My View

‘Fall down seven times, get up eight’ Japanese proverb.

Christmas 2014. Telephone conversation.

Policewoman: ‘Reporting him allows us to intervene. If you don’t, then he may well go on to repeat this behaviour with someone else. It may be worse. He may kill her. Please report him.’

Me: ‘I can’t. He’s the father of my children. I just can’t do it.’

Me: (unspoken) ‘It’s my fault anyway. I’m the reason he behaves that way’

Christmas 2016. Conversation with friend.

Me: ‘What if he hurts her? Or her child? I didn’t report him. It will be my fault.’

Friend: ‘She is different to you. She is strong.’

Me: (unspoken) ‘Stronger than me?’

Standing high on the moor, obscured by a bevy of bodacious beeches, is a lone fir tree. It came to this place in 1924 as a Christmas gift; a three foot high youngster to be decked with all that glitters, to twinkle and sprinkle magic over a small classroom of quarry worker’s children who existed in a barren, granite grey, windswept world. The tree safely spent Yuletide being adored and admired, then after the festivities waned, and prettiness was packed away for another year, the schoolmaster’s son planted it in the garden behind the playground.

Somehow it sought life in the sodden soil: spreading roots seeking sustenance in wintery sub-zero solidity and sappy, spiny leaves photosynthesising each morsel of sunlight. With feet firmly planted, the tree stretched its green limbs up into the clean moorland air, creating it’s own earthy salute to the sun. It did more than just survive: it quietly thrived.

The quarries closed. The workers moved away, and with them went the children, sucking the life from the school which closed in 1936. The empty building homed a family for while, before they left too, and the dead, decaying school crumbled into the ground from which it was raised.

Today, absolutely nothing remains save the playground perimeter walls. And the fir tree.

The tree has stood firm and leant into the punishing, unrelenting, pitiless storms which have raged through every one of it’s ninety-three moorland winters, and it has basked in the clear, nurturing blue of each calm summery interval.  It has soldiered through the battering blizzards and five metre snow drifts of The Long Winters 1962-63 and 1977-78, and survived the frozen Arctic wasteland of December 2010. The incessant rains of 2012 didn’t kill it, nor the drought of 1976. The vibrant clean air and black shallow layer of boggy peat covering its feet supply sufficient provisions: the fir tree is not high maintenance, does not need much to keep going. The inclement environment has resulted in stunted growth, curtailing its reach to the sky, and the tree bears wounds; stumps where limbs have been ripped away and jagged scars mark its bark.

Through all of its hardship the tree has held fast, harbouring creatures within its canopy and giving life to others. A nervous wren darts warily up the dark trunk’s crevasses, and gleaming emerald mounds of moss cling to twigs. Sheep shelter underneath, chewing, and starlings gather on top, twittering, before alighting for their murmurations in the dimming light. Life around the tree today has altered considerably since the day that it was planted; not better, or worse, just different. It has survived and thrived.

The tree stands as a gracious guardian of a story that few people have heard. For years I drove past it with unseeing eyes, before I knew its tale: now I feel the need to look, stop, get out of my car, squelch through the sodden ground to be underneath it. I place my hand on its bark, to feel the pulse of its heart, its tenacity,  and its resilience. I acknowledge its quiet strength, and am bowed with a weight of profound respect.

This is the true story of a tree,

It is also the story of me.

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

There can be, I think, a misconception that if you have been the adult victim (or survivor) of abuse that it is because of a weakness in your character: you are ‘weak’ because you have allowed another human to hurt you in some way, over a period of time, and that you have not removed yourself from that harm. This is something that I have been confronted with a fair few times during my journey through the last three years: it has hurt deeply and each time I have questioned my own behaviour, instead of challenging the misconception.

Well, that stops here.

This is hard to type <takes deep breath>:

I am not to blame for that abusive behaviour. It was not my fault. 

Here is my challenge: if you are in an authentically equal and mutually loving relationship, where each person completely accepts the other for who they are, why is there ever be a need for one to be ‘strong’? There should never be the need: this is the one place where you should safely stand as nakedly vulnerable as you can possible get.

It has taken me a very long time to understand, that in my life metaphor, I am as every bit as strong as the fir tree. But I don’t need to be anymore, and thats a good thing.

I can just stand up and be me.

This is my view.

What is yours?