Champion
By Nila Bartley, Navy
Writing Type: Array
By Nila K. Bartley
VA Medical Center--Chillicothe, OH
Childhood longings.To belong.To be loved.
Betrayed by a father figure.
I had looked upon him as one from the beginning.
Instead he was a predator and I was the prey.
He used me and my need to be loved.
He used my need to be loved as a weapon against me.
The attention he showed me, I thought was because he cared.
It was meant to disarm me,
to lull me into a feeling of security.
That left one day in violence.
That left one day in violence.
The sexual assault that followed wounded my whole being.
I was in pieces. Pieces that had to be put back together or
I could not function as a normal human being.
A million pieces. How to begin to fit them back together
in a cohesive way?
To provide cohesion meant to pardon my attacker.
That did not mean that I was giving approval for what
he had done.
As long as I could not pardon him, I stayed a casualty.
A casualty
identity for the rest of my life.
I could not live in that mentality.
When I gave the pardon to my attacker, the identity was
reversed.
He no longer had dominance over me. I now had the power.
The power to live and enjoy my life to the fullest.
I am in charge of my life.
I am more than a survivor.
I am a Champion.
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