Wr1tt3n0ne

Bunches and bunches
2017-04-03 15:16:00 (UTC)

Half a Dozen of One, Six of the Other

Throughout my life I have had moments of intense feelings, colors, moments where I felt so damn alive. I cherished these and felt special in these minutes. I use them as writing fodder and ways of interpersonal connection. They make me happy, light, and playful.

Not all of what trauma left me is so thoroughly rotten. Awful, scaring, and frightening, yes, indeed, but also highlighting. I feel deeper than others, I think, the colors sometimes taste and hear for me, having been hurt, I can feel empathy, be more insightful, more nuanced in my understanding of others, when I can. That is the caveat, when I can. The downsides do prevent much of that, being withdrawn, anxious, and depressed doesn't help my relationships or enable me to fully explore the upsides. Hate is a simple emotion, and certainly one I am not above feeling, but I am too complex for that, my past is too complex, the purer emotions like hate, rage, and vengeance are pathetically oversimplified.

I get something from being complicated. Maybe a misplaced sense of superiority, maybe a charming character turn, likely really both. It makes my inner life richer for all the time I have spent there. There was a story once of a man ( Henry Joseph Darger, Jr.) who wrote some fantasy fiction by the thousands of pages and no one knew until he died. Complex. Hopefully, I won't be noticed only when I die. I hope, against the odds to be noticed while I live and breathe.

I recall on my, have no idea what number since I went to so many, therapist, walking into the session, sitting composedly, listing off a minor personal history with probably diagnosis, issues I felt I had and an overview of my commitment to the process right down to the visits weekly, in my educated opinion, I might need. To a surprised murmur of consent when I paused for agreement. Then the look on the therapist's face when I finally made eye contact. "You sure are self-aware!" "Naturally, after years of therapy that is the very least I should hope to be. But you see self-aware isn't enough and so I am here."

I gather from her response I was almost inappropriately self-aware. I had something like four of my favorite people die in as many years as a child culminating with my mother's death. Lots of my friends know this. What I never share is I took care of my mommy as she became too sick to care for herself and helped her, because she begged me to, to cover up her illness from my father so he would not force her into the hospital. I knew it was wrong at the time, even though I was barely in school at that point. My mother died ultimately from liver failure and in the end she was jaundiced and bedridden. I knew it first and made sure to cover her window with a yellow afghan so the light was yellow colored, changed the light bulbs in her room, cooked barely for her to eat, washed the soiled bed linens when she was not able to reach the restroom, and walked two miles home from kindergarten after having lied and slipped away from the yard teacher who dismissed us. And my homework. Had to show her my homework, completed perfectly as she was a teacher.

It is that last line that daggers my heart. That mundane part of my life with her that bonded us so that even now I struggle through tears, that lump in my throat burning, transfixed with grief. I miss my Mommy. As purely now as ever, she left the world and me thirty years ago.

I can feel her loss and the bottomless grief even now. I can connect to those feeling because I have been abused. Ironic that it makes us closer to our base selves, even as we are alienated from our emotions. I want to get to that point where I can still feel like it all happened a second ago and be undiminished. Therapists have never understood this dichotomy about me, wanting to be healed and yet not at peace. Perhaps it is a character fault, but I bled for it and it is mine and transcribing it into art, even if it hurts me anew, gives my suffering some sort of meaning.




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