I know that everybody nods with admiration, when those who go through hard times say:
“If I were to do it all again, I wouldn’t change a thing.”
Because this speaks to their wisdom, maturity, and power to overcome adversity.
“Isn’t it true,” the nodders rhetorically nod, “that all their strengths, virtues, and positive characteristics, were developed in the tumult, heartache, pain, and sorrow of those times?”
“Are they not the truly wonderful people that they are, precisely because they experienced and overcame those things?”
“Who knows,” the nodders ponder, “perhaps they would have been quite awful, boring, mundane, selfish people, if they had not been burned and transformed into agents of love.”
But me,
I would trade my wonderfulness, my strength, and wisdom, and my ability to overcome,
To go back into a childhood
Where I was never fucked by my dad.
I’d be willing to take the chance and believe that
Having learned to love despite being fucked,
I would still learn to love
Without being fucked.
Because if I am wonderful now,
I think I could have been that much more wonderful,
If I hadn’t spent every day of my childhood afraid,
If I hadn’t been taught to blame myself,
If I hadn’t been left for dead.
If I were to do it all again, I’d go back to a childhood where I was safe. And my father would love me, the way I love my children; and my father would teach me, the things I teach my children; and my father wouldn’t touch me, the way I never touch my children; and my father would be gentle, kind, and comforting with me, the way I am gentle, kind, and comforting with my children. And perhaps, one day, my children will speak of the things that they would go back and change. But I will not be one of them.