For some months now, I have poured my thoughts, my feelings, and my emotions into sharing with you the story of my abuse. It has been liberating and it has been pain-filled. Each of these posts, particularly those in which I retell the details of my seduction, manipulation, coercion, and physical handling, pulls me... pulls my heart and my sensibilities apart. As I relive these moments, the moments that are my boyhood, I am thrown back through time, through visceral time. The mind of a man dealing with the emotions and the nervous system of that boy.
If you have ever lost a loved one, someone particularly close to you, maybe you understand. Maybe you know that feeling that, when you begin to talk about them, wells up in your stomach and rushes into your throat. Suddenly, and seemingly out of nowhere, the tears come. You can feel them as they swamp your eyes. Your chest heaves and it all pours out in a gasp that you are unable to suppress. That is what happens when I recount these intimate details of my relationship with Dr. William P. Garvey. It is happening now.
Sure there are times, when I am editorializing, that I punch at the keys as my resentment and anger rush to mind faster than I can hammer the words out. But more often, there are times like now, when I cry, and my chest does heave, and my tears drip down my face, and I gently push at the keyboard, ever so lightly pressing each key because that something, that sentiment that I'm feeling, is mine. A pure unedited response, it is purely mine. And it is precious. And It is so fragile, so hurtful, so sad, that that is all I can do to protect it. To protect me.
I have tried, over the course of the last few months, to begin to deal with this something. This something that was pushed on me. This something that I did not ask for. That I have buried deep inside of me. I can't shed it and I cannot outrun it. The sheer strength and physical nature of my reactions now, decades later, tell me that Garvey did things to me that are so wrong, so powerfully wrong, that he has changed me forever. In ways I'll never know.
I do know this. In my chest, in my heart, I carry a cloud. I carry a cloud that is the pent-up deluge of years of denial. Denial of acknowledging the acts and emotions, dealing with the feelings and doubts, thrust upon me by William P. Garvey. It is a cloud ready to gush at the very mention, or fleeting image. A cloud that heaves and bursts when I talk to you. And after, for a while, I feel better. There is no rainbow but, for a while, there is release. And there is calm.
Please, this is not a plea for sympathy. If anything, it is a statement of understanding... and inclusion. It is lonely in this place. This place of hurt and downpour. The hurt that is my past, our past, and the downpour that is my present, our present, with William P. Garvey. Lonely, yes. I understand. Alone, no.
predafile@hotmail.com
2 comments:
Jack: I am moved alternately to tears and anger every time I visit this site. Anything that one might say feels so inadequate...
I was hired at Mercyhurst within the past several years....I am not faculty. (More than that I am hesitant to reveal.) I met Dr. Garvey only once, and even my brief encounter with him gave me the creeps. I was appalled, but not truly "surprised", when this story broke. Now, why don't I leave/stand up/ take action? Well, at this time I have a family, a mortgage, and financial obligations that don't care about my moral indignation. And I think we can all agree that the employment outlook in Erie is bleak. I "take action" by continuing to do my job, which is to help the students at this institution. I stay informed, and I refuse to buy into every bit of party propaganda that comes from the administration.
There ARE those here, from faculty to secretaries, who seem to be loyal to Garvey no matter what. I don't understand this. Perhaps I'm too young, too naive, or too idealistic to accept that humans can be so easily blinded and led...
Post a Comment