A Witness for a Past Life
This year so far has had me deep in the 50,000 word book I’ve been working on for a decade, re-reading, remembering, editing, preparing for other eyes. I’m consumed by how to write true and also spare, an old fragmentation. There is still a long way to go.
This year has me back in therapy again in that necessary living with(in) complex trauma type of way. Here too, a long way to go, even though I have been in and out of therapy since I was 7 or 8 years old. I do know that there are many ways to find witness and so I keep writing, too, I keep feeling too, even when it feels like it has all been said and felt.
For weeks now, two songs are ensnared in my repeat listening:
In today’s CBAW writing workshop (register and come if you want— every Friday!) my friend, my fave Seema Reza asks us to write towards— “What do you surrender to?”. I share because I know what I write is not only mine.
And all at once I am a child again in trouble again, so difficult, I am.
I refuse and spit and scream.
Into the bedroom alone I go. I gather my stack of books from the library. I check on the paper cup I’ve been tending, the tiny fur-encased seed at the bottom. I water religiously, I pray it will grow into a furry animal no one has ever seen before. I use what I learned in the Sunday school I am forced to attend.
A friend. A witness. Maybe even a protector, the last a brave wish I’m not sure I ever uttered.
I sit next to the heating and cooling vent, pray and steady my intentions. In school Missy tells me that if I just sit by the vent, I will be shuttled away. She also tells me she has huge metal spikes that come up through the floor so I’ll have to wear thick soled boots because the vent from my house to hers will shoot me into the basement. I believe her but I am not afraid. By sheer will, I learned to stop being afraid long ago. The only thick soled boots I can find are the ones my father wears to the Marine base for work, no matter. Bare-footed, I use what I learned; I pray next to the vent “Please take me, anyways.”
I’m receiving the message, no really, I am hearing it clearly. I might not survive this home and of course it would be my own fault. Why can’t I just get in line? Why must I always talk back? Incessant, insistent, indignant.
I am 5, I am 8, I am 17, I am 27, I am 34, I am 42. The flame, the heat rips into me and shoots me into sky. Justice has never meant much; I can not catch my breath.
Alone is the child who is made the target, absorbed the anger in the house. It fills the belly that has refused to eat with the family— gotta control what we can, no?, hums incessantly when I am trying to sleep.
It fills, makes bad. It comes back up, erupts.
Every pulse of my breath, a lashing.
So I stop.