On Friday July 27, I received a text that read, ‘One more day and I made 7 years.’ That text was written by “Cinderella” a victim of one of my articles a few years ago after she had been clean and off drugs for only a year or two, so this text carries a ton of meaning.
Whenever someone mentions an anniversary date for having been clean, we may rejoice with them, but in many cases the events suffered by these people are not always brought to the forefront of our memories. Even the one celebrating often will blank out some of what brought them to this point.
Not only do they not bring up what they experienced, in many cases they have wiped these incidents from their memory. More than once I have had someone mention the fact that they were abused, but that they do not remember exactly everything that was perpetrated at the time it happened.
One of the questions in my mind but in theirs also is, “How could any father or grandfather or uncle or husband do anything like that to a child?” What ever happened in their lives that they should turn to a behaviour that ends up destroying another person’s right to a life without such painful memories?
So, for one individual to text and say I’m celebrating an anniversary regardless of the number of years; that demonstrates a powerful amount of resolve and purpose in a person’s life. So it is a big deal! In the case of Cinderella, she now is able to lovingly communicate and interact with children and grandchildren who are eager to be with her. The joy it brings her does ever so much more for her heart than drugs ever could have; a couple of decades of drug dependency proved it to her.
We’ve all heard the clichés that go like; violence only leads to violence; hate manifested only produces more hate; uncaring leads to the same in people uncared about. But, the reverse is also true; love produces a security that allows the recipient to love and those cared about will often care about others. I’ve also heard of the impossibility for a person to change their way of living after such a traumatic event and is equated with a leopard trying to change its spots; well, I beg to differ.
A person who has gone through experiences like not only the Cinderella in this story, but all the Cinderella’s who have suffered at the hands of another person and take on the challenge to turn and live a ‘normal’ life are fully able to change the spots on their leopards. Unless a person has been through it themselves, it is hard to imagine the tremendous effort that has been utilized by an addict to ‘go clean’, but we can make an effort to celebrate with them because it is an extremely important event in their lives.
Traumatic memories can never be wiped out completely, though the effect of them can be minimized somewhat by a change in life habits, but as much as it takes a community to raise a child; that same community is needed to embrace and cheer on the one who has made such an important change in their life.
#me too is a movement that I believe has been generated by people who have been wrongfully treated in their past and want desperately to change the climate that allowed that to happen. Sometimes they desire that which they will never have; a clean memory, but that desire can be understood and empathised with.
Maybe someday they too will come to a day when they can say, ‘In one more day I will celebrate an anniversary!’
Chris Salomons is a retired Red Deer resident with a concern for the downtrodden