Unlike You, I Have Found Peace Poem by Tamra Craft

* as a word of warning this poem tends to go on and on, but the devastation and triumph took more words than a few well penned stanzas could ever hope to convey. I considered breaking it up into four peices, as it was originally constructed to have done to it, but i felt it needed to be posed together for the message to be complete. thank you for your precious time*

I had no way to ask for this, for you.
I was unable to take any precautions.
I was innocent in this decision
That you found yourself lost in.

Yet I was blamed anyway,
The prosecuted victim.
Those white jackets called you wrong
But you didn’t want to listen.

Remorse filled you, in you was me.
When you gave in to it at last.
Certain I’d be the end to your life,
Forcing me to play the role I was cast.

Growing strong against all odds
As you pumped into me your many escapes.
I learned exactly how good a mother
A selfish drug addict makes.

Through clouds of sweet smelling smoke
High as I learned to crawl and walk.
Through unfed affection and neglect,
I learned how to talk.

Only to learn that screaming real words
Didn’t make one bit of a difference.
Between us, a thousand miles or beside you
Was emotionally the same distance.

I loved you with every breath I took
For so many years, you were all I had.
But you shattered me with you so many times.
As a baby I was already tired of being sad.

Not even finished with being a child,
You paraded me as your little adult.
You never believed me when I told you they hurt me
So I never knew that it wasn’t my fault.

You let me pay your debts for you
Never a thought to what I lost.
You fed me to things you should have protected me from.
Carelessly out the door, my innocence was tossed.


When I preyed to you to save me, you laughed
When I prayed to god, I was ignored as well.
So I learned that I would always be alone in this world.
Every day filled with secrets I could never tell.

At ten I could drink your friends under the table.
I was barely afraid of what would happen in the dark.
I knew you were too drunk to hear me scream
And afterwards you refused to acknowledge my marks.

So I stopped trying to fight, I didn’t make a noise.
Because they would hit me less if I was quiet.
Soon I was filled with your same need to escape.
Every day I was on a search to find it.

If it promised oblivion, that was all I asked.
I immediately consumed it and waited for release.
But every time it wore off, I’d find myself there again
Always exhausted by my daily search for peace.

At first I misconstrued it for trying to get away from myself
Until one day I realized I was really running from you.
The spread of your fourth stage cancer of hatred and malice
And your unrelenting cycle of cruelty and abuse.

Your perpetual blame laid on me for your own mistakes
Finally had succeeded in taking its toll.
Years of fending for myself, succumbing to weakness
Had blackened my once pure soul.

For you I could harbor nothing but contempt, disgust.
The same lack of empathy you showed your own child.
I saw that you were at fault for my years of torment.
I made your rage, hatred, disregard appear mild.

I could never give you a strong enough taste.
All I wanted was for you to feel my Rapture.
You tried to silence me once again, tried to lock me up
But I wasn’t weak anymore and I refused to be captured.

I left you to your misery, I relished the fact
That leaving you with no one to catch you next time you fell
Was the most pain I could ever wish to conflict you with
Because then you would finally have to face your self.


Still only a baby in others eyes, it made it so much harder.
The thought of your torment chased away the chill
And soon I was able to fine fulfillment in a choice few things,
For once none of them were liquid, needles or pills.

It didn’t take me long after being away to see
That my world filled with light now that you weren’t in it.
I could finally think of myself without feeling disgust
And take joy in my life, knowing my time was finite.

How could you ask me to forgive you without admittance?
How could you expect me to ever be your friend?
How can you accuse me of leaving you when you needed me?
When you left me behind years before I ever left?

I came back to you when I was safe, mostly healed,
Against my better judgments, to see if you had changed
But over those years, all you did was simmer in hatred
Showing me that maturity and responsibility have nothing to do with age.

I can never feel sorry for anything you go through
Because you made me carry both of our pasts.
I learned to face my problems and let them go.
You always look for someone to blame, that’s why your happiness never lasts.

Now I am at the end of this journey.
You’re the last piece of trash I have left to put out.
And I am happy to say I don’t feel one ounce of remorse
Because pain and heartache isn’t what life is about.

My mind still occasionally thinks of you
On those hot, endless summer days.
When everyone’s lips are painted with smiles
And I’m spending hours watching my children play.

I feel one small pang inside me of pity
That you, like so many others, will never know love
Because I know just how empty my soul would be
If I didn’t know how to love them so much.

Then I feel more than thankful to the gods
For dusting off my soul and showing me the sun.
For giving me the strength to face my life
Despite the fact that you always taught me to run.


I like to think that I learned how to be a good mother
By never doing it the way that you did.
I know that no matter how hard it gets
I never will take one second with them for granted.

I will love them every moment I have with them
And succeed in making sure they know it.
So that they can grow up surrounded in trust and love
And never be too afraid to show it.

I would never allow their fears to go un-noticed.
I would die trying to protect them from that world.
I will never rush them, or fail to protect them.
They will be free to enjoy being little boys and girls.

Pride will fill me where jealousy filled you,
As I nurture them and watch them grow
Though I cherish their childhoods more than anything,
I look forward to watching their lives unfold.

Of them taking on the world, enjoying its beauty.
Becoming strapping young men and lovely young ladies.
I dream of them finding a love like I found with their Daddy
And of holding my perfect Grandbabies.

I used to want you to pay for my pain.
I used to dream of ways to make you feel like I did.
I still wish you had had more compassion than to lean on me.
You were my mother, I was just a kid.

But I no longer wish you any more pain or revenge
Because I have risen so high above that, I can’t even see you.
Because you’re still in that world I ran so far away from,
Surrounded in that pain I once was so used to

And knowing that I will have everything you denied yourself
Because of your hideous and unforgettable actions,
I am finally free to find more worth while adventures,
Other uses for my emotions, and my passions.

This finality is like cutting through the last bar of the cage
And finally freeing that dark and abused beast.
into the sunlight where she is free and beautiful
Because unlike you, in my children’s eyes, I found my peace.