Shimmering Monsters (2024) Peinture par Troy Wilson-Ripsom

Shimmering Monsters is a representation of the boogeymen ever-present in an abused child's mind.

With every noise, every shift in the air temperature, anything that might be a harbinger of the abusers return, the child imagines horrors of increasing intensity until fear is a near constant state whether the abuser is present or not. Everything is danger and nowhere is safe to the child huddled in the corner, hoping he will blend into the background and not be seen. He will confess any sin, whether guilty or not, to avoid the wrath of the nightmare that is his abuser.

Until he is well and long away from his abuser, the fears manifest in every relationship, in every job. Only time and love ease any of the fears until he makes the decision to not abuse his own child. At the moment he becomes resolute, fear is replaced with fierce protectiveness that will brave any horror to spare his child the horrors he knew as a child. The one thing fear cannot defeat is love that is genuine and true.

The strength of enduring the abuses of his childhood becomes determination to protect his own child from dangers and those who would harm him. Wary should be those who mean his child harm as those who do him harm should pray that enforcers of the law find them before the vengeful father of the one they have harmed. All of the darkness from all of his own pains of abuse will be unleashed on those foolish enough to trouble his child. Every monster locked inside released to indulge every fantasy of torture on those who would harm the ones he loves.

Those who abuse likely don't fully understand the damage they leave behind. For the abused, life is a series of fears and dysfunctions in all of their interpersonal relationships. Because the behavior modeled for them was that harming the ones you love is normal, they have a deep-seeded misperception of love. When they find the real meaning of love, it shows them all of their failings of the past and makes them afraid of the darkness inside.

At some point, they get their inner demon under control until they have a child of their own. Then, there are two paths to follow. Will they continue the tradition of pain or break the cycle of abuse? For many, the choice is not a conscious one and the cycle continues, because that's how children are raised...

For those who have recognized the dysfunction of their own history and desire to change it, the journey becomes one of fighting your own nature to be kind and nurturing, until you realize that kind and nurturing is what you wanted to be all along. Then kindness becomes easier and cruelty is reserved for the purveyors of evil so that it has a place to reside where it will do less harm.

There is no removal of the demons of abuse, only management of them.

Thèmes connexes

Child AbuseFearPain