#92 - Out of the Darkness

“You are hiding in my dark, my son.”

I am.

I am?  But I just barely know you, and I am healing and I’m allowing them to look after me.

“You are lying in the childhood bed with soft bands upon your arms to stop you tearing at yourself with your teeth because you are screaming that all you deserve is pain.  This is part of your healing.”

I am?

I don’t deserve pain.  I don’t think I do.  I don’t believe I do.

“Then you need to come back to your body that is thrashing and writhing and attempting to do itself an injury.”

My conscience.  But I’m just making it worse, being so awful.  Someone has to care for me and I have to add that guilt onto my former guilt and it becomes a never ending spiral until I manage to die.

“To stop that, you have to reach into yourself, my son, and forgive yourself.  The others have already forgiven you, for all that you cannot see or bear it.  This is your worst crisis. You must forgive yourself.”

I.

The silence here is wilder than any roaring, raging star.  Where Aeono burns and flings Himself into the dark, She is a vaster deep than even He can fill.  They can fill?  My Gods what an idea.  What if our Goddess is One and the Gods many?

I am distracting myself from the main point.  The point is. The point is.  The point is…

Do I have the strength, the mercy, the capacity to forgive myself?

I see the little boy playing with his toys, the carved and painted soldiers and dragons and horses, singing to himself.  I see the old Monster watching. Then I see him deliberately and viciously smashing the child’s toys, paying particular attention to the ones he loved most.  I see him punching a much younger Kinourae because the little boy loved him.  I am angry for the child.  I wish to protect him but I am helpless.

“You at not helpless.  You are that child.  Forgive him for raging at his father until the old man knocks him unconscious.  The old man set up the whole scene to lead to that beating.  You love yourself, your younger self.  You no longer have to hate him for being a victim.”

Every abused child begins to hate themselves because they come to believe they are somehow responsible for their pain.  Every abused child begins to hate others for not saving them. Do I need to hate other people any longer?  Do I need to hate myself?

I was innocent.  I made myself culpable.  No.  He made me culpable in my own destruction.  I… I want to go back to being innocent of hurting people.

“You may.  Listen to the elephant singing to her child.  Let her joy rumble through your soul.  Let Limyé’s medications heal the scars in your mind as well as in your brain.  Let the lovers of a great soul show you how to be like him.  Let them love you.  I cannot say it will not hurt but I know you.  In all your incarnations in all the worlds.  You are capable of this.”

Am I? I am, am I?  Goddess I’m tired.

“I understand.  If you choose to rest, you may.  If you choose to go on, you may do that also.  I cherish either decision, for you reflect your world to me in your own unique way.  There is no other soul like you, however similar all the other Ahrimaz’s, all the other hateful Emperors, are.  You can be the one who healed.

I can hear Didara rumbling to her calf… and her calf to her.  It’s like floating on sound.  I can bear Pelahir and Yolend holding me.  I can bear his father and his mother holding me.  It no longer hurts.

I can be the one who heals?  Or one of the ones who heals?  But it is up to me.  I must choose.

I choose.  I choose.

Yes.

**

Ahrimaz opened his eyes to a blazing mid-day, sun pouring into the green child’s room.  He looked down at the bloodstained bandages restraining his arms and felt the cotton in his mouth.

He felt terrible.  His whole body hurt.

He felt wonderful.  He didn’t have to do this any longer.

Yolend sat up from where she’d laid down on the sofa and looked at him.

She was beautiful, even as tired as she was.  Her soul shone almost brighter than he could stand. The wash stand and basin next to her was somehow just as bright and just as shining.  It was glorious.  It was real.  It wasn’t a dream.  It was the dream of the divine, who could not interact with their own worlds, without help.  Everything shone.

Even with the bite-gag in his mouth, he smiled.

Limyé got up from the chair by the door and came over to check him, fingers on his neck.  “Is your paroxysm over?” He asked, softly.

Ahrimaz managed a sore-muscled nod and when Limyé removed the gag and he could feel the rawness inside his own mouth and the taste of blood on his tongue he just started to laugh because it was so wonderful that he could.  “It’s so real.  It’s so solid.”

His voice and his laughter was a rasping whisper but Limyé smiled back and gave him water, that was in itself miraculous.