The death of naïveté
He was so beautiful she thought, her heart skipped inside her chest with a forbidden excitement. His eyes captivated her from their dark depths. His exotic charm, his hearty laugh. He sang to her in minor toned melodies beautiful words of love and romance, of seduction in far off places. She quickly fell under his spell, mesmerized, a sort of death dance of naive attraction. The rush of something new, exotically different. Exotically deadly.
A predator, selfish and cruel parading in the form of an enchanting man. But how could she know? She was so naive.
With his distance she was drawn closer. When he came close she shrank away timidly. When she shrank, he swooped in for the kill with terrifying ferocity. Taken aback, she screamed and tried to run, tried to make him understand, but he was no longer a man, and you can't reason with a monster. Overpowered and forced into the corner, all she could do was turn her face in shame to the unwanted onslaught of kisses. Her lips tightly shut so as not to return any sort of affection.
Coming to his senses, he backed off, apologizing profusely, tears of regret trickling down his cheeks. Naively, she had pity on him. She forgave him.
The distance of miles came with amnesia apparently, as she overlooked his fatal flaw and seduced herself into fantasy. It was springtime and her heart was ripe for love, bursting with pent up emotion never before expressed. She fell in love with the idea of the exotic lover. She fell in love with love itself, or at least the state of fanciful falling. Heart pattering excitement. Love poems exchanged. The young heart in brilliant bloom.
He wasn't there to remind her of his predatory instincts. She had forgiven him anyway, and it felt good to feel so good.
It's been said* that the naive one is easily lured away by the pleasures of the ego. And why not? We all want everything to be wonderful. Every woman wants to sit upon a horse dressed in bells and go riding off through the boundless green and sensual forest. All humans want to attain Paradise here on earth.
She had found her paradise, a beautifully enchanting place inside her heart, where the exotic lover would join her in the pleasures of paradise. The only problem they say*, is that a desire for paradise, when combined with naiveté, makes us not fulfilled but food for the predator.
But the predator would stalk her in her dreams. There she would see him as he truly was, stripped of his charm, gnarly and animalike. Night after night she would awaken with the terrifying fear that someone - he - was in her bed, and that if he felt her in her underclothes, he would attack again. Night after night she would get up and unconsciously put on jeans, and crawl back into bed. Sometimes she wouldn't even remember doing it, she would just wake up fully dressed and confused. If only she had listened to the discordance in her soul, the knowledge of her own psyche, her night dreams shouting warnings to her...
Six years later.
She hadn't seen him since that terrifying night. She had eventually cut off the relationship, only to move onto other fantasy-induced oblivion. But she had grown. She had become a woman and a mother. She had been through horrifying heartbreak, betrayal and shame. Life had cured her of much of her naiveté. She was coming into herself as a woman, at the edge of understanding the beauty and power of the feminine nature when she saw him again.
His charm lasted a day or two, but it didn't take long for the predator to show himself again. Only this time his force was more than physical. He threatened to tear her apart both physically and mentally with a sort of psychological torture she had never experienced. He shamed her then pulled her close, but when she moved away he wouldn't let her go; he threatened to engulf her with her permission or without. She would breathe only when he said. She would have no will, she would be his slave. She would dance when he said dance, she would obey when he said no. Manipulative and demeaning he trampled her newfound sense of self, stripping her of her budding womanhood.
The torture took its toll. Stripped, vulnerable and soul-exhausted, she lay there lifeless on the floor. Nothing
existed except for the waves of sobs heaving from a place so deep
inside, she hardly knew it existed. Psychologically, emotionally shut
down except for the anguish that seemed to permeate every cell of her
body.
Heart wrenching realization breaking over her in waves of grief... she had destroyed her life for this. She had once given her heart to THIS! This animal! This beast! At the expense of her marriage, and for what?! To be brutally abused, psychologically tortured to the point of breakdown. Assaulted mentally, physically, sexually. She grieved, she roared, she sobbed. She anguished at her own naïveté.
It is said that* when a woman understands that she has been prey, both in the inner and outer worlds, she can hardly bear it. Prey to the predator. Prey to her own foolish fantasy.
But something inside reared up in strength. Some small part that had just recently began to fight fought back with what seemed like itty bitty fists, and screamed at him with an itty bitty voice. She couldn't match his bulldozer strength but she wouldn't be rendered without a fight! So she fought, drew her lines in the sand that he would callously cross, but in the end, she would stand her ground, even in the face of his threats, the roar of his raging fury.
But in the midst of the anguish, SHE was there! Through the midst of the pain, the raw, instinctual feminine Force welled up inside and fought within her with snarling, wolf like fangs, forcing him back, knocking him down in surprise. Naive no more, she would rise from the place of anguish with a newfound Force birthed inside.
Growth only comes in the face of adversity, in defying the predator, whether the one within, or the one outside. And the living, instinctual force of feminine life would not be known except in the face of that which would kill. But when that Force is awakened, when She begins to stir within, watch out because those under her touch will no longer be prey, but a force to be reckoned with!
** "It has been said" was said so beautifully by Clarisa Pinkola Estes in Women who Run with Wolves, Chapter 2: Stalking the Intruder, the begining of initiation. I owe much of my musings realizations to her wisdom.
