Thoughts of long ago

It's up. The image. The archetype. Something I read caught an edge & it's tipping over the embankment. I feel the gravity of it. I watch it fall, endless weight. No bottom. He couldn't love sex, but he had to have it nevertheless. I used the wolf of red riding hood to describe him to myself when I finally got it. He used the weight of my body to crush his self-loathing. It didn't work. I dematerialized at the crucial moment and he was left with only shame & rage. I had no framework for his way of seeing except misogyny. It took longer to see addiction. It took longer to admit that I felt used. Where did I get such perserverent optimism? Such naivete? Only a history of abuse could explain why I stayed through the upheaval, but I couldn't pin that history. The one link that took me by the scruff was my grandmother who was quickly losing her mind in a mess of abusive delusions. Or was it all just coming back to haunt? Why is it that I desire to understand human suffering so deeply? I built a model concentration camp for 4th grade history day. No doubt the judge found the cottonball smoke billowing from a foam-core board gas chamber just a little unsettling. No doubt they found the pipecleaner firing squad downright distasteful. Was this an 8-year old's strategy for dealing with German guilt? But, somehow I remember feeling the atrociousness of it all alongside survival, redemption, faith in God against all odds. Was I looking for a real-life adult replay? Can I survive against the odds? That wasn't my question going into it, but I certainly learned I could by the time all was said and done, denied & reclaimed.