A Survivors Story
Mid December. Surprisingly mild weather, drunk and triggered i staggered through the city looking for people willing to engage.
No takers.
I keep walking, stumbling really.
Still, no takers.
Getting angrier and angrier with every step, wishing someone would start an argument just so I had an excuse.
Then I saw a light. Well a lit up cross atop a building, a church, yes!
There is am at the door willing myself to go in, confront a priest and really get closure.Â
In I waltz. I try and stay at the back, to be relatively inconspicuous, but a smiling man with his wife, urging me to sit with them. It’s the start of Mass, so I stay, wishing others peace and smiling at the families so excited for Christmas. Decline a donation to the offering and decline the consumption of the body and blood of christ.
I wait until the end at the back and my eyes are fixed on the priest. People passing by are nearly a river infront of my target.
I catch his arm as he passes my path.
“Father, do you have a minute?”
“Give me 5 minutes, I’ll be right back, I’m going to say goodnight to the congregation”
I waited the agreed 5 minutes which felt like an hour.
He came back in to find me waiting by the door.
“Shut the door and lock it”
“If, if this a theft, you don’t need to, I will give you money”
“Lock the door I’m not here for money”
He locked the door. Hands trembling as I watch the lock shut.
“Give me the key”
As he hands it. I grab his shoulder turning him away from me.
I feel him tremble as I march him down the aisle.
He stumbles to his knees halfway down.
“Get the fuck up”
He tries, I lift him to get him up. My hand still gripping his clothing as I lift.
I take him to the bible, “put your hand on that book you hold so closely”
Tears streaming down his face, he does as he is told.
“Why was i chosen? To be used? To be an object of someone’s pleasure in a house of God?”
“I, I, I’m not sure, I don’t know why, I’m sorry you were, please, I have never met you before, I don’t know you. If you leave, no one will know you were ever here”
“Shut up”
Silence from him. Still crying.
“Promise me on the bible, you have never had nor acted on an improper thought about one of the children in your parish”
“I promise, I promise, I swear to you I have never deviated from my devotion to the Lords word. Please, please I promise”
“You have never even had a thought?”
“No, never. I swear!”
“Then fuck, what am I doing here, turn around get on your knees”
“Why?”
“Do as I ask and you leave this intact”
“I told you I have never done anything”
“I know, turn around, get on your knees.”
I tell him “hands on your head and interlock your fingers, cross your ankles.”
He does this. I tell him ” if you look around before you hear the door shut I will know. Once you hear the door shut count to thirty and come get the keys and lock up, but remember, you don’t know me, but I know where you fucking work!”
I left. He was unharmed but shaken.
Since this event i have been back and apologised to the priest for my actions explaining my history of sexual abuse in the shadow of the church. He was so heart broken listening to my story.
No the man who molested me was not an official man of the cloth, but it’s like a drunk man being angry at the police.
It’s not the person in the uniform, it’s the trigger, in this case, the place.
Regrettably
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