Speaking of Suicide...

When a sexual abuse victim commits suicide, people pay attention.  Funny, because 24 hours ago, they didn't.

You feel helpless and enraged.  No one cares, even the people who listen.  No one really knows, or really cares.

You start to hate them all. 

No one can help you... no one can stop the pain and no one can fix the problem.

And the bastard goes on, living his pathetic life, the ultimate coward.

When you want to believe

I want to believe that the Bishop is a good man.  A man who cares about children first of all.

But I fear he cares about peace more than anything.

A peace that is not a just peace-

is no peace at all.

If

If a man, a grown man, covered your young daughter's face in kisses and whispered he loved her like a father, then kissed her again,

what would you do?

Why do you pray

I pray.

Every day.

It's not the Church I hate.  It's not God.  It's not priests.

It's lies. 

I am a faithful daughter of the Church.  How difficult to look at one's own pain and admit that the first one hurt has been God.

His suffering is greatest.  He isn't happy with men who lie.  God is always on the side of truth.

Truth.

"Justice can't serve everyone."

I told them.  I told the people I ought. 

A few years too late it seems.

Damn. 

I write when I must.  When I must.  And I wish someone would listen.  I wish someone could make the world a right place.  An honest place.  People who ought to uphold the truth instead lie; people who ought to die in defense of the innocent, instead rob the innocent of their innocence.

Priests should never lie. 

I told who I ought and they told me:

"Justice can't serve everyone."

What a nice way for the Church to say, "Fuck off."

In a dark place

First meeting, 4D.  Big smile.

He takes me to the empty classroom next door.  Locks the door behind us.  Doesn't turn on the lights.  The blinds are drawn.

With a quick deftness he turns a desk around and invites me to sit.

I sit.

He sits in a desk next to the desk he's turned around, his facing the opposite direction, and scoots it closer.  A nest. A desk nest.  A strangely intimate setting created, in seconds, from the world's least sensuous furniture imaginable.  He promises this conversation is covered by the Seal of the Confessional.

As we talk, he leans toward me.  At some point, his outer thigh presses my outer thigh.  It feels reassuring.  I tell him much. much more than I intended to.  I am really so ready to have an adult's help with the mess I've gotten into over the summer.  I've been feeling suicidal.

He wants me to come back again.  He can help me.

In the Beginning

It started from the beginning, really.  I was a young girl in a plaid skirt and a crisp white blouse.  Kneeling behind a screen.

He wouldn't give me absolution.  Because when he asked if I was sorry for my sin, and intended to commit it no more, I honestly replied, "No."

He became emotional.  He'd never had to do this before.  "Do you want to meet with me tomorrow after school to discuss this matter further?" he asked in his deep voice.

Sure, OK.

"Can I see who you are?"

Ya, go ahead.

"Can I... just... give you a hug, girl?"

Um, ya, OK.

And then he did.  That particular "hug" I would come to know so well.

You know how adults hug- they bend forward at the waist, or they go in from the side.  Not this wretched fat man.

No, he pressed his whole fleshy body against me and held me tight, for an eternal 2 seconds.

And he told me to come, tommorow to room 4D.