crazy.
Please do not believe everything you learn in school, read in the newspapers or hear on TV. There are a lot of lies in all of that. Your history classes are loaded with propaganda, and the literature you will study has been chosen to modify your behavior. Even mathematics, the only subject that makes sense to you, has some lies in it (those turn out to be fun actually, thrilling even). But it will surprise you to hear that the subject that contains the most egregious lies of all is science. I hope that you know better than I did to question any science that you have been told, but not shown any evidence of. Learn how to tell good science from bad science.
I am going to tell you one specific thing I would like you to not believe. It risks changing your character quite a bit, because you will probably not experience the worst trauma of our life, and nor will I. Will I be as patient, as careful, as certain, as strong, as understanding, or as inquisitive as I am now if you believe differently than I did? Will I be a shadow of who I am because I did not suffer through the horrible illnesses of every single member of my family except my own?
Do not believe what you are taught about medicine. These concepts are among those you will be told and not shown. You will NOT be taught that other methods of healing have equal if not superior results in treating disease than western medicine does. You will NOT be taught that western medicines are made from toxins that always do great harm. You will NOT be taught that your body, if healthy, is capable of handling almost any illness it contracts, nor that there are simple, harmless, soothing, and inexpensive methods to help your body through its toughest times.
Above all, you will be told to trust vaccines, and the science of vaccines is the worst science of all.
Just ask me. And ask any of your children, who will all three contract an auto-immune disease in their childhoods. Ask me how many days I have spent sitting next to a hospital bed that one of my children occupied. Ask me how many times I was dismissed when I questioned a diagnosis. Ask me how helpless I have felt, knowing the only type of medicine I was allowed to use for my children, because I also wrongly believed in public education, was harming them.
A prophecy: you will bear three children at what might be the last moment in history that a parent can choose not to vaccinate. Choose wisely.
As I finish this letter I feel desperate for you to be smarter than I have been. I want so much for you to begin the battle I chose to fight too late in my life, but hopefully not too late for others to benefit.
I suppose this task of writing to my younger self could have been uplifting to both of us, but I most certainly end this post of mine feeling bereft.
Be afraid my love. Be very afraid of injecting toxins into the arms of our children.
I can't even tell myself meen foovasta: don't be afraid. I am terrified for human kind.
This is my entry for Power House Creative contest, which you can find here.
I publish this with trepidation.
This conversation must be had, and now.
All images are my own unless otherwise stated.
It took gut to write this. It took courage to open old wounds and lay out such an emotional and powerful piece! Thank you for writing and sharing it with the world. I am sure that it touched a lot of other people and uplifted more spirits than you ever thought it would.
Thank you. It was definitely one of those that was hard to hit that "publish" button on.
The spirit of we (us?) vaccine resistors is gaining quite a bit of momentum. Maybe I've helped expose that we have been psychologically programmed to walk into this particular gas chamber on command. Say no to certain injury!!!
Ohhh I love this so much - (and once again, I'm ten days late finding it) -
This is what we ALL need to tell ourselves:
You are kind. You are smart. You are beautiful. You are not shit and you will be fine, as fine as any human born in this era can be. You will learn how to give things, important things, to yourself. You will learn how to give things, precious things, to others. You will be whole, and you will be healthy.
The WAY this is written is as brilliant as the content.
I'm in awe that you didn't even start writing much, or think of yourself as a writer, until very recently - until being adopted by @freewritehouse. Thank you @mariannewest for rescuing these rogue writers and bringing them into this community! And thank you @owasco for sharing so many deeply personal, poignant memories and insights.
Not to trust science... that one is hard for me. Science was my only god for so long. I even trusted doctors, though it started shifting in 1985, and by 1995, when two doctors sent me home saying "That's not pneumonia" but I knew it was.... yeah. Anything they couldn't solve with Paint-by-Number was just "in your head." Now my nieces, half my age, have more wisdom than I do about herbology and natural remedies. (Yes, I'm taking note!)
The father's voice rings so true. The Greek words. The labels. The tree limb, the hiding places, the shattered self esteem.
I wish your children well - and you - and thank you again for sharing this!
You know I love you right?
It's mutual!!!!!
Given that we have only one life, can never go back, moving forward sharing information from experience, one can only do what one feels is right at the time.
Outside influence always affects our choice, well written, loaded with feelings, turmoil over the past fifty years.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting!
It's loaded with feelings I did not intend to load it with when I started writing.
15 was most probably one of the most fun times in my life, too much water under the bridge to spoil it now.
I think that was the most miserable time in my life. Not the most traumatic, just the time when I was at my lowest in terms of self esteem.
We dust off and move on, growing from experiences just like this.
Hello!
This post has been manually curated, resteemed
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Much love to you from all of us at @helpie!
Keep up the great work!
Manually curated by @rem-steem.
@helpie is a Community Witness.
Thank you so much @rem-steem! And all you helpie cakers too.
I'm sorry to hear you went through so much from a young age @owasco, sometimes it's good to let it all out, it becomes part of the healing process!
Vaccinations is a hot topic and something we all need to think about carefully, in the old days we just accepted that it had to be done and in slme instances yes, but not all!
Thank you for your supportive comment! I am always hesitant to post anti-vax stuff because some folks go ballistic on me.
I have come to the conclusion vaccinations must end immediately world wide. They are doing far more harm than good, if indeed they do any good at all. There is plenty of evidence that the polio vaccine, for instance, had nothing whatsoever to do with the decline in polio cases and that fraud has been drummed into us all as unquestionable truth from a very early age in our schooling. Forgive my pontification, but this short video is one of the many that have transformed me from a pro-choice vaxxer to a full on 100% anti-vaxxer.
This was a very bold and coureagous letter to write and make public, and I applaud you for it. I do know that despite your childhood as presented here - or, perhaps, because of it (it's always hard to tell) - that you've turned into a magnificent, strong woman that I, at least, am proud to call a friend.
I don't know what to say. Thank you so much for seeing that I speak here from my heart, that I've bared my deepest regret. Both traumas have shaped who I am today, and I am grateful for the life's lessons that only trauma can give.
I just reread it after reading your comment, and I think it's a darn good letter. I wish I had added that traumas present the richest sources of growth.
I had contemplated going down a hedonistic letter, too, stating that growth comes through either pleasure or pain, but ultimately decided against that. I think there is some truth to it, however.
I had no idea what I was going to write when I started, it was largely a freewrite that got a lot of editing after I was done. I'm not sure I've ever had the experience of personal growth as a result of pleasure. Maybe a moment or two of feeling safe, or if it followed trauma it could enhance the lesson learned then. Pleasure seemed to reinforce my undesirable characteristics, like my swelled head. I'd love to hear more about that from you.
Such a heartfelt piece, it almost brought me to tears. It seems in part to mirror my own experience and I would likely be giving my 15 year old self much the same advice.
Oh thank you for saying that. The other entries are all so very uplifting. I set out to be uplifting myself, survivor of abuse yada yada yada, but as it turns out, there is much I would do very differently.
Thanks for sharing this precious insight @owasco. I wanted to enter the contest but didn’t know how to tell that young girl how to cope with what happened. You did wonderful in doing this. 💗 🌺
Oh I so appreciate your comment! We coped, we did learn to cope. I'd say we've developed some awesome coping skills, and writing sure helps.
Howdy owasco! What a powerful piece! Wouldn't it be nice to be able to have advice like that when we're 15? My gosh things could have been so different. This is brilliantly written!
Thank you! I think reconnecting with my 15 year old self is the reward of writing this letter. Life is not always easy, but it can be always rewarding.
I agree owasco and that was a beautiful post.
Such a lovely letter full of love and caring with a dire warning indeed!
I'm sorry your children got an autoimmune disease - if only we could turn back the hands of time!
Hopefully this poignant message will reach others and save them some suffering!
Thanks for sharing!
Thank you @porters. I know whenever I post something about vaccines it won't get a whole lot of support - few and only tiny curator upvotes for instance - so my message is largely ignored. But I carry on, because I KNOW we are headed for disaster, the disaster indeed is already here, if we allow this toxic practice to continue.