SVULadies

The Gift

I'm a good gift giver. In fact, I'd go so far as to say I'm a great gift giver. I have a certain knack for knowing just what to give someone.

One of the gifts I am most proud of giving was a wedding present for my cousin Julie. She was marrying a man who was going to take her hundreds of miles from home, and this was a girl who had never really lived away from home. And I knew exactly what I was going to give her.

I searched until I found a small, polished piece of wood with a secret compartment. I then dug up some dirt from her front yard, and took a blade of grass from her father's grave and placed them in the piece of wood. And I told her that as long as she had that, she was always home.

That was a great gift. But it is not the best nor is it the most important gift I've ever given. For you see, I am a survivor of sexual abuse. From the time I was 4 until too many years later, my cousin sexually abused me in the basement of my grandmother's house.

Needless to say, it caused me more than a few problems. Problems with trust, problems with self image, problems with intimacy. The first two have been fairly easy to overcome, but that last one, I'm still working on it. It's taken a lot of time, and energy and money. Lots of money, because therapy isn't cheap.

I've also had to work to overcome the anger of having that part of myself stolen. It has been eleven years since I first told my family what had happened to me as a child. I told everyone. Everyone except my abuser. Until this past Christmas Eve. Ironically his daughter was born on Christmas Eve and this was her first birthday.

I caught my chance to confront him on the porch of my grandmother's house, and I took it. As I stumbled over my words, all I could manage was to tell him to watch his little girl, Macy. That bad things happen to little girls, and I'd hate to see that happen to Macy.

And he knew what I was getting at, and as we stood there having two conversations in one, I reconciled myself to the fact that this would have to be good enough for me. I didn't have the courage to say more.

And in that moment when we hugged, the words came to me. As we embraced, I simply said, "I forgive you." With those three words, I gave the greatest gift I could ever give to anyone. And I was free.