The Crack Reader - A funny story about abuse

The Crack Reader

A funny story about abuse.

Written by Jackie Hancke

https://soundcloud.com/jackie-hancke/hey-dude-its-only-food

For some or other reason people are excited when a building blows up. Especially at the beauty should it be imploded on purpose. The way it destructs inwardly ending up as a neat pile of rubbish yet astonishingly arranged, have left crowds in awe. Although the end is predictable, chaos has a distinct charm as everyone gathers to experience the result at a safe distance.

When people implode it lights up the cracks. It shows piles of astonishingly arranged rubble. Some people read tealeaves. I read cracks. It’s my talent. My super power. There’s a purpose for a gift like mine.

It’s not a way to determine your direction in life as it has led me down some real butt ugly truths about people. People I loved with all my heart.

My father went through different stages when he imploded in my teens. It differed in abusive behaviour until the moment where he gave up and started eating a tub of ice cream every time the phone bill came. He was right in blaming me for the large amounts. I was using it to investigate my love interests’ cracks as if solving the puzzle of life and send them on their way at my father’s expense. If you think that sounds wrong, you better stop reading as everything that I’m about to tell you is wrong.

I have discovered that society uses the word “wrong”, well, wrongly. It’s a placeholder for something they refuse to show compassion for. It’s a weapon of choice for organised religions, a motivator for behavioural adjustment and the measure tape of the success-o-meter. How many wrongs have you avoided? Or not.

Telling my Dad that I was moving in with my then boyfriend at age twenty, was according to him a purposeful action towards something wrong. Him being a pastor by night and government official by day, did not receive such joyous news well in 1994. There were enough changes to cope with in our country. Apartheid was officially a thing of the past and the birth of a new democratic Republic of South Africa was at our doorstep. I felt democratic too.

My father experienced it as a crack as it was the year he basically lost his status he tirelessly worked for all his life. He believed he was the best preacher and the most trusted government official on the planet while being adored for being so righteous. He was caught as the unfaithful pastor. And then all the cards came down.

In hindsight, my life as a teen was a slow and tedious process for him to be ready at the moment when the actual hammer fell. I remember that day. I can still recall the deafening sound it made.

In years thereafter his actions would reflect that sound it made when it hit the ground. It wobbled time for a moment.

A period followed where he was truly offended about his whole life and he was able to recall each and every moment where it went wrong. Outraged at having an abusive father. Outraged at being worried about money. Outraged at me for becoming exactly what he feared the most - reflecting helplessness. He became an expert in seeing it.

Being proud of him for becoming head boy in high school went over my grandmother’s head when she didn’t congratulate him, but instead reminded her son that he’s not a “head boy in the house” while ironically being the only other person in the house to be abused.

My grandfather was a coward because he could only muster up enough courage to commit those atrocious crimes against my father and grandmother as a drunk. Hiding behind an inebriant character to crack people’s beliefs about love, is not a heroic choice if humans have freedom of choice. My father chose to make peace with the fact that he will never understand why it had happened to him. In a way he recreated those same cracks and came to another conclusion; He will never understand the purpose of abuse in the first place. It’s a confusing time to be in one’s life.

My grandmother stuck to her choice she made at sixteen when she fell in love with a guy who promised to take her anywhere she blindly wanted to elope to and the gift of the child he stole from his then wife. Seemingly, my grandmother allowed a lot of things to fly over her head. It should’ve been alarming to her that if a guy is prepared to kidnap his own infant baby, he might not be the best material to father children. She also knowingly married a polygamist and expected a miracle to cure all the realities of her decisions. Instead it humbled her own beliefs about herself. This is why there is a general feeling of stupidity that accompanies abuse. Instead of realising that you have allowed bad decisions to take form, it becomes a dance between denial and the smallest truth about yourself with a dash of curiosity.

To have a Stockholm syndrome affair with your cracks are also not advised. I’ve seen them. People holding their cracks like beloved portraits, introducing them like children. “My demons.” “My daughter died.” “My anger because I was chosen to be a victim of abuse.” I had a couple on the mantle piece too. My father’s photo was shining like the employer-of-the-month award. Next to it, my mother paled like Mrs Fitts from American Beauty, always sucking up to the employer-of-the-month.

There’s also an honorary mention for the crack heroes I refer to as double whammies. The “I’m so brave to take on yet another episode of abuse.” Heroism of the Unkind.

Some people end up in the yoga position they refer to as “tree” facing their self-caused abuse patterns at regular intervals without realising that they pulled the trigger only to see if they can still stand against it. They allow themselves to be willing participants in the drama and anguish even if it means to be the shady parts of their paintings that seemingly determines the size of things. By acting out these shady values, they want to portray their undying love by creating the urge to make a pledge with pain; to reconfirm the same place where the loss of something was far more greater than the love of it.

It should be a painting about what you’ve learned as a student and then seen as a gift of discernment and service. It’s not an obsession to cling to or a “right” to perform crack resistant tests.

As a crack reader I’ve seen some lines that are created with the same intention; to achieve a certain perspective about pain. It’s a glimpse these painters offer you. An honest sympathy about their pain. It’s called “The route to the smallest memory” when pain and joy meet and peace is made with it being the thing that will drive your direction in life. That one picture that is burned into you like a ringer marks a cow. Victims of abuse allow it to become their tape that measures every experience they have.

To overcome a crack you first have to acknowledge it. As an empathetic crack reader, I have discovered the biggest cause for crack related issues are denial.

The moment denial stops, another shape takes place.

Being offended at the size of the crack.

“Do you see the size of the damage of this crater I’ve caused! It’s unfixable! I’m staring into the abyss of life-long suffering ahead.” The new measure tape’s name is “See, I’ve told you so,” while magicians are in actual fact shaping their lives with immaculate accuracy.

Is it so difficult for a student to believe that he or she has reached the level of a magician that has the power to create instant results? Look at the rate people abuse themselves on a daily basis with their different belief systems. Some don’t want to see how others experience that moment in their minds when they meet God or their spirit guides or their ancestors and feel special and elated or chosen.

Not many want to admit that they only meet God or their spirit guides or their ancestors only when they have a complaint that needs addressing.

“I refuse to be this hurt about something I had no control over,” instead of admitting the smallest truths about themselves when it happened.

They all felt helpless.

If you allow yourself to feel helpless, you will only allow yourself to feel saved or lost in the end. Your experience should be unlimited that allow words like extraordinary bravery, faith, a miraculous healing and celebration in the experience. One sure way of getting there is through curiosity and a selection of words you want to investigate as a way of life.

Organised religions have caused damage in our society by killing the practise of curiosity because they practise exclusion instead. Shouldn’t a religion at least include a sense to protect the wellbeing of minds and thought patterns of people? Those rehearsed verses contain words, rhythms in which people find their solutions. To remind someone of sins, death and hell on regular intervals is man’s love for punishment outweighing love. They raise children with the faith that life is a game of punishments and survival. A tree doesn’t grow if it cannot find different pathways in the wind.

Our history as a human race speaks volumes about destruction that resonates in people’s decisions to practise their smallest truths about themselves. You will be surprised at how cheap people are selling themselves short once you’ve discovered what they measure themselves with.

That’s where most of my stories took place. Trying to convince people not to measure themselves with the pain that they’ve experienced, but to see the beauty of the light it allows if they would only choose it freely. Sometimes I took myself into those patterns to understand why people will abuse themselves as a way of belief. As an architect of words, you can only illuminate someone’s limited perspective once you understand the few words they repeat about themselves and why.

Here are some of my stories as a crack reader in the hope that you will crack yourself up and allow the light to come in. The complexity of life is a study in art and should be taken with great enthusiasm. A sense of humour is strongly advisable as paradox is a necessary ingredient to a happy and fulfilling life. There are real magicians in our lifetime that have turned their walk of shame into a black comedy. These are the stories of my failed attempts to help people find a safe distance to implode and leave the neat pile of rubbish behind, yet be astonished at the arrangement of chaos it caused. These are my studies in abuse.