Where's Your Little Warped Fear Fightin' Moxie Muscle?

This is me trying to find a bad ass picture of
myself to go with this story. 

A few years back I had two blogs up and running. One was called A Freedom Place (easy for me so I could talk about whatever I pleased - don't write on it anymore) and the other was called Who's My Girl. It was a blog about fathers and daughters or men who play fatherly roles in my life and in "our" lives. I loved writing on these blogs.

I did however moderate my comments because I wasn't brave enough not to at that time.

One day a very long, almost blog-like, comment dropped into my inbox. It was sneaky and crafted in the beginning as a comment about this commentor's father. You see he was responding (reacting) to an entry I had made about my step-father. It was a mild and innocuous entry about how Steps step in. Truth be told I had a very difficult relationship with my step father but I wasn't focusing on that at the time.

This interloper told the story of his father who left his mother and ran away with another woman and never took care of his sons but crafted a new family. Of how his mother died of cancer and how the boys were left to fend for themselves. Horrible. So sad. What a crappy hand to be dealt in your young life.

Very quickly it became all to clear that I knew this person. A person from my long past. A person I wanted to remain in my past. Forever. The commenter was my (ex) step brother. A very hurt individual who clearly was still in pain over his childhood. A childhood that aside from the nastiness of the rebuttal was not altogether untrue. But he wanted me to pay for it. The youngest daughter of five whose parents divorced when she was around two and who had a new step-father she never really bonded with at about 4. He ended his "comment" by hoping that my mother and his father (now deceased) were rotting in hell. Super.

I had not seen or spoken to this person in over 20 years. And had no connection with him in any way, digitally or otherwise. And that's as it should have been. By then he would have been at least late-40's.

So why was he Googling me? Ew.

Did I mention he molested me when I was 4 and kept trying throughout my teens had I not finally found my fists and lung power?

Minor detail. He had always denied it. He denied it when I woke up at 13 to him kneeling at my bedside lifting up my nightgown over my panties. He denied it when my brother found him trying to dry hump me in the closet. Amazing how liars just lie and lie and lie. Yet he was still looking for me online?

Creepy much?

At the time I received his retort it scared the dog-doo out of me. It utterly freaked me out. It made me feel like that helpless 4 year old in the closet unable to run or to know what was happening or why all over again.

So I deleted the blog. I wanted to disappear. So he couldn't find me. So no one could find me. So I'd be safe.

And that, my friends, is the devil at his finest. And it worked.

For a while.

Until... it didn't any more. The thing is. I have things to say. And to write and to sing and to express and to speak and to teach. And not telling my stories and not speaking out loud the hope that is in me is impossible and death to my very soul.

I'm not scared anymore. Wait. That's not true. I'm scared every day of all sorts of lies the devil is whispering in my ear. There's just one difference. I don't care anymore. I'm going to do whatever needs to be done and I'll do it scared if I have to. And maybe I'll develop this little warped rebellious fear-fightin' moxie-muscle that drags me to the computer, opens my mouth, points to the truth and hits publish.

And maybe then you'll want to, too.

I will never ever ever stop writing and telling the truth ever again. Neither should you, my friend.  What truth do you need to tell? What action do you need to take quaking in your boots? Let us hold each other to it.

Go on! Quake, shake, throw up if you have to, then open your mouth and put the words into the air. Link them one by one in an order altogether new. Mess with the sound waves, wiggle some quarks then inhale and embody your true spirit more deeply than you ever have. You may scream a little at the sheer adrenaline that will be running through your veins. And then, little energizer bunny, what will you do next?

When we have the courage to tell our stories after a long game of hide and seek it may be tempting to coming out with fisticuffs. But you will be grounded in the goodness that is in you. Speak your words with love above all.

A blog named Hushabye. Get it?