Lesson 3. Lens of Suffering

Overcoming sexual abuse and the difficulties it brings. These are the difficulties I had to overcome as a child. Mental health is a challenge to achieve, but not impossible.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:10

ever been lost in your thoughts? Randomness? A thought pops into your head and you don't know where it came from. Many times it's your past. Things that have happened that have not let you go. Why have they hung on? Let's talk about that. I'm the Time Smith. I hope you've had time to look around. If you haven't understood entirely what's happening here, well, this is the mind of brokenness. Have you ever thought about what it looks like inside? Well, I want to give you a glimpse. I have a question, though. Have you ever felt like you see the world behind a lens? Maybe that lens is fear. Maybe that lens is anxiety. Maybe that lens is trauma. When you look at things, they don't really look like what you would expect. Well, let's venture down again. Let's see what we find. You know, as I come in here, I look around and it's not always determined as to what I wanna say or what I wanna show. Other than that, I want to show the space that I've created that's helped me to function. Well, when I was young, somewhere about four or five years old, I had an experience that changed my life forever. It was a Sunday and we went to church, normal. And after church, we ended up visiting some friends and at an apartment. My siblings and I, as usual, would play hide and go seek or cops and robbers. Some type of game where we're chasing each other and running around the whole complex. Well, let's find that room. I do have to say that this is not a first floor thing. And I have wanted to share this part so that maybe we can understand what everything else is. So as usual, we have the counter in front of us. We have the stairs to the right and the elevator to our left. But on this one, we're going to take the elevator. We're going to go a little bit deeper. Part of going down deep is having to get out. Having to get out soon enough where we don't get stuck. I know that there's many people that go into their heads so deep and they never come out. I was in here a long time trying to figure this one out. But I would say that I've come to terms with what I saw. Please be advised that this is something that is explicit. And it's not for every listener. I'm not a doctor either. Again, I'm just somebody who wants to share. So let's get in the elevator. We don't have to go all the way down. But for this one, we'll just push the fourth. For this one, we'll just push the fourth floor. And as we go down, like normal in an elevator, it shakes a bit. You look around, there's really no music, but the lights do get dimmer as we go lower. Well, here we are at the fourth floor. Watch your step. As we step out, we can't really see the staircase. It's not as lit up. I have spent some time trying to adjust the lighting in here, but again, that takes a lot of work to light up which means bring the truth to these situations. And I've been trying to bring the truth to most of it, but this is the core. Well, let's walk up to the room. On this Sunday morning, we went to church like usual. And this is less of a picture and more of a moment. But after church, we drove to a friend's house. And as we ran around, one of the older girls, a teenager, she would always kind of pick on me and tell me I look cute and that I was a good boy and that type of language. I'd have to say that as a four or five year old, it did melt my heart. So if she wanted me to sit on her lap, I would sit on her lap. She wanted to tickle me. I'd let her. The thing with this situation is that as she called me over, I ended up following her into the house and up her room. I remember passing my parents on the couch as they laughed with their friends. The couch was about my eye level. I was a real small child. And I ran up the stairs. don't ask me why my parents just let me run around but it's just the way it was when i was in that room there was another young lady and there was a boy in there and here's where it gets kind of murky i ended up blanking out at this moment but when i woke up my pants were down to my knees and I was stuffed in a closet. I remember looking at her in confusion and the boy laughed and the other girl was in shock. She didn't say nothing except keep her head down. It wasn't just my pants down, it was everything. So I went ahead and pulled everything up and I ran out. I ran down the stairs and I ran past my mom and my dad and past the couch and I went outside the apartment complex. I kind of looked back at the door as if the door was to blame. And I remember looking out and being aware of where I was at. The world hadn't looked like this to me. It never did look like this to me. But now I was able to identify a parking structure, the cars in front of me. There was a tennis court to my left with people playing in there, and it was the kind that has the basketball courts inside of them. And in the distance, I heard one of my brothers yell, not it. That's what we would say when we would play freestyle. And whoever was last Well, they would be the ones who would chase the other kids. I kind of looked up because the sky looked kind of red. It looked different. Everything looked different. But I ran off and said, not it, and kept on playing. Why don't we step out of this room? Many times I've come into this room and I've changed things. I've fought in my parents to go to church and I've told them, and I've told them, I don't want to go to church today. And in that very moment, in that memory, my mom would scold me and spank me and force me into the car. It wasn't reality. It was just a thought. She would drag me to the car. I would tell her I didn't want to go today. In other moments, I decided to stay in the car when we ended up at our friend's house. Needless to say, that I've played the situation out very differently many times. Well, you could see why I would want to change it. For a long time I thought that this was just molestation. I think until I got older I finally accepted what it was. And it wasn't easy. I had been wondering when do I say this, but in order for me to be able to continue to tell you about these rooms and structure, I had to lay out exactly why my mind was processing even some of the simplest information like this. Well, after that moment, I would see the world through a lens. When innocence is taken away at such a young age, all you can do is mimic. You can mimic a laugh and you can mimic a smile. That's not to say that there wasn't moments that I was genuinely happy and I had forgotten. As I've gotten older, again, I'm still staring in this room. But as I have gotten older, six years old, seven years old, there was times that my mind would think about that and ask myself, what happened? Most children at that age don't understand what sexual contact really is. And I kept looking at this life through a lens. I come from a strong family. I wasn't allowed to sit there and cry. I wasn't allowed to talk about our business. And in fact, I never even told my mom what happened or my dad or my brothers for that matter. I kept it to myself. We come from an era, well, let me retrace that, I come from an era that we don't talk about what happens. We didn't go to school and tell our teachers what was happening at home. We didn't call the cops. We just dealt with it. But the lens I was behind was a lens that I was different now. I'm not sure if I knew exactly what that lens was at that age. But there was times when that lens would have shadows on the corners and life wasn't as visible. Life wasn't as clear. So why do I share this? I share this because when I think about those that I've met with the same circumstances and the troubles that we feel in this life, It becomes very difficult as we get older to come to a point of reasoning and accepting, not condoning, and definitely not something where we want to relive it, not be the givers of this pain, and not ever have to be a taker of it again. Once is enough. And this room is a large room. I could tell you that if I poke my head in there, I could probably even smell the scents of that day. I could probably tell you about the cars. And reliving it, that's suffering. The lens of suffering. I think many times that's what those who have this experience deal with. a lens of suffering. So why did I want to show you this? I wanted to show you this because it was a mess in here because of this. Well, if I were to say it even more transparently, because of this moment, my life became a mess. I inherited someone's dark feelings. I inherited someone's evil thoughts. Well, that's what I inherited. Something evil. And for the life of me, I tried to detach myself many times. I've seen people go down to the depths and want to stay there. Yes, including the dreaded S word, right? Suicide. Well, I powered through my life and through my teenage years. And that's what I want to show. The decisions that came from this. What did it cause in my life and what did it bring? So I do want to show that. I want to show how this brought addiction into my life. I do want to show how it brought brokenness. I do want to show you that there's a way to overcome. It's not easy and it's not for the faint of heart. Let's take a look back in there real quick. The way you see it now is the way it happened. I didn't kick and scream. I didn't tell my mom or my dad I didn't want to go to church that day. I didn't tell them that I don't want to visit their friends. I didn't act out. That day played out like any other normal Sunday. Well, up until the moment. And it's been very difficult to deal with the lens of suffering. Do you know it? Well, if you do, why don't you do me a favor? Let's just, let's just step out. It's not happening right now. That's suffering, replaying it, feeling and thinking about it over and over and over again. This room I keep closed. And there's times that yes, I visit it to remind myself where I come from. Many times as a child, I would tell myself that I was trash. Those are things we had to overcome. Those are things that I had to overcome. And because I do feel that I'm speaking to somebody, that's why I say we. But as I record it, it's just me. But there's a way to overcome it. And the first step is, it's let's get out of our head. When I look around, I have a job. I have a trade. I have a passion. I have a family. And I think about that. How fortunate I can be. that I can breathe, that I can love, and that I've been loved. So sometimes when I walk away from this room, I kind of backpedal away from it as I stare it. Sometimes as I get out of this room, I backpedal and look at that room. Let's just go back to the elevator. You know, when I look at these buttons and knowing that there's floors below us, moments that are darker than that. What that moment caused in my life caused darker moments, addiction, violence, anger. But let's go up. We'll just push the forge. Well, as we go up, I think about the forge. Why it had to be the forge? Because there had to be a hardening. There had to be a strength. That this moment wouldn't consume me. But it did, for a long time. And I had to quench it. I had to stop it. Well, from here on out, maybe you'll understand a little bit more why everything is in my head. It thrusted me down there. This evil pushed me down really low. and I want to continue to show how I overcame. And in that moment, I finally came to terms that that's what happened to me. Let's step out of the elevator. Watcher said, not everything has to be profound. In this case, it's just about sharing. Do you know the lens of suffering and what has it caused you to do? You might not speak about it, but I do. And I hope that if you are in your head today, that you could step out. Well, I say we get out of the forge today. So as a reminder, if you feel lost, remember, you can be found. If you feel unloved, you are loved. God bless you. Have a great day. I am the Timesmith.