This is my second acrostic, in poem form, first letter of each line to spell the word. The word was given to me, and I found it stirring up deeper, more conflicted material with straggling pieces still in need of healing.
I wrote this about the experience of being injured by an emotional abuser who used image devaluation as a means of control, and how I overcame it by recognizing and claiming my own individual beauty which is rich far beyond surfaces, (and no, I’m not just saying that because it’s how things aught to be!).
I found myself surprised at how my very deep needs for safety, acceptance, and connection drove me to ends in the dynamic I hope never to repeat, in an effort to get them met externally. Those needs were manipulated through techniques I would later discover are part of training that a man can go through to learn to trigger certain responses from women, capitalizing on a power structure subconsciously embedded within the exchange. I also discovered he had a history of engaging with women this way, and that he was doing so with 3 others at the same time!
My own relationship with and view of myself held the greatest baring on how this person and their methods were drawn into my life. I found it was nothing more than a dramatized reflection of what was in me, including conditioning from strong early experiences, and modeling from authority figures in my youth. (Big surprise? *coughs* Not!). Hey, we all have our dragons to fight, and when we face ourselves, we find out the battle ground is within.
Having confronted much of the material already, some with professional assistance, I am happy to say that I love myself far too much for it to be likely that I’ll ever give my personal power away in such a fashion again. I am capable of giving myself what I need, and am safe inside myself, so those things are no longer effective carrots for the dangling!
Phew!
Here is the poem.
Preposessing
Pressure was upon her, as conformity began its ruthless cast. Bounty hunter
recklessly confiscating what would have been roses. But those vivid irises;
Excavating the source of the light in her eyes, unearthing eager organisms in
pleomorphic design, mutated in the darkness of the shadow’s reign to compost.
Oh Narcissus, milling the petals to destroy the flowers. Pathogen’s tyranny,
superimposing his rule over conquered mirrors, blind to beauty of another kind.
Scintillating shine, she was supple skin and coalescence of ancestors’ triumphs,
echoing their cries from their many lines in her blood, hot like embers,
soaring like birds of fire, ravaging the lies ripe in takers’ tradition, to pluck
sweet truth from his wretched hands, and put the swing back in her hips. Her steps,
interested now in the reformation of her glorious form, planting seeds for roses,
never room for irises again, those eyes that cut her. But how she is rising,
grace willing, she be the flower she is. She be the shimmering rare thing, in root.
Copyright © Season Naify
Image artist unknown. Please contact me if identified, for credit.
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