I am an innocent man.
Falsely accused and convicted
in the gaslit court
of daddy-Monster.
Sentenced to two decades of extreme terror
and exposure to parental violence.
Another decade in the halfway house
of religious deception and abuse.
Sentenced to 25 years of false guilt.
Sentenced to entering adulthood
without a viable foundation for life.
Sentenced to decades of not fitting in.
Sentenced to watching my peers zoom past me
while I remained stuck
in isolation and awkwardness
and confusion and excessive compliance.
In my late twenties, I had an epiphany.
I was just as old then
as daddy-Monster was
when I remembered his first violence.
I would hold any other toddler innocent.
But somehow I felt guilty.
I would hold any other abuser guilty.
But somehow daddy-Monster seemed untouchable.
No. I am an innocent man.
I was born into a violent home.
I did nothing wrong.
Daddy-Monster bears his own guilt.
I gained freedom from his prison,
not when he died,
but as I worked my recovery
over the years.
I am an innocent man.
But the church kept accusing me.
What were the accusations?
They were all vague and imprecise.
Just like daddy-Monster,
they falsely accused me.
There was nothing I could do
to prove my innocence.
They declared me guilty,
of what I do not know.
They convicted me in their gaslit court
of self-righteous judgmental sludge.
My true transgression:
I didn’t fit in their judgmental social club.
They wanted me out.
So they made up indictments.
But I am an innocent man.
None of them could tell me
what I could have done differently.
None of them gave me specifics.
I had joined them while still a teen.
I had joined them out of my innocence.
I had joined them for peace.
I had joined them for light.
I had joined them for brotherly love.
I had joined them for belonging.
I had joined them in my search for Truth.
I had joined them in my search for God.
But they didn’t have God or Truth.
They only had hostility and judgment.
In their own twisted way,
they removed me from their cult.
I am an innocent man.
Anything I said to them
was twisted and used against me
in their hypocritical court of injustice.
Am I totally innocent in everything?
No. Of course not; I’m human.
But regarding the accusations
brought by daddy-Monster and the church:
I am an innocent man.
– Healing Heart Warrior (Tom M.)
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