trauma

I am a mess

~ KJ ~ 5 Comments

These past two weeks have been difficult. So difficult that I could barely speak about the shitstorm that was inside my head, let alone write about it. I became emotionally constipated. My words, my emotions, they continued to build up — but none could find their way out. After awhile, it started to hurt.

It’s scary for me when that happens. It leaves me unable to communicate my needs. It prevents me from asking anyone for help.

And I desperately needed help. I was trying to be strong, but I could no longer hold myself up underneath everything that was piling on top of me. One thing, I could handle. But it was everything all at once. The unwanted correspondence with my mother, her finding out where I live, the holidays, my upcoming appointment with the doctor. The flashbacks, the memories. It was just too much at once, and I started to drown.

I was tired of the fear and the pain. I was tired of living. Tired enough that I ran out in front of a car in the middle of a busy highway one morning, hoping it would hit me and end my suffering. But the car didn’t hit me; it slowed down just in time. I walked back to the curb like nothing had happened. I went in to work like nothing had happened.

I could have died in that moment. The car could have not slowed down and I would have been struck and killed. But I couldn’t process that reality. Instead, I just pushed it away, as if it were some minor inconvenience like missing the bus or being late for work.

I didn’t tell anyone about it. I couldn’t understand what was going on inside my own mind, let alone try to explain that chaos to another person. But deep down, it scared me. It scared me that I got to the point of trying to die without any forethought at all. There was no warning. There were no red flags. I just got off the bus one morning and thought it would be better if I could just get hit by a car and end my life. There was no planning, no chance for intervention.

It scared me because even in my darkest moments, in the times that I want to die, there is something inside of me that wants to continue on, that wants to live. But that didn’t happen this time. There was no pull to live; only an impulse to die.

I became my own biggest enemy. Greater than the fear of my mother was the fear of myself. Because no matter how badly my mother wants to kill me, it will never be as much as I want to kill myself.

I finally broke down and told my therapist what happened. I wanted her to save me. I wanted her to say something that would flip the switch in my brain from death back to life. I was desperate, but even my desperation was full of false hope. I knew she couldn’t save me. No one could save me but me.

I told her I would be okay. I told her I could be safe. But I didn’t believe it.

I found other ways to cope. I started smoking again. I stopped eating. Because even though cigarettes and starvation won’t kill me today, I know that each puff of smoke I inhale, and each meal I skip brings me a little closer to the death I still believe I deserve. It’s a more acceptable form of self-induced pain; a discrete, prolonged suicide. And no one’s the wiser.

I’m still alive. I still go to work. I still go to therapy. I still do my schoolwork and write my articles like everything is okay. But it’s not really okay. I’m not okay. I am a mess. And it’s difficult for me to admit that. It’s difficult for me to write that down. I am a mess.

I want to be strong. I want to be able to say that shit doesn’t bother me. But I would be lying. So instead I say nothing at all. And I write nothing at all, I think in part because I don’t want my mother to see how much she affects me. I don’t want her to know that even from far away, she still causes me pain and heartache. I don’t want her to know my struggle, my fear, my pain, my misery. I don’t want her to feel like she’s won the battle, the battle that I never set out to fight in.

But in my silence, she is still winning, because silence is what she wanted all along. Silence is why I suffered as a child. Silence is why I still suffer today. I don’t want to be silent. I want to be able to say how I feel inside, through my voice and through my writing. I want to be able to ask for help when I need it. I want to be able to say that I am not okay when I am not okay. I want to be able to speak without fear.

I can’t do any of that if I’m silent. I have a lot to say. I won’t let her stop me.

My name is KJ. I am a mess. And that’s okay.

I tell them I’m fine

~ KJ ~ 1 Comment

They say I look sad. They ask if I’m okay.

I tell them I’m fine. I tell them I’m just tired.

I can’t tell them the truth. I can’t tell them I’m not okay. I can’t explain that I’m tired of living.

So I lie. I lie to push them away. I lie so they don’t have to share the burden of my pain. I lie to protect them. I lie to protect me.

I don’t even understand what’s going on inside my own head. My thoughts don’t make any sense. All I can hear is noise. Loud noise.

I can’t find my words. I try to write, but nothing comes out right. I can’t talk about what’s inside. So I suffer in silence.

I just want them to stop. The memories. The flashbacks. I just don’t know anymore. I can’t tell if I’m 30 or 3. I can’t tell if I’m home or if I’m free.

Because I’m both. I’m living in two worlds at the very same time.

She’ll tell me I’m safe there, but she just doesn’t understand. I know my body is there, but my mind is somewhere else. A different place. A different time. A different me.

I dance on the line. One foot in, one foot out. It’s a line that only I can dance on, because it’s a line that only I can see. No one else sees it. No one else understands it. Only me.

They see me sitting on the couch, safe and fully clothed. That is my present. That is what everyone sees. But they don’t see what I see in my mind. They don’t see me standing in the bathtub of my childhood home, naked and afraid, awaiting my punishment. They can’t see that. Only me.

They see me working hard. They hear me crack a joke and laugh. But they don’t see what I see in my mind. They don’t see me burning in the flames, with every last bit of evil inside of my soulless body turning into a pile of ashes to be stomped upon and smashed into the dirt. They can’t see that. Only me.

I’m dancing the line. The line between past and present. The line between life and death. And I’m dancing alone.

I tell them I’m fine. But I’m not really fine. I never was. I’m not now. And I’m not sure I ever will be.

Shame sickness

~ KJ ~ 2 Comments

I have been sick the last few days. Constant nausea. Throwing up. Pain in the pit of my stomach.

But it’s not the flu. It’s not a stomach virus. It’s fucking shame.

I knew it was coming. This wasn’t the first time this has happened, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

I had to make an appointment with a gynecologist earlier this week. I was actually supposed to make an appointment months ago. I had an issue back in July in which I was bleeding for longer than normal, and became so weak that I struggled just to hold my head up at times. I had to promise my therapist that I would make an appointment in the next couple months, but I (knowingly) kept putting it off. That is, until my therapist brought it up again. Then I had no choice.

There is a fear in going. I have never been to that kind of doctor before. I have never had anyone check that part of my body before. The thought  is terrifying in many ways.

But even more pronounced is the shame I feel in going. There is so much shit tied up in that part of my body, that I don’t even know where to begin to work through it all. I don’t even know how. I don’t even know if it’s possible.

I grew up believing that I was sick. That’s what she told me, that I was sick down there and that’s why she had to do what she did. And I believed her. Because I didn’t know any other way.

And as I grew older, that belief that I was sick only grew stronger. I was the only one of my peers who hadn’t started menstruating. I didn’t understand. I thought something was wrong with me. Years went by and I still wasn’t normal. The only way I could explain it was that my mother was right — I was sick down there. It was the only thing that made sense.

Any time I needed a physical, I would panic whenever the doctor wanted to check my private area. My mother, who was always in the room, would tell the doctor I was shy, and the doctor would leave me alone. But I wasn’t shy. I just didn’t want them to see the sickness I was hiding there.

When I was a teenager, I had to go to the hospital because I couldn’t breathe. I remember the nurse asking me when my last period was, and I hesitated. My mother was standing right there. I didn’t want her to know I was still sick. I didn’t want her to have to help me anymore. But before I could make up something, the nurse sensed my hesitation and assumed I was hiding something. I couldn’t tell them that I was just sick down there. Mommy says I’m just sick. I swallowed my shame, just as I had done so many times before.

Doctors wouldn’t understand. So I just learned to lie better. Any time a doctor or nurse would ask about my period, I’d tell them I started the week before. No further explanation needed. They didn’t have to see my sickness. They didn’t have to sense my shame. But I sensed it. Every time I had to lie, I remembered why I was lying in the first place: I am sick there. My mother was right.

In my 20s, I experienced random bleeding, but nothing that lasted more than a day — and never regular. I would have spotting one day and never again for another 6 months, sometimes even a year or two in between. Other women would talk about the pain and frustration with that time of the month, and I could never relate. When I told the women close to me my experience (or lack thereof), they acted as if I were lucky in some way. They were envious. But I was disgusted with myself. Don’t they see? The reason I am not like them is because I am sick. If I wasn’t sick, if I didn’t do bad things, if I wasn’t evil, I would be just like them, too. I wasn’t lucky at all. I was sick.

I’m not even sure I could adequately explain how I felt during all those years, never experiencing what society told me I needed to experience in order to be a woman. I had already felt inadequate. That only made it worse. I felt alone. I felt less than. Too old to be a girl, not enough to be a real woman. Who was I then? Not a child. Barely a human. Just a sick bundle of flesh, bones, and fat, held together by viscous shame.

Things have changed, but I still struggle with those thoughts. I know I’m not sick anymore. I got my first real period in August 2015, one month after I ran away. And I’ve been normal ever since. I know there could be reasons that have nothing to do with me being sick: malnourishment, eating disorder, stress (physical, emotional, and environmental). I know all of these things can and do affect your reproductive health. I know the sickness may very well have not been in me, but in my environment.

But on an emotional level, I still carry the shame as if I were still sick. Like I am somehow still less than a woman. Like they can still see the sickness somewhere in me. It’s why I struggle so much with going to this doctor. I’m scared she will see all of my sickness, all of my badness, all of the disgusting things I’ve done, still lingering there, inside my vagina.

But maybe the sickness was never inside me at all. Maybe my mother was wrong. Maybe she was the sick one. Not me.

The only sickness I have is shame, and I don’t want to suffer with it anymore.

She wants to say no

~ KJ ~ 6 Comments

Little girl lies awake. She knows what’s coming.

Her mother comes in, and now she is crying.

She tries to yell out, but no one can hear her.

She shows all the hurt, but no one can see her.

She can’t take more pain, and she wants it to end.

She tries to fight back, but she just cannot fend.

She tells them please no, but they just don’t listen.

She wants it to stop, but no one will listen.

She stands there afraid. She can’t stop the shaking.

She yells out stop, no, but now she stands burning.

She can’t hold the tears; she wants them to drown her.

She tried to say no, but no one would hear her.

He tells her to sit. She knows what is coming.

She begs him to stop, but he just keeps going.

She tries to say no, but he doesn’t listen.

So she shuts down, because no one will listen.

She hides all the hurt, but can’t get very far.

So she shows them her pain in each little scar.

She hopes they will notice, hopes they will see her.

She needs their help, she needs someone to hear her.

She wants to be free, she wants to say good-bye.

But she is still trapped, and can’t figure out why.

She’s tired of the pain, but they just won’t listen.

She stops saying no, ’cause no one will listen.

She cries so much. They ask are you okay now.

She wants to speak out, but she doesn’t know how.

She can’t tell them no, ’cause her voice has left her.

So she tells them she’s fine, then they can’t help her.

She’s a big girl now, but she knows no better.

She tries to be grown, but they just won’t let her.

She follows commands, because they don’t listen.

She loses herself, ’cause no one will listen.

She swallows each pill, and hopes it will kill her.

The pills they don’t work, but that doesn’t stop her.

She lives with the pain, ’cause no one can see her.

She keeps it inside, ’cause no one can hear her.

She longs for a friend, wants someone to help her.

She wants to find trust, wants someone to love her.

He says he’ll be there. He says he will listen.

She lets him in. She needs someone to listen.

She can be who she is, won’t need to hide now.

He gives her that hope, and she feels the love now.

But then it all disappears. It all leaves her.

He takes that away. He takes it all from her.

She clenches her teeth. He pries them back open.

She closes her legs, but he pulls them unopen.

She asks him to stop, but he just won’t listen.

She can’t tell him no, ’cause no one will listen.

She can’t find her voice. So she takes all the blame.

She didn’t say no. Now she carries the shame.

She just wants to hide, wants no one to see her.

She just wants to cry, wants no one to hear her.

She’s scared to connect, so she just pulls away.

She’s lost enough now that she can’t find her way.

She can’t understand why no one would listen.

All she had wanted was someone to listen.

She finds a way out, and she finds her way back.

She’s no longer hurt, never under attack.

She wants to come out. She wants them to see her.

She wants her voice back. She wants them to hear her.

Now she struggles to trust, and she struggles to speak.

But with strength in her heart, she is no longer weak.

She longs for respect. She needs someone to listen.

She wants to say no and have somebody listen.

Making choices

~ KJ ~ 5 Comments

You’re making a choice.

I hear those words a lot lately, but I’m not sure I understand them. I’m not sure I know how to make choices. I’m not sure I ever had the chance to.

My mother decided everything for me: what I wore, who I spoke to, when I bathed, what I ate, when I ate, where I worked, what I used, where I went to college, what I bought (really, what she bought with my money), where I went. I never had the opportunity to have choices. My entire life had been chosen for me. I was not a human being; I was a system running my mother’s commands.

And now, in my mother’s absence, I have no idea what I’m doing. In some ways, I feel lost without her. She has done everything for me for 29 years. Who will make my decisions now?

I just want someone to tell me what to do. Tell me what buy. Tell me what to eat. Tell me everything I need to do.

Don’t ask if I am thirsty. Just tell me I need to drink.

Don’t ask if I need a break. Just tell me to stop what I’m doing.

I can’t answer questions, but I can respond to commands. I’ve done that my whole life.

You’re making a choice.

My mother used to say  I had choices. She’d tell other people that, too. She’d tell them that I could have friends, but that I chose not to have any. She’d say I could leave the house at any time, but I chose not to go. She’d tell them I could do whatever I want with my money, and I chose to support her. She wanted people to believe I had choices, but they were never choices. I couldn’t have friends because I couldn’t talk to anyone. I couldn’t leave the house at any time because I didn’t have house keys. I couldn’t keep my money because she would take it.

My mother ruined choice for me. She made me believe for so long that I had choices when I never really had choices at all. Now, I don’t know how to differentiate reality from my mother’s warped sense of reality. Now, every choice I make is complicated, even when it’s supposed to be easy.

You’re making a choice.

It doesn’t feel like a choice. It feels like what I have to do. You say I have the power, but where did it come from? It didn’t fall from the sky. It didn’t arrive in the mail. If I really have power, then that means I always had power. I always had choices.

And once I arrive at that point, my thinking goes to shit. I turn the ability to choose into the need to self-blame. If I am making a choice now, I must have made a choice back then. I must have chosen to be abused. It was my choice to let it happen. It was my choice to keep letting it happen. It was my choice not to tell anymore. It was my choice not to fight back. It was my choice to shut down. It was my choice to self-destruct. It was my choice to stay. It was my choice not to say no.

But were those all really choices, or were they acts of self-preservation?

It’s exactly how my mother wanted me to think. She wanted me to think everything I did was a choice that I made, and not a decision she had imposed on me. My mother wanted me to think that everything was my fault, when the reality was that she was the one to blame.

If I really had choices then, I would not have chosen to be abused. I would not have chosen to be hurt. I would not have chosen to remain in that prison for as long as I did. I would have chosen none of those things.

I did not choose to be abused. My mother chose to abuse me.

I did not choose to be hurt. My mother chose to hurt me.

I did not choose to stay in prison. My mother chose to take away my freedom.

It may have taken me 29 years, but I finally made a choice. I chose to take my freedom back.

And while the initial act may have very well been an act of self-preservation — a choice between living or dying — it isn’t any more. My choices are different now. Complicated, but different. I choose to speak. I choose to feel. I choose to write. I choose to heal. I am choosing to do things I couldn’t do before.

I just wish other choices came so easily, too.

The Cost of Silence, Part 1

~ KJ ~ 4 Comments

When I was in first grade, my teacher gave me a small plush bunny. She told me to hold on to it, that it would help me feel safe. And I did. I held on to it for years. I never thought anything of it.

While I was shopping in a store awhile back, I came across a small plush bunny. The bunny looked just like the one my teacher had given me. I remembered. I remembered everything. Then I immediately pushed it all away.

It was not the sweet childhood memory it should have been. It was much more complicated than that. And I didn’t want to bring it all up, so I pushed it back down and buried it and pretended like that memory didn’t exist.

Until the memory came up again. I was sitting in therapy, trying to think of childhood memories, and that memory popped through once again. I smiled at first because I felt the care I was given when my teacher gave 7 year-old me that bunny. Then my smile disappeared and I remembered things I didn’t want to remember. I had thoughts I didn’t want to think about.

I wanted to bury it all again. I didn’t want to think about what that memory meant. I didn’t want to feel the pain in my heart. But I did. And all I could do was cry.

Why did that teacher give me that bunny? Why did she tell me it would help me feel safe? Why did she think I needed to feel safe?

Those were the questions I thought of when that memory first came up, and I immediately pushed it all back down. In my adult mind, I knew the answers, and they were the answers that I did not want to hear. They were the answers I could not handle. And here they were, coming up again. I didn’t want to go there. I didn’t want to face the reality of what it all meant. The possibility that my teacher knew the truth, that she knew I was being abused.

My child self may have thought that bunny helped, because my child self didn’t know any better. But my adult self knows that a bunny wasn’t going to help me. A bunny wasn’t what I needed to be safe. A bunny wasn’t going to stop my mother from hurting me. I needed someone to help me. I needed someone to be my voice. Instead all I got was a plush bunny.

That teacher wasn’t the only person to stay silent. There were others: teachers, family members, family friends. Some of them admitted that they knew something was going on but just didn’t want to get involved, they didn’t want to cross any lines. Then there were other people who had to have known, but just ignored the signs.

It hurts. Sometimes it hurts worse than what my mother and father did to me. I think that it’s hard for people to understand. It doesn’t make much logical sense. How could being ignored hurt worse than the actual abuse?

It’s a different type of pain. It’s not the sting from a cut or the ache from a bruise or shooting pain of a broken bone. It’s a deep pain in your heart. The pain of being invisible. The pain of being unworthy of anyone’s love or attention. The pain of being so worthless that no one would help you.

My parents always told me to stay silent. Did they tell all of those other people, too? Why did no one speak for me? Why didn’t they help? Why did they stay silent? How was I supposed to know I mattered if no one ever acted like I mattered?

I was a child who held out hope that someone would save me. I needed to matter to someone. I needed to be seen. But time and time again, people turned their backs on me. I wanted my parents to be wrong. Instead I grew up believing they must have been right.

Don’t shatter my fantasy

~ KJ ~ 7 Comments

I’m juggling a lot of emotions right now. Anger. Sadness. Mostly anger, though. I’m not really sure I want to feel any of it, but I think I have to. I’ve buried enough anger throughout the years to know that burying it doesn’t make it go away.

Anger is not a dead body that stays forgotten beneath the surface once you bury it.  Anger is a seed that grows into weeds that grow and take over until you dig them up. The anger seeps into everything you do, until the day you dig it back out. But by then it takes so much effort to get rid of the anger, that you start to question why you buried it in the first place. It takes much more effort to bury and dig than to embrace and release.

So I am letting myself be angry. I’m not burying anything. But now my problem is directing my anger in the right place.

At first, I directed the anger towards my therapist. I left our therapy session on Thursday uncomfortably angry. I felt the walls of my life breaking down and she was the one doing the breaking.

I shared a part of my childhood with her, a part that I had never connected to anything other than childhood oddity. I’ve shared it with other people over the years, largely because it was one of the very few parts of my childhood that I didn’t associate with anything bad, so never felt any pain in sharing it. Some people thought it was funny, and some were grossed out. But no one ever thought it was sad. That is, until Thursday.

Don’t you think that’s sad?

What? Why does she think this is sad? It’s not. Please laugh. Please be grossed out. Please be something, anything, but please, don’t make this sad.

The thoughts started running through my mind. Why didn’t I realize this all before?  This wasn’t just a weird childhood behavior. Healthy children don’t save their poop and hide it. But I did. I held on to it because I didn’t want to lose any more pieces of myself than I already lost. It is sad.

But I couldn’t connect with the sadness right away. Instead I connected with anger.

I spent all these years believing in the innocence of something only to have it all turned upside down. Why? Why is this being taken away from me? I’ve already lost so much, and now I’m losing things I didn’t even realize I never had to begin with. I lost my good family. Now I’m losing my good childhood. This wasn’t just about the poop. This was about all of the snippets of my childhood that I held onto as being good and innocent. They’ve all been ripped away from me.

I believed in a fantasy, much like children believe in Santa Claus. But children don’t believe in Santa forever. Eventually someone comes along, tells them the truth, and shatters the fantasy.

And there my therapist was, telling me the truth and shattering the fantasy of my childhood. And I was mad. Mad at her for taking this good away from me. Why did she want me to see the truth? Why couldn’t she just let me believe in the magic a little longer? Doesn’t she know I’ve lost enough already?

I didn’t say anything. I swallowed my anger and let it burn, because part of me knew that this really wasn’t my therapist’s fault. It was mine.

I didn’t see the connection all this time. It all became so obvious when my therapist started talking about it, but it was everything I should have already known, that I did already know but chose to ignore. It was my fault. The truth was there and I avoided it the whole time. I rationalized what shouldn’t have been rationalized. I minimized something that wasn’t minimal at all. This was my fault. Now I am angry at me.

I have been putting so much time and energy into holding onto pebbles, holding onto the smallest bits of seemingly neutral life experiences, that I’ve been ignoring the giant mountain of trauma right behind me. I don’t want to acknowledge that those pebbles aren’t really just pebbles; they are actually pieces of the mountain that managed to break off and roll down without hurting me.

The realization that those parts of my childhood that I have been holding on to for so long are not what I thought they were is hard to accept. It’s another loss, in  my already overwhelming abyss of all I’ve lost already. It’s a deep sadness that I am not sure I can ever get out of.

I am angry. I am sad. Now make it all go away.

Dear K Explained

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

After I posted the letter to K last night, I was emotionally exhausted. It was the first time I read the letter in its entirety, and the emotions I had experienced during the last three days of writing it had hit me all at once. I wanted to write more, I wanted to explain, but I couldn’t. I ended up crying myself to sleep, hoping that would be the last time that I had to feel it. But it wasn’t.

I didn’t want to write a letter at all. How do I write to a stranger? How do I write to someone who I’m not even sure is there?  I didn’t even really want to talk about K, let alone write a letter to her. But my therapist encouraged me to think about writing a letter to K after session last week, and since my therapist has yet to steer me in the wrong direction, I followed her suggestion.

I’ve had such a disconnect from K for so long, partly to protect myself, and partly because of the guilt I felt about her absence. Her loss is connected with one of the worst experiences in my life, an experience I end up reliving each time I think about her and what she went through.

I never knew K. She took care of my parts before I knew I had parts. She was there, protecting me and the others, as I spent my younger years in blissful ignorance of my DID. K was the reason I made it through childhood. 

But then K went away, on the night my father attacked me, the night I got beaten for being depressed. I don’t know all that happened. I still only remember small parts of that night. But I do know that’s when everything changed. That’s when the voices started. That’s when Charlie came to be. That’s when my life became chaos.

I learned who K was over the years, and I was able to put all of the pieces of who she was together. I missed her. I never knew her, but I missed what she did for me. My life before that night was vastly different from my life after. The difference was her.

I also felt an immense sense of guilt. She disappeared because of me. I couldn’t fight back my father. I couldn’t stand up for myself. I wasn’t strong enough, and I let her take all of the pain. I don’t even know what happened. That’s the frustrating part. I don’t even know why she had to go away.

I just know that, if that night never happened, K would still be here. If I just fought my father back, K would still be here. If I would have just acted normal, K would still be here. If I hadn’t been depressed, K would still be here. K is gone because of me.

It’s why I never talk about her much. I feel at fault. She existed because of me. She left because of me. Why couldn’t I just be better, stronger, and more courageous? Why did I have to be so weak?

As I started writing the letter, all I could think about was how sorry I was. I was sorry she had to exist. I was sorry she had to work so hard to protect us. I was sorry she had to endure something so horrible that she had to go away. I was overcome with so much guilt that I couldn’t see anything else. The first sentence I wrote down was not a “hello” or “thank you”. It was “I’m so sorry.”

It took me three days to finish that letter. The emotions were so overwhelming for me that I had to step away several times so I wouldn’t break down completely. I felt sadness. I felt guilt and shame. I felt a sense of loss over someone I didn’t even know was there. I felt for my parts, too. They lost a mother. Really, they lost two mothers; one I caused to go away and one I took us away from.

I thought I had got it all out. I thought that once I wrote those words down, the feelings and emotions would disappear. But they didn’t. As much as I wanted to read the letter to my therapist, I worried that speaking it out loud would make the feelings all come back. And they did come back, stronger than ever. Guilt. Shame. Sadness. Confusion. Loss. Hurt. Pain. I cried for her. I cried for my parts. I cried for me.

I didn’t understand why she left us. Why did she have to go?

I still need her. I can’t be her. I can’t love. I can’t nurture. I can’t be caring. I can’t protect anyone. I’m not K. My therapist says that I am all of those things. Those qualities were K, but they are me, too; they always have been. But I just can’t see it.

K was all of those good things. K got hurt and went away. I am not any of those good things. I wasn’t the one who got hurt.

K is not me, and I am not K.

I can’t be.

Endless fear

~ KJ ~ 5 Comments

When the doorbell rings, normal people stop what they’re doing, see who’s there, and answer the door.

When the doorbell rings, I stop what I’m doing. My heart races, so much that I can hear it beating in my ears. I can’t breathe. I don’t want to breathe, because I’m afraid if I do, they will know I am here. Five different scenarios run through my head, and none of them are good (or even rational). I always end up hiding in the closet or the bathroom, waiting for the worst to happen.

One incident is enough to drain me for the rest of the day. By the time I’ve calmed down (minutes, sometimes hours later), I have no energy left to do anything but sleep.

But yesterday, the doorbell rang (and was followed by several knocks on the door) not once, not twice, but six times.

I was a wreck. The first two times it happened, I was downstairs and locked myself in the bathroom. I was able to calm myself down after ten or so minutes. Then when it happened a third time, the panic was overwhelming. It was too much. I didn’t feel safe. I locked every lock and closed every window, then went upstairs to my room and locked my door.

Then it happened a fourth time. My mind went into overdrive. My mother found me. She knows I’m here. It’s the only thing that made sense. Who else would be ringing the bell and knocking so consistently? Not the mailman. Not a solicitor. It was someone who wanted me to open that door. It’s her.

By the time the bell rang a sixth time, I had barricaded my door with so much crap that no one would be able to push their way in. But I still didn’t feel safe. I knew where I was. I knew I was in my bedroom. I knew the doors were locked and I was blocked in. But I still felt in danger. I was scared of my mother. My mother, who doesn’t even know where I live.

I was still on edge even after the ringing and knocking stopped. Every single noise made me jump. Every car passing outside. Every creak of the floor. Every step the cat took downstairs. Every sound was magnified and I couldn’t make it stop.

My body was tired, but I couldn’t sleep. I spent hours fighting battles inside, trying to stay in the safe reality while my mind was tied to the dangerous past. After several hours, I gave up. I took just enough medicine to knock me out, because I knew that was the only way I was going to make it through.

Now as I’m sitting here, a day later, I’m wondering when it will stop. When will I not have to hide? When will I feel safe? When will I not be afraid of my mother? When will I not live in constant fear?

Is any of that even possible?

People don’t understand the fear I carry with me every day. You’re free now. Yea, I’m physically free. Mentally, I am still in prison. I am still a scared child. I am still in danger. Your mother won’t hurt you anymore, you got away. Exactly. I got away. I was never supposed to be able to leave her. I committed the ultimate sin, and now I am perpetually waiting for my punishment.

I’m tired. I’m tired of hiding every time there’s a knock at the door, because I’m afraid she will come in and get me. I’m tired of wearing four shirts and three pairs of underwear every day because I’m afraid she will come and hurt me. I’m tired of sleeping with a knife under my pillow every night because I’m afraid she will come and kill me.

I’m tired of living my life in fear, because it’s not the life I want to live.

Lies

~ KJ ~ 13 Comments

I’ve been struggling with a memory for the last couple of days. It came up inadvertently in therapy on Monday.

My therapist asked if I could smell anything. I have issues with smell, due largely in part to a deviated septum I got as a child when a classmate accidentally kicked me upside the face. I never went to the hospital; my mother insisted I was fine. I just sat in the office with ice packs covering my bloody nose and face.

I found the need to justify my mother’s inaction. She cares. She’s taken me to the hospital before. I recalled several visits to the ER to have Lego blocks removed from my nostrils (my mother wasn’t happy about those incidents). Then I recalled the major hospital incident of my youth: the time I walked into the wall.

My brother was playing a video game. Super Mario Bros. 3 on Nintendo. I can remember that part.

Then I remember sitting in the backseat of the car, surrounded by bloody wash cloths and towels. Don’t look. Just keep holding it there. We were driving for a long time. We lived just minutes from the hospital, but that’s not where my father went. He drove all the way to a hospital in the next county.

I remember laying in the hospital bed, staring at the lights above me. I couldn’t feel anything, but I knew what was going on. I just focused on the lights as the doctor stitched up my face. No more bleeding.

What I can’t remember is what happened in between. How did my face get like that? My parents always told the story that I walked into a wall. I was just being clumsy and careless and smacked my face right into the bedroom wall. I never really questioned it as a child. What child would?

Saying it out loud the other day made me realize how bizarre the incident was. How I could have walked into a wall and caused that type of damage? How could a little girl walk into anything with that much force to cause a deep cut across her lip like that? How was my nose spared? Wouldn’t that have hit the wall first? And why did we drive so far away to get help? I have all these questions that I don’t have the answers to.

I still have the scar (thankfully less prominent) 20+ years later. What I don’t have is the memory of how I got it. All I have to go on is a story.

The last couple of days have been full of memory flashes of what happened after, but nothing of what caused the damage. It’s frustrating for me. I want to know. Why can’t I know the truth?

Maybe I did walk into the wall. But why can’t I remember doing that?

Maybe I did walk into the wall. Because why would my parents lie?

I ask myself that last question and realize that my parents have lied most of their lives. They’ve lied to themselves. They’ve lied to their family. And they’ve lied to their children.

There’s been so many lies, that I can’t even figure out what was truth. Even the most insignificant things were lies. My mother lied about where I was born. I didn’t find out until I went to get a Social Security card after I ran away, and ended up giving what I found out to be inaccurate information. My birthplace was wrong. My mother’s name on my birth record did not match what I knew her name to be. I haven’t been able to get my birth certificate because I don’t have the right information to verify who I am. As if I didn’t struggle with figuring out who I am enough, I can’t even figure out the most basic components of my identity. I know my name is the truth. That’s about it.

I was a child who believed what my parents said because that’s what children are taught to do. Trust your parents. They don’t lie to their children to hurt them. Sure, parents lie about Santa Claus and the tooth fairy. But they don’t lie about birthplaces and bleeding faces.

Maybe I’m just overanalyzing. Maybe it wasn’t a lie. Maybe I did just walk into the wall in just the right way. But how the hell can I know truths when so much has been lies?