We’re all babies-latest excerpt from “killing justice: the taste of knives”

When I shared my new piece called “Triggered” at this past Wednesday’s “microphone sessions”, which I’d written in response to Rhythm Kid’s piece about being abused by his uncle when he was just four years old, Rhythm Kid’s response to my piece was eye-opening. For while I had written about just how fragile and humiliated I had felt having to acknowledge that my trust had been abused when I was in my forties, and that I felt like I should have known better or been able to protect myself better, Rhythm Kid said he’d never thought about abuse at any age being any more or less humiliating than at any other age.

“After all,” he said, “we’re all babies, aren’t we?”

‘Wow,’ I thought to myself. ‘Maybe I should try seeing the world that way for a change.’ For we all need love, and we’re all vulnerable and fragile and needy. Yet most of my life I’ve hidden inside the shell of pretending that I’m not a baby. No, not me, I’m the strong one. I don’t need nobody for nothin’, ‘cause nobody’s gonna be there for me the long run anyways. And then when I finally did let down my guard, and told myself, that maybe, just maybe, my friend of twenty years would be there for me, he took that trust and made all the ill-gotten gains he could off of it and then threw me under the bus like roadkill.

So now that I’ve spent most of the past eight years trying to unlearn as many of the lies that had sustained for most of the previous forty-six years as I possibly could, perhaps that’s as good a place to start as any other.

We’re all babies.

We all need love.

We’re all needy, fragile and vulnerable.

Nobody knows nothin’.

Most of us spend far too much of our lives hiding behind masks, trying to pretend that we know what the hell we’re doing, & what the hell is goin’ on, hoping against hope that the masks don’t slip, lest anyone catch a glimpse of just how child-like our souls really are.

So let the masks slip.

Let our souls swim free.

Let the world see just how child-like we are.

And don’t be surprised if two-thirds of our fellow humans draw back in horror and make sure their masks are more firmly secured than ever. That’s their prison, not ours.

For as we begin to tear down the walls that have been suffocating our souls for far too long now, and begin letting our souls swim free for a change, don’t be surprised if one-third of our fellow humans are inspired by our example to begin setting their souls free as well, and then we can finally begin to relax and enjoy the sight of our baby souls crawling out of the shadows of their prisons of fear and dancing delightedly in this playground of love which is, after all, our soul’s true home.

image: https://inseasonmom.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/baby-1941745_1280-960x640.jpg