CHAPTER 6

Leaving LET’S PRETEND LAND

 

   When I was 7, my family of two took a startling detour from the straight and harrow. Destiny was not only riding again, it was burning rubber.

   Somehow, I fell into the Manhattan show business pool. Thus, we were solvent because the money dad left my mother was enhanced via the time I put in as a pro kid actor. Somehow, I felt obligated to attempt sponsoring the lifestyle we struggled to live. Financially and emotionally.

   In a private sense, I appreciated my rather odd jobs as they gave me the chance to vicariously experience normal kids' lives via the parts I played.

   Sure, I was just a visitor to Let's Pretend Land, but somewhere I thought these happy, supportive family settings had to exist for them to be reproduced for public viewing. They had sponsors so somebody watched. Somebody related. They gave me a social hope if not a personal hope.

   On the other side, I bubbled through several soaps. And with all their endless misery, weeping, tragedy, depression and skullduggery my life didn't seem so bizarre, just different.

   Of course, the subject of Child Abuse was not on any writers' list of possible story lines. Then it was either Doris Day Land or The Days of Whine & Poses.

   The only glitch in my escapades was that by not performing in any show that even slightly touched on Child Abuse nor with a "mom" whose behavior border-lined my mother's, my sense of alienation from the normal kidhood society intensified.

   However, there's one specific incident that always remains captured in my memory banks to show me I wasn't alone.

   After one large casting call for kids to be in some heavy serious Broadway play, Brian, an actor and classmate of mine in Professional Children's School, was leaving the audition hall with his mom.

   I guess she was angry he didn't get the part and vented her personal frustration by repeatedly boxing his ears, whacking them with loud slaps while telling him: "Maybe that's what the director shoulda done to get you to cry on cue!"

   This peculiar acting lesson seemed a sad cover for an iceberg of abuse I'm sure I only saw the tip of. I felt for his pain, but hadn't a clue as to how I could alleviate it.

   Should I tell? Who could I tell? Heck! I wasn't even sure how to handle what I was coping with at home.

   Then I rationalized: Though he seemed like a nice kid at school, who knows. Maybe he asked for it. Maybe I asked for it. That I couldn't figure out how we asked for it didn't seem to matter. Possibly, we were born bad. Born targets.

   End of story?  No. It was the motivation for a prolonged personal journey in search of understanding why abuse exists within the human nature. Why Tradition encourages it and has covered it up for so long. And how to possibly turnaround the anger/ fear that energizes abuse into a constructive springboard for all who are touched by it. A springboard for soular growth, be it for the abused, the abuser, the observer or the rescuer.

   My primary concern is to create effectual methods we can apply to rescue abused kids out of the war zones of their abuser's anger, as well as helping the abused adult release their unexpressed kidhood sorrow.

   My secondary concern is to create feasible ways for the abusers to explore what causes them to vent their rage on others, especially their own kids who are too little, too intimidated and too unprepared to defend themselves.

   Ironically, when I recall the cliche statement of those who opt for hitting kids over hugging, that old relic of "This will hurt me more than it will hurt you!" flashes through my little gray cells. It evokes consideration of the karmic truth buried in those seemingly illogical words.

   Eventually, it shall hurt them more.

   What Goes Around Does Comes Around, and it's coming around faster and faster these days as people are being forced to face who and what they are, and what they have caused, on even faster conveyer belts than ever. Life races so fast, I'm amazed it hasn't lost its mortal license from so many speeding tickets.

   Not just in the area of parental/guardian abuse of kids but bureaucratic and educational abuse. Abuse in the name of "saving abused children" runs rampant in so many children's charities that use abused kids like a hot product to raise money, to fatten their administrative budgets while tossing pennies to the kids they profess to serve.

   So many charities I've dealt with over the last 20 years use kids as a handy commodity, just as so many religious organizations use God as their hustle, or whatever name their particular club uses to market for benefiting the coffers.

   I sense the upheavals are sending us a constructive message that ― just as God is a personal issue as opposed to a business one ― so too, abuse by parents, guardians, mates, society, educational systems and bureaucracy, needs to be a People Issue. Not one that we can continue believing is either the Government's or the Other Guy's job.

   If it bugs us that so many county, state and federal workers and assorted charities use abused kids and the needy to fund their high salaried programs, then possibly it's time to take it away from them and bring it back home. Time to stop playing Let's Pretend in so many areas of our world. As in:

Family Games like:

Let's Pretend, kiddies, that you are really bad and deserve our abuse, neglect and humiliation. And, therefore, you get to remain in your role as our silent in-house punching bag as no outsider ever would.

Let's Pretend daddy or mommy has the right to molest you. Let's Pretend you asked for it. Let's Pretend it will gain you the love you're looking for. Let's Pretend it's OK.

As far as that big bad world out there, Let's Pretend this is our private game and that it never really happened.

Charity Games like:

Let's Pretend we're thoroughly justified in giving ourselves such disproportional high salaries and perks from the "non-profit" money we raise that's actually given us to help the truly needy. After all, without us they wouldn't even get the crumbs we toss 'em. We should be praised, not impeached.

Government Games like:

Let's Pretend it's necessary to allocate the people's money to war games, pointless research of woodpecker holes or catsup measurements and political perks rather than People Needs like: establishing and funding national safe camps for abused children and battered women. And so forth.

Let's Pretend financing military protection of our territory is more important than upgrading the quality of life, health and education, plus restoring the unity within the community that constitutes the heart and soul of our territory.

Parent Games like:

Let's Pretend that total education and daycare of our kids are the responsibility of our school teachers' while we continue to pay them less than what we pay our janitors.

School System Games like:

Let's Pretend it's OK to slide illiterate kids through graduation as it serves the higher purpose of financing our facilities based on how many kids we bulldoze through it.

Let's Pretend the actual education of kids is not our problem, but a parents' problem, just as parents believe it's the System's problem. Sure, kids become the neglected pawns in the Game, but we're not paid enough to seek or implement alternatives.

Battered Women Games like:

Let's Pretend my abusive husband will one day be the prince I dream him to be. Let's Pretend the assaults don't hurt. That I must surely have asked for it.

Passive Mates of Abusing Parent Games like:

Let's Pretend it isn't happening. That the kids asked for it. That they won't get too hurt. That the nightmare will end on its own. That I have no choice but deny what's going on in my home. That at least my family's together, if only joined by the crazy glue of fear.

   Unfortunately, Let's Pretend ultimately becomes: Let's Deny. Or, at least, Let's Deny the Truth to Society.

   But, our conscience is not so easily duped. The Games and their scars tend to remain firmly embedded within our spirit until we face and erase them.

   Let's Pretend has been a dangerous centurial game. It has propagated more casualties than any war. Let's Pretend has produced few winners. Only, at best, simulated survivors.

   As I see it, Let's Pretend only pays if you're a Thespian. When it begins costing us our integrity, our self-esteem, our life and knowledge of our true capabilities, individually and collectively, it may be time to walk from the playground.

   Either, we yank our denial helmets down further over our eyes and yell: "Let the Pretend Games continue!" Or, we risk the results of taking the Truth Quest. Indeed, Life is a never ending chain of choice. However, I am still haunted by one main thought:

If the truth hurts,
what's the affect of lies?

Copyright © 2006 by Krystiahn - All Rights Reserved