They say things happen for a reason. Well, I wasn’t ready for a child. Regardless of being 28, I wasn’t ready. I had so many things going on in my head, in my heart, in my world that were difficult and confusing enough. I was terrified at the prospect of becoming a mother in the midst of it all.
Then came motherhood and a reminder of all I’d left behind, of all I’d lost and forced to hide so very long ago.
The best memories of my childhood revolve around animals, nature, my abilities that I somehow knew were unique and felt were not meant for everyone to know, "magical" things I knew with my whole heart were real, and the innocent curiosity of my soul and purity of my mind.
I thought nothing of silently wishing for a breeze and receiving it on an otherwise windless day, or of hoping for a rainstorm and getting one even when the forecast called for sun. I was never afraid of walking up to a strange animal, even with all the warnings by adults. Never once did I feel threatened by any creature, and never once did any harm me.
I didn’t understand why the other kids called me names when I would sit in patches of clover flowers to talk to the honey bees that never stung me, or for sitting among our azalea bushes while the bumblebees swarmed but never hurt me.
I thought everyone believed there were mermaids and sprites, that dragons were good and noble and real, that animals had the answers and could lead us to them, that the simplest way to be happy was to make others happy, and that Unicorns really did exist.
I also thought everyone could sense spirits, could feel the wickedness in a dangerous person, could see things before they happened, and could envision or dream the answers they sought while awake.
I was happy in how I knew I was meant to be. I believed in who I was and took a certain pride in it,
Then, I was taught that animals had no souls. That people who believed they could converse with nature were mentally unwell. That people who believed in fairies and gnomes and Unicorns were delusional and foolish and lived in a world of make-believe. That dragons were demons and “Satan” in another form. That only “God” could know the future and know who was bad, and that anyone who claimed they could do such things was blasphemous and full of sin.
As a matter of fact, it seemed everything about me meant I was evil. The only way I could keep from burning in the fires of “Hell” was to understand I really wasn’t able to do any of those things and to admit it was just fantasy, wishful thinking, pretend. And so I did or at least I tried.
I tried to ignore when dreams would come true days or weeks later. I tried to pretend I didn’t hear the animals around me. I tried to pretend the playful voices in the forest were hallucinations of a lonely mind. I tried to pretend that everything my soul told me was real was just a trick of my “wild imagination”. I tried my best to do as I was taught - to respect my soul as a gift from God while at the same time believe my soul was lying to me.
It took some time for me to turn my back on it all, though I never stopped believing. I just abandoned the truth for living the lie that would get me into “Heaven”. It hurt and I found my happiness fading away. I hung on, though, until the Unicorn ignored me.
There was always something about the Unicorn that bore its way through my heart and into the deepest recesses of my soul. Every time I became frightened or lonely, the Unicorn pranced into my daydreams and took me to the most wondrous places my imagination could fathom.
So often, I was told I was silly for believing in it, but it didn’t bother me. I never cared when the other kids or even my family made fun of me for loving Unicorns. It hurt, of course, but not enough to ever abandon my belief in the Unicorn or my determination to find one.
A lot of things happened to me when I was a child. When I was 6, I started being sent to a child molester's house down the road. Sometimes, it was because my mom was too tired or annoyed to deal with me (I had outgrown my baby-doll cuteness as I aged), and other times, it was simply the rest of my family wanting to get a break from the child I never felt they wanted. It went on for a year until I told my parents. Their reaction was to order me not to tell anyone because it was an embarrassment to them, and as a "good Catholic," I was told to forgive him and forget or I would join him in hell.
I was often put into situations that put me so near death, once even bringing me through that threshold. There were occasions that if I didn’t feed or bathe or clothe myself, it wouldn’t have been done. I was often told how stupid I was and incapable of doing anything right or worthy of my parents. I never knew that I had a right to have a goal in life because I was raised to believe my only place would be as a wife and mother and never anything more.
All I was forced to hide from my life were those things that made me who I was, so I didn’t readily or willingly lock them away.
Every night, I would look out my window and whisper my only desire - to find a Unicorn. It was all I wanted. I was willing to endure the emotional, mental, and physical neglect, the cruelty of the kids at school, the heartache of knowing no one loved me. All I ever wished for was a Unicorn.
I never asked God to be rich or for a good grade or for better parents or for anything selfish at all. Any praying I did was for everyone else.
All I ever wanted was a Unicorn. I didn’t ask to keep it like a pet. I just wanted to see it. That’s it. Just to see a real live Unicorn, even for a moment. I needed to know that all I believed in and all that I was inside was not a lie or a delusion or a crime against God.
About the same time I became obsessed with my need to find the Unicorn, my mother was diagnosed with colon cancer. She may not have been the best mother in the world, but she was all I had.
The first week of December, her doctor told us she could come home for the Christmas holidays but had to go back afterwards. By December 16, we had all of her things back at the house ready for her return. On the morning of December 17th, she died.
I was numb when my dad told me. He was crying, my siblings were crying, but I said nothing. I learned very early not to cry in front of my family. It made things worse for me, so I said nothing and I never cried. I cried myself to sleep every single night, but I never cried during the day.
That night, the day she died, I looked out my window and up to the moon and made a deal with whomever was listening. I gave up my one and only wish in exchange for having my mother back. I promised never to wish for the Unicorn again if I could have my mom brought back to life. The Unicorn never came and neither did my mother.
Very soon after she died, my father gave away most of her things to my brother and sisters. There are 4 and all between 10 to 20 years my elder. They took most, telling me I was entitled to nothing since I was just a kid and didn’t know her long enough to miss her as they did. I didn’t care about her possessions. I just wanted her.
The closest thing to her were our 4 cats - the last remaining of the dozens of strays she cared for when she was well enough. They were her joy and my only friends. Soon after her things were gone, my dad gave the cats away because he said no one would be around to care for them.
Again, I begged for the Unicorn. I cried about how I had no one and needed it so badly. Again, it never came.
My 6th grade teacher was the nicest person in the world to me. No one cared about me but her. She meant so much to me because she was the only human contact I had that didn’t result in my suffering. About the time the cats were given away, she announced to the class that she was going on maternity leave and wouldn’t be back until the next year - when we were all in 7th grade and it wouldn’t matter.
The room mothers planned a small surprise party for her and I thought I could make her stay. I painted her a Unicorn by a stream. The day before the party, I sat in front of the painting and begged the Unicorn to make her stay. Although she loved the gift, she still left.
It was about this time that I realized just how right everyone was when they mocked me for believing in Unicorns. I started to hate the Unicorn and decided from that moment on that if I couldn’t see it or feel it or hear it with my own two eyes, it did not exist. I finally believed they were all right and allowed their abuse and the church’s influence to have me.
After my mom died, I started my period. I was 12. Then, when I was 13, the old man down the road noticed I developed rather quickly. He started pinning me up against the wall and groping my breasts while getting off behind me. I never told. I didn’t want to go through that pain again of witnessing my own father not caring that a man hurt his daughter. He cared when men hurt his other girls, but I simply was never that important.
When I was 15, I met a boy. Nothing significant happened until I was 16. For about a year, it was a lot of forced groping and other things that he tried to say wasn’t technically sex. When I was 17, he stopped taking no for an answer, and for a year he raped me, sodomized me, and made me do things I didn’t even understand.
After I turned 18, I started meeting the occasional man who made me think that I deserved better. So, I broke up with him. He didn’t like that so he tried to drown me. Like always, I survived, and like always, I couldn’t understand why. Why I couldn’t just die.
After it was over and my survival made him run away, I looked around to see if anyone had seen. There in a beach chair reading a book was a woman about ten years older than me. I stared at her in awe as she glanced at me, rolled her eyes, and continued reading her romance novel as she sipped her iced tea through her bendy straw.
That was the beginning of my breaking point, and it was at that moment I realized no one was ever going to help me, never going to protect me, never going to stand up for me.
About eight months later, I survived being raped again by a man my own cousins sent after me.
By the time I was 19, I realized I would never again find peace or joy or love.
Because of christianity, I believed I was unworthy of any descent man. I believed that by not being a virgin, I was tainted goods and no good man would want me. My standards, therefore, never rose above “be happy with what you get”.
I went through a lot because I believed it was my punishment for "letting" myself be raped, for burdening my family with my existence, for doing whatever I possibly did to anger God so much that he would condemn me to everything I’d endured. It wasn’t even so much what happened as much as it was going through it all alone.
I became cold and distant, not only distrusting but loathing of mankind. For a while, I even wondered if I could find the abilities I’d had as a child for the soul purpose of destroying humanity. If there was any time in my life where I was at the crossroads of “good” and “evil”, this was it.
Things were so colorful for me as a child. The things that happened to me made me sad and frightened, but I was forever hopeful and never hid who I was. I was always so confident to be myself and didn’t shy away from expressing it.
Then, the church dug its claws in at my weakest point and made me feel I was vain and shameful just for believing in myself. People in my family took every opportunity to make me feel I would never be anything, that I was undeserving of happiness either of my own making or from the kindness of others.
Even after losing my hope of finding the Unicorn and losing my belief in "magic", I still managed to hold onto hope that I deserved and would find happiness. I was so sure everyone else was wrong and I was right. That I did deserve to be born, did deserve good things to happen to me, did deserve joy, and did deserve love. Anyone saying otherwise was just cruel and mistaken.
I held on so tightly for so long to the hope I would some day see a Unicorn, that I allowed myself to become lost in that fantasy world where all things were bright and beautiful. That would have been a good thing had it not been for the blinders that world placed upon me when it came to trusting people I shouldn’t have - all because I was pressured into ignoring the powers that told me so because it was a sin - and believing only in the overall goodness of mankind. I wasn’t able to guard myself against dangers that were so obvious to those who lived in the “real” world.
Of course, they were never as happy as me, either. No one could touch my inner peace, and I wouldn’t have given up what I had with Nature for anything. Even if I had to suffer my own ignorance to have it. When I lost faith in the Unicorn, however, it seemed all else followed suit.
I became angry when the Unicorn didn’t come. I resented it for all the stories I’d heard of its purity and attraction to the pure heart. It didn’t help that I felt as if the Unicorn was punishing me for its own neglect of me. The legends say Unicorns come to pure maidens, virginal girls with pure hearts. I’d been tainted and so why should it come to me? But I believed I’d been tainted because it didn’t rescue me. Therefore, resentment.
Which lead me to little self-worth. How could I be worth anything to others, to life, to myself, to God if I wasn’t worth anything to the Unicorn? I wasn’t even worth a glimpse, which is all I’d ever wanted. That, in turn, lead me to feeling I didn’t deserve happiness.
The masculine persona, which we all have one of each gender, began to take a greater hold as the feminine hid within, along with the child I’d lost so long ago. I’d always been a tomboy - mostly seen as such because of sexist views on what girls should and should not like. As I grew older, however, I actually began to resent all women represented: the softness, beauty, pleasant smiles, romanticism, emotional expressiveness. To me, all this was a welcome mat to those who would do us … me … harm.
Out went the velvet, in came the steel.
I began and still decorate with monochromatic tones, art deco designs, and see anything with flair and bright colors as dangerously revealing of personal character. I am drawn to the simplistic and cold. It keeps me safely hidden from exposing my inner child, where she still sits within an iron room in a darkened corner, crying for the day when she can be set free.
I used to think the owner of the code needed to convince her to come out and me to allow it would come from a man. Not just any man. One I’ve dreamed of for the last twelve years and who I have become just as obsessed with as I was with the Unicorn. I’ve even placed the burden of unlocking that door on people who were never meant to be placed upon that honored pedestal.
I’ve hated myself so much for not being able to release her. She is, after all, me and the decision for her freedom is ultimately mine. Were I not so afraid of once again becoming prey.
Left to my own accord, I would have kept behind those walls the little girl embedded deeply within my soul. The magic is there. I can run from what I can do but I cannot hide from it. I can only hide it from the world.
With no urgent calling for more than I had become, I would have accepted my prison and left freedom to those who mattered to this world. I would have withered and died inside without ever seeking out that forgotten innocence and bliss.
Suddenly, however, I was not alone and I now find myself being forced into the rainbow of childhood once again. I see myself in this spirited little girl beside me so distinctly, even familiar things I notice she can do, and it all becomes so clear to me.
I recognize the pure heart, remember the joy in the simplest sights and sounds, and find myself once again listening for wings and magical things and seeking out the spirits in the forest mist.
Through all the pain, I remained kind to those who hurt me. Through all the crimes of men, I still fell in love. Through all the mental abuse by the church, I never lost my spiritual path - my empathic nature and my calling as a sensitive and healer, nor did I turn from loving the higher forces. Through all those I lost and heartache that came with it, I still care for all those I meet. I never once lost who I was inside, only kept her safe.
And it is now that I realize my reward and take pride in my duty as guardian of my very own fairy adoring, animal loving, sparkle laden, strong-willed though delicately pure-hearted Unicorn. My saving grace, my inner child reborn, my love, my life, my daughter.
“Now I will believe that there are unicorns…” -- William Shakespeare
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| Drawing of a bat on my back by my daughter, age 9 |
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