The weight of time has begun to rest heavily upon my mind. Time passes ever more quickly as I lie in the fate of my life and wonder what the purpose of suffering is. Is there anything to be learned? I have come to the conclusion that it is only through suffering that we can truly know the power and value of love, and how important it is to treat your fellow humans as you would want to be treated and to stand against those who do harm.
The battle between good and evil has raged since time immemorial, but I now know that in the end, good will always win over evil. For love is more powerful than hate and is a gift from God. I have known good and I have known evil, but I have chosen good...and I have chosen Light over the darkness.
I have this vivid memory of when I was around 3 or 4 years old. I was in one of the many houses we lived in as a child and was sitting on the wooden stairway landing while the sounds of my siblings laughing and playing outside in the distance echoed through the foyer. I stared at the sunlight strewn across the floor from the open screened doorway, and a wave of sadness washed over me. Tears flowed down my cheeks...I wanted to be like them, but I knew I wasn't and couldn't, because I was different. "I was born bad," my childish brain convinced itself, ..."You were born bad."
For most of my life, my memories came and went like glimpses of a dream, and I told myself it was a dream for so many years terrified of what life could exist upon fully awakening, yet a person can only run so long from their own mind. It is hard to explain to others whose brains have never had to run away from themselves to survive what it's like to experience life in this way, but I think it is important to try. When I close my eyes, I can still see it: The prison of my memories and broken psyche. A mansion that houses all that I am, and was...., have, and continue to be, and down the stairs I walk into the basement where it all began, and any semblance of a normal life ended. I can see a girl crouched down on the ground, she is me..., and not me, but I know her...so familiar, and yet so distant. She hides deep inside, far away from her body...trapped within a tomb of stone in utter darkness...unmoving, while a figure nearby stomps loudly and drops metal into a bulky acrid tool bag with a loud clang; and from the side of the room: eyes, and another girl suddenly appears and is screaming. "Don't look at me!," she yells internally, but the eyes never falter from burning through her...those unflinching eyes across the room where a young boy stares into eternity. One of his eyes, warped and bulging, looks forward toward his killer unwaveringly. Then yet another girl appears in the doorway at the top of the stairs, "Run," she loudly whispers, "Shadowman will get you too," before swiftly disappearing out of sight, and the screaming girl stops and turns, "There's nowhere to hide," she tells me as she grabs my wrist tightly. She was right. There was nowhere to hide, but neither was there any reason to run. There was no escape, because only the truth can set one free.
I tried so many times to tell my story and each time I was met with rejection, and so I stopped trying...for just because it is the truth doesn't mean anyone wants to hear it. Truth often hurts, and ignorance is too often an all-consuming bliss. By rejecting my story though, they were rejecting me, and pushing me to the outside of society...an outcast by extension of the crimes committed against me, but not just me...they rejected that boy who haunted my dreams for 30 years, and all the other children used as toys in this life, and then abandoned and forgotten. For how are things ever going to change if no one is willing to listen or have a dialogue about these things, and face reality for what it is? Doesn't that mean that the criminals will always win? That the darkness will always win? No, I will not let the darkness win! I will no longer hide to make people comfortable. I, and others like me, exist, and we are not going to hide in the darkness anymore. We deserve to live in the light too, no matter how many people it bothers.
In the mid-1980s, at the age of 3 or 4, I was raped and tortured by a man and his mother, along with a boy. He murdered that boy, and likely many others, and no one else ever knew or cared. I still do not know anything about this sadistic child rapist and murderer, his mother, or that boy, because I was so young, but I know that it happened because I have lived in that darkness, haunted by it, for over 30 years. It is only by God's grace that I am alive today, in more ways than one. A few years ago, I had another dream where the boy appeared. Normally he haunted in the background or crawled like a creature away as Shadowman hunted us, but this time I was with my family in an unknown house when I heard a distant voice calling out for help. I wandered out of the house after the voice into a remote winter landscape where a boy appeared in the distance. He walked slowly toward me as he called out for his mother. I stopped, overcome with emotion, and began to sob for this poor lost soul. Then he stopped walking as well and I could see a pulsing, golden orb of light in one of his hands which he held out toward me. I cried out, "I'm so sorry," and as I rubbed my eyes I told him that it was okay...that it was time to go home now and be with his mother again, before waking up in tears.
I believe he is at peace now in the next life, but his story and mine still need to be told, for there is so much work to be done here on Earth to prevent such tragedies in the future and to strive towards true justice. Based on estimates, there are likely anywhere from 2 to 4 thousand active serial killers in the US on any given year, and in the 1980s, more than 1 million children went missing each year in the United States alone. Even now, there are still an estimated 840,000 children reported missing every year in the United States, and those are just the ones who are reported. That does not take into account those children who are trafficked by abusive family members, arrive in the United States from other countries, or are the forgotten children of the foster care system who may never even be reported missing to begin with. As a society we have to do better for our children. No child should ever be forgotten about or trafficked to be abused or killed. Together we can shine a light into all the dark recesses of the world and save every soul. For every human being is a child of God, and their life and soul are irreplaceable, and if someone tells you their story, please just listen and be understanding, for they know that it cannot be changed, but that does not mean it doesn't need to be said or heard. I release my truth into the world that rejected me my entire life and left me to die as well. I release myself from the dark corner I was shoved into. I am no longer going to silence the truth to make you comfortable. Reject me or not, I have nothing to lose, because I was already rejected from the start. I am letting the light in before it's too late. I choose to live the remainder of my life in the sunlight. Truth sets me free!
K. Aldaya, 1/1/23
