Hell

I always had a rough time, swallowing the concept of hell. There are people who commit foul deeds, to be sure. And, those individuals should be kept separated from the rest of us. I just never reconciled an eternal dungeon of fire and brimstone, with my benevolent creator.

I long posited that a place like Hell, as depicted by world religion, cannot and does not exist. The God that created me, would not have created a lake of fire for my soul, should our higher minds become separated.

Well, I'm here today to tell you, for the record, that 'Hell' DOES exist. It's not the stuffy, maladrous place where bad people go after they die. Hell is a prison that exists in the minds of people.

How do I know? Resonance. Pat Benatar wrote a song about child abuse, and titled it, "Hell is For Children." Know what? She is 100% right. Hell IS for children.

What do I mean. That song resonates, after all these years. That means, to me, that there are deep layers of truth, within the song.

"It's all so confusing, this brutal abusing
They blacken your eyes, and then apologize
Be daddy's good girl , and don't tell mommy a thing
Be a good little boy, and you'll get a new toy
Tell grandma you fell off the swing"

Children and other victims of abuse (including 'adults' who practice self-abuse) are imprisoned in a world that defies their understanding. It is confusing, as the song says, because, "love and pain become one and the same."

A child is completely dependent on their parent for love and support. A child has absolutely no control over their situation. That is the foundation of this hell; a little soul, tragically imprisoned.

I have been to hell and back. My father has always exerted control over his children by opening and closing his wallet, and his heart. My mother, strained by the demands of raising five children alone, kept all us children in a state of fear. I could never be sure, when I got close to her, whether I was going to get the palm of her hand, or the back of it.

One chilling recollection that keeps coming back, is her telephone voice. She could be a mean, angry witch when she wanted to be, spewing the most hateful words, in the harshest possible tone of voice.

When the telephone rang, and she answered it, I was always amazed at how quickly she could transform her voice into a sound that was smooth and velvety.

I'm no different than most people. My mother, herself, is a co-victim of my father's controlling tendencies. I was well into my thirties before we could discuss that man, without her collapsing into tears of self-recrimination.

As human beings, it is our personal responsibility to recognize the signs of abuse. Each person who is abused, will in turn, become an abuser. I was forced to inhale my mother's second-hand cigarette smoke for my entire life, until I myself, became a cigarette smoker.

This is how each and every person is a victim of the Stockholm Syndrome. We all try to identify with our captors. We have all been imprisoned by the misanthropic will of another. We have all become captors of others.

Liberation is our highest calling. It is our sacred duty to break the cycle, and flush it out of our very DNA.