I’ve come to understand something rather significant about my successful effort to get a place at University.
By achieving this and by specifically getting into the University of Exeter, I’ve reclaimed a part of my life from my abuser of many years ago. That I didn’t take up Exeter’s offer in 1971 was entirely due to the problems arising from abuse in childhood and the subsequent breakdown of my relationship with my parents.
It feels good to have won this battle against my past and I now have the genuine belief that I can win more. I can’t have my childhood or adolescence back but I can stop their loss so thoroughly ruining my present.
Hey, Mr. McLachlan… I am smiling all over my face, reading this. I mean, we don’t really know each other, or anything, though through your poetry and so on the riven skies page, I kinda have the feeling I do, but, well, maybe I am just happy to see that this is possible. So many years later, but you can still win, after all.
And though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are: One equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield!
As long as you don’t regress totally.