This is a poem that I wrote about a survivor who had peace, which she deserved, but she also deserved Joy.
Settling for Peace
By Jeanine Ricchetti
We see each other now only sporadically, where once we saw each other daily.
So many years have passed since she used to break glass.
She never tried to cut her wrist, she cut her arms, so many tiny cuts,
enough to draw blood, to draw attention to the pain.
Bloody little screams for help barely visible after healing.
The first time I took her to a counselor I didn't know that I would have to do it for her.
She never told. Two years in counseling and she had never mentioned
the daily rapes, the pillow that would suffocate her.
The scars were not visible. The questions were not asked.
The next two times, I told for her. The times after that, she told.
She had learned that to get help she would have to show the scars,
would have to tell, to cry, to fear, to scream, to believe, to trust, to find peace.
At last, she had come to a place of relative peace, or
so she said with a stiff full smile, a tilted head, and a false, unconvincing emphasis.
Each reunion, the same stiff full smile with the same tilted head.
"I have peace."
I didn't want to have to do it. I didn't want to push her.
It had always been my role to listen,
to love and to accept, not to push, never to push.
The first time I said it, we cried, first she then I.
I hate you, she said.
I know.
I love you, she said.
I know.
If she told me again that she had peace, I figured that it would mean
that she needed to hear it again.
So when she called and she said that she had peace.
I said it again.
We cried, first she then I.
I hate you, she said.
I know.
I love you, she said.
I know.
I also knew that after decades of struggle, of torture, terror, pain, and grief,
she had finally come to a place of some kind of peace.
I knew, too, from having experienced it with her, what was at stake
for her
should she lose that peace.
She risked a return to the edge of sanity.
She risked perhaps cutting again,
wishing to die again,
maybe this time, she might not survive.
Who was I to suggest that she risk that? Who was I?
Still, again I had to say it, yet again, when she said that she had peace,
I had to ask.
"What about Joy? You deserve Joy."
Again we cried, first she then I.
I hate you, she said.
I know.
I love you, she said.
I know.
You deserve Joy, I said.
I know, she said.
I deserve Joy.
We cried, both she and I.
Whether you goal is Joy or Peace, I would love to help you to find your way to either or to both.