Red Flags

I see them. I saw them even as a child, but I don’t have to not see them anymore. That was then, that was the times – that’s what everyone did. Then. But I am now, in a future you could not/would not go to.

As I step through yet another portal in my mind, again a different life opens up before me. The red flags sound with the clarity of bells and I can hear and see them now. I ignored or justified them, waving in my face, initially because I was dissociated and then because I was simply responding to my excellent and thorough training. Oh yes, I internalized the negatives and turned them on myself. No more.

I am lucky – a childhood both wonderful and awful. No ogres lived there, no monsters, just flawed humans who refused to change. Ladies (and gents) can also be tigers, but my child self never knew which was behind the door. Mistrust was born and grew, never to disappear in your lives but did in mine. Misplaced trust now becomes replaced, gently. Or not. I see your red flags and I can position your owners much more appropriately in my life.

I trace a heart in the snow as I look back, pierce it with an arrow and shade in the tail feathers. I then make it beat with three little parentheses on either side. That’s for all the truly good parts that I know were difficult for you. Understanding deepens. I know I will never go back, and I also know that, in some ways, I will never leave.

Kathy O