Saturday, December 21, 2013

Christmas Un-Caroling?

Sometimes I am rudely and abruptly reminded that no matter how much time may pass, the reality of a violent childhood will be with me forever.

John Michael Montgomery's hit song "The Little Girl" was released in August of 2000. I turned fifteen that December. I was still a little girl myself, and it would be several more months before I would look at my mother through a scrim of tears and blood and tell her not to come back to my room again unless she wanted me to kill her. Most of the little girl in me was gone or hidden away by then under the iron will I'd need to survive the rest of my time in Hell, but when TLG started climbing the charts, I was still a baby who thought Jesus was going to come whisk me away from my suffering.

Every time I heard that song, it broke off a piece of me. It broke me because it made me hope, and hope was a dangerous thing then. Hope meant disappointment. In the final stretch of years and months between the first time I heard that song and my one bid for freedom that didn't have my death drawn into the plans -- because so many of them did; there are so many ways to end a life, and I thought of them all -- I would learn that the only way to keep going was to turn hope off, to accept that every day was going to continue to be the same as the day before, and that I had to put my shoulder into the work of surviving and keep pushing forward till I dropped in place. But before that lesson made itself known, hope twisted and squirmed and gnashed inside me, and it hurt. Hope hurt in a way I cannot describe, like a feast set for a starving child who has no mouth with which to eat. I needed what I could not have. I was set in a race against time, violence, and the limits of the human spirit, and I was steadily losing ground. "The Little Girl" reminded me of that. It made me know, deep down, that I knew I was dying: there comes a point at which a person's will can no longer serve to keep her fully human, and an intrinsic part of a person will perish when pushed to that point. If I didn't die at the hands of my mother or at the hands of myself, or escape, and soon, I'd become a walking ghost, lose all desire to, or concept of, how to relate to others beyond the necessities of self-preservation.

It might sound drastic, and it is, but it's real. It's even recognized by the medical and mental health spheres as a type of attachment disorder. Of course, I didn't know that then. I just knew, could sense, that if I didn't get out I'd die, one way or another. That in some important way, even if I was still physically present, I would cease to be. 

There are fates worse than death.

I managed to escape the harshest of these, but I carry scars with me wherever I go. It's not a ploy for pity, saying that: it's a fact. We all carry scars, some deeper than others, some deep enough to affect everything that we are and everything that we do. I said earlier that sometimes I am rudely and unexpectedly reminded of this, but actually I need no reminders: I carry my past with me in the present, as a current of thoughts and memories and emotions that are right on the edge of my conscious mind every second of every day. If it sounds exhausting, that's because it is. It's exhausting and limiting; it throws up roadblocks you don't expect. I fell head over heels in love once, and I was so scared of it I pushed it away and watched it burn. I don't date anymore, because I'm too afraid of it happening again. I'm 29.

The past in the present can bring about good things, too, like my unquenchable passion for social justice and my entrenched belief that people are entitled to be loved and cared for because of the same reason that they're entitled to breathe: they exist, and therefore they matter. They are human, and they live and breathe and feel; they are real and they matter. Because of my own suffering, I am uniquely attuned to the suffering of others. I am a person who will drop everything and run to help alleviate it, and I probably wouldn't be that person if I hadn't suffered.

There are times, though, when I wish I didn't have to be reminded of the length and breadth of my own particular suffering. When I don't expect to be. I went to the coffee shop tonight to hear Christmas carols, and instead I heard a song that was probably only put into the set because it had Jesus in it, and 'tis the season for Christians everywhere to make sure everything has Jesus in it. (Did that sound bitter? It did, didn't it? Oh well. Truth is truth.) As soon as the artist announced it, I knew I couldn't listen. I will endure a lot in the name of awareness -- for instance, if the same song had been played at a vigil for child abuse awareness/prevention, I'd have stayed in the building if not in my seat. But given the season, and the memories it brings up anyhow, and the pain associated with that particular song -- plus the fact that I was a little pissed off because I thought I was supposed to be listening to carols, and not country songs about Daddy drinking and Mommy shooting up in the bathroom -- I followed my instincts, preserved myself, and got the hell out of the coffee shop just in time: right before the part that would have either made me crumple into tears or scream like I was being boiled alive in a kettle of hot oil, which is kind of how that song feels to me.

... and how do you wrap up a post like this one? I suppose by saying I needed to write this, to get it out of my head, and now that I have I feel better. Usually I keep writings like this to myself, but I'm putting this out there because people need to know that the consequences of childhood violence are real, and that they are ugly, in the hopes that maybe some tiny something about that knowledge will help another child, or at least another survivor.

Calling all angels: walk me through this one; don't leave me alone.

Also, I hope to God I NEVER HEAR THAT SONG AGAIN. Next time, I WILL scream.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

This is Anxiety

And it wasn't meant to be a poem. I just gave it line breaks so the un-panicked brain could follow it. This really is anxiety.

Things weigh on me. They press and press and press until I'm flat.
 It's anxiety like carving the heart out of a pumpkin and then cutting it a smile.

The room is too big, the walls soar away when I reach for them;
I get dizzy and my hands hum.
Or the room is too small and it can't hold me,
 my pacing, my flapping fingers flicking the nervous off like soapsuds.
My throat clogs up. I want to claw at my chest;
there's a space that hurts and I want to clutch it, a child's hand clapped over a bee sting.
 It's a cannonball, it's I would gnaw away my fingers if I thought it would help,
it's how many blue pills do I have left and I swallow them dry and sit motionless till they work,
because oh god, oh god, if I move I will die.
It's I wish I still smoked because nicotine would save me,
 it's I'll down the whiskey and the wine and the one bottle of beer in the crisper -- why is it in the crisper; for god's sake it isn't lettuce-- all at once just to blunt the edge of this hell;
 help me, someone help me, I think I'm drowning on dry land.