Healing the child

 I first saw her, the little girl in me.

She was always standing alone, around age eight.

Somehow, I knew she was the cause of my stunted growth.

That when I no longer see her,

I would be matured.

It was not apparent when I was younger.

But as I grew older, the incongruence of my actions struck me.

There I was in my early forties and I reveled in being treated like a child.

I had done self therapy with the help of my spiritual director,

A Jesuit and astronomer.

I knew this time I needed someone professional.

What do you expect to achieve with seven sessions?

The psychotherapist, Charlie L. asked me.

I had only seven days in town.

Dispense with preliminaries and get right into it,

I responded.

We did just that.

He asked me how old the little girl is.

I told him, eight or ten.

He suggested I write a letter to the six year old me.

I do not remember what I wrote.

But over time that little girl did grow up.

When I stopped seeing her,

I noticed also I had dropped the childlike act,

Which I had found to be so incongruous with my adult person.

It was as though a child was inhabiting the body of a forty year old.

My spirit team who was that child and why that child?

You do not remember it.

But from clues, you knew you were abused as a child.

The child standing alone was you, unable to express the damage within.

Because you had blotted it from your memory.

But the effects remain.

It created an inner silence within.

Hence whenever you saw her, 

She was always standing alone by herself and not speaking.

You know the exact moment you healed yourself.

For months you sought all the books you could find on child abuse.

You read them all and it was never enough.

"Why am I being driven to read those books?"

You asked a priest, "It must be because I was abused as a child."

He told you that need not be the case.

But you knew it was.

One day, reading one of those books.

You came to the part when the abuse was happening.

You read it and howled and howled in pain.

You howled it out, all the pain bottled inside.

It was cathartic.

It was healing.

After that release, you did not have to read any of those books again.