21 VOLUME 9 |ISSUE 2 |2018
By F. E. Feeley Jr
Yet, the world beckoned me. The beauty I saw, the
thoughts I’d been exposed to when I snuck a book home,
or the lyrics I’d secretly listened to introduced me to
other ways of thinking. Despite the church’s insistence
that no good existed in the outside world, I realized
at some point that the church was wrong. Humanity
had worth. It had virtue. There was something to love.
People weren’t perfect, but they generally tried to be
good. These new thoughts were a direct threat to the
established theological existence we lived in because as
soon as these new thoughts challenged my old ones, the
fundamentalism began to die.
When the abuse became too bad, around my sixteenth
year, I left home and the church. My father had beaten me
so badly with a wooden board the length of his forearm, I
had bruises down my back and my legs and could not sit.
I wasn’t sad anymore. I wasn’t afraid anymore. I was filled
with fury unlike anything I had ever experienced, and I
knew it was time for me to go.
It was a painful period in my life as I left behind everything
I had ever known. The city I grew up in, the friends I had,
the church, my family. While I was no longer being hit on
a routine basis, the guilt I felt was almost overwhelming. I
think in some ways I will always be leaving them in some
form or another. It doesn’t just happen the one time. The
5-year-old who was punched in the head and crawled for
cover under the counter, the helpless child who watched
both his sisters tossed out of their home as teenagers, the
humiliated teenage boy having to drop his pants to be
beaten the very last time, those memories are still very
much with me even now in my thirty-sixth year.
I am often amazed that I and my siblings are still alive
and in relatively good health. I knew something was
better, somewhere “out there” away from the fear, and
the hatred of people “not us.” I didn’t have to be a part
of or be a captive audience to racism, sexism, misogyny,
and homophobia. Somewhere beyond Detroit were calm
streets and less violence. Somewhere. At the point of
departure, I was hell bent on finding it, and I knew I would
never go back.
Yet the struggle to undo all that had been done to me isn’t
quite over, yet.
You can remove yourself physically from a place. You can
geographically extract yourself from danger. However, for
those who have suffered any sort of violence or trauma,
the work to recover is just beginning. For me, along with
therapy, some medication, education, and the support of
my husband, connecting to the world through writing and
through shared experiences is helping me to rid myself of
that madness I once lived in.
Telling my story, bit by bit, hidden in pages of fiction, or
right up front in poetry, I began to love the world and
connect to it in ways I could never have imagined. There
are scars, sure. Deep ones that ache sometimes. Yet, when
I draw my pen across them, as Dr. Maya Angelou once
described, my work attracts those who have gone through
similar experiences and oddly makes those experiences,
somehow, worth it. Therein, at least for me, lies true
salvation.
About the Author
F.E. Feeley Jr is the author of several
books, including The Haunting of
Timber Manor, Objects in the Rearview
Mirror, Still Waters, When Heaven
Strikes, and the soon-to-be-released
novel, Closer. He has also been
included in several anthologies,
including Indigent and Gothika 5: Contact. This is his first
published work of poetry. All poems in this issue come
from his book Underneath the Sound of the World: Poetry
Collection (2018).
Born in Detroit, Michigan in 1981, he became an avid
reader and lover of the written word. Inspired by the world
around him, he now lives in South Texas with his husband
John, their German Shepherd Kaiser Wilhelm, and their cat
Ms. Abigail Adams. n
…my work attracts those
who have gone through
similar experiences and oddly
makes those experiences,
somehow, worth it.
By F. E. Feeley Jr
Yet, the world beckoned me. The beauty I saw, the
thoughts I’d been exposed to when I snuck a book home,
or the lyrics I’d secretly listened to introduced me to
other ways of thinking. Despite the church’s insistence
that no good existed in the outside world, I realized
at some point that the church was wrong. Humanity
had worth. It had virtue. There was something to love.
People weren’t perfect, but they generally tried to be
good. These new thoughts were a direct threat to the
established theological existence we lived in because as
soon as these new thoughts challenged my old ones, the
fundamentalism began to die.
When the abuse became too bad, around my sixteenth
year, I left home and the church. My father had beaten me
so badly with a wooden board the length of his forearm, I
had bruises down my back and my legs and could not sit.
I wasn’t sad anymore. I wasn’t afraid anymore. I was filled
with fury unlike anything I had ever experienced, and I
knew it was time for me to go.
It was a painful period in my life as I left behind everything
I had ever known. The city I grew up in, the friends I had,
the church, my family. While I was no longer being hit on
a routine basis, the guilt I felt was almost overwhelming. I
think in some ways I will always be leaving them in some
form or another. It doesn’t just happen the one time. The
5-year-old who was punched in the head and crawled for
cover under the counter, the helpless child who watched
both his sisters tossed out of their home as teenagers, the
humiliated teenage boy having to drop his pants to be
beaten the very last time, those memories are still very
much with me even now in my thirty-sixth year.
I am often amazed that I and my siblings are still alive
and in relatively good health. I knew something was
better, somewhere “out there” away from the fear, and
the hatred of people “not us.” I didn’t have to be a part
of or be a captive audience to racism, sexism, misogyny,
and homophobia. Somewhere beyond Detroit were calm
streets and less violence. Somewhere. At the point of
departure, I was hell bent on finding it, and I knew I would
never go back.
Yet the struggle to undo all that had been done to me isn’t
quite over, yet.
You can remove yourself physically from a place. You can
geographically extract yourself from danger. However, for
those who have suffered any sort of violence or trauma,
the work to recover is just beginning. For me, along with
therapy, some medication, education, and the support of
my husband, connecting to the world through writing and
through shared experiences is helping me to rid myself of
that madness I once lived in.
Telling my story, bit by bit, hidden in pages of fiction, or
right up front in poetry, I began to love the world and
connect to it in ways I could never have imagined. There
are scars, sure. Deep ones that ache sometimes. Yet, when
I draw my pen across them, as Dr. Maya Angelou once
described, my work attracts those who have gone through
similar experiences and oddly makes those experiences,
somehow, worth it. Therein, at least for me, lies true
salvation.
About the Author
F.E. Feeley Jr is the author of several
books, including The Haunting of
Timber Manor, Objects in the Rearview
Mirror, Still Waters, When Heaven
Strikes, and the soon-to-be-released
novel, Closer. He has also been
included in several anthologies,
including Indigent and Gothika 5: Contact. This is his first
published work of poetry. All poems in this issue come
from his book Underneath the Sound of the World: Poetry
Collection (2018).
Born in Detroit, Michigan in 1981, he became an avid
reader and lover of the written word. Inspired by the world
around him, he now lives in South Texas with his husband
John, their German Shepherd Kaiser Wilhelm, and their cat
Ms. Abigail Adams. n
…my work attracts those
who have gone through
similar experiences and oddly
makes those experiences,
somehow, worth it.
