Pillar of Light

BetterLife
2022-12-09 15:01:55 (UTC)

Time

My sister sent me a Snapchat memory from 3 years ago of my toddler when she was a newborn. My middle son was 10. The thing that caught my attention was his voice in the background; just making comments about the baby “oh my god, did you see that? How did she do that!”. I had to listen to it 5 times to make sure that was really his voice, because now he sounds like a man.
I tell him almost everyday how I can’t believe how big he got, and how he’s taller than me. But it hit me even harder that not long ago he was just a little kid with a baby voice.

I flipped through some pictures. He was such a sweet little thing, and always clinging to me. One picture took me back to a moment on vacation when he was a toddler. He got tired while taking a walk on the beach, he didn’t want my husband carrying him, he wanted me. But I wasn’t strong enough to carry him so I found a hammock chair and rocked him to sleep.

My husband got annoyed then like he does now when my daughter does the same thing. He mimics “mommy, mommy”, “everyone just loves mommy”.

The thing is…with a memory. I don’t think they are ever really forgotten. Sure our brains are only capable of accessing and processing only so little…but our soul never forgets. That’s also a reason we get scarred with trauma even if we don’t “remember” what really happened.

The same person you are born as is the same person you grow old as. You can learn, change in personality, intellect, looks, the way you respond to things; but I feel that once you die time disappears and it’s all one.

I witnessed disturbing events as a child involving a dead body which I somehow suppressed until I was an adult. Then one day I was pretty stoned when I touched the handle of a walk in cooler, and suddenly the entire 2 days of memories came flooding back. I tried to explain to myself that it must have been a dream that I made up in my head.
But I saw and felt the details, as myself at that age probably 5 or 6.
I can still see the cold and distant look on my grandfathers face, walking out of the freezer with blood on his shirt saying “she shouldn’t be here”. And driving me back to his house. I was so worried about him and loved him so much, that’s why I sat on the floor just waiting for him to come out.
Then I remembered the night before. I was playing the arcade in the back of the pizzeria when my uncle came to the back door. My father and other uncle went out back, and there was this stress and panic.
They carried in this big heavy thing in a black garbage bag. We were around it for a while while they were discussing what to do.
They opened the bottom and took shoes, and jewelry off the “mannequin”. I asked if I could have the gold ring, and they yelled at me and put it on the high window ledge along with the watch.
Then they dragged the black bag to the freezer.
I also remembered being in the freezer with my brother and youngest uncle. I’m not sure what day, but all we saw was a hand. I thought it was a gag gift like a Whoopie cushion, so me and my brother took turns waving it around and scaring each other with it. Yeah fuckin gross. Then my uncle took it back and started to cut one of the fingers. He immediately ran to the bathroom to puke. When my father realized I was where I was he kicked me out and forbid me from ever being there again.
I even remembered telling my mom when she picked us up. We were all excited like mom there was a scary hand! And me and my brother arguing if it was fake or real. My mom was just driving and not paying us much mind, like “oh that sounds fun” thinking we were joking.

I kind of know the full story, after my brother told me a story. It all fit together. My uncle was stopped at a light in Brooklyn, and a mugger came up to his open window with a gun at his head. My uncle grabbed the guys wrist and turned it, shooting the mugger in the head. It was self defense, only everything he did after that was not normal.
It explains the time me and my sister were watching a crime show…I said “that’s the murderer!” And my father flipped the fuck out on us screaming “No he’s not a murderer!” Just because he killed somebody it doesn’t make him a murderer, you don’t know anything! We were just so scared the way he was screaming at us. It was definitely personal.

So this has been very long, but there is a reason. I seem to know why I have so many demons inside me, and how my parents screwed me up.
I hear that parents take their own trauma into raising their own kids…but I always make a point not to.
So when my middle son says things about all this anger he has in him…I try to figure out WHAT HAPPENED? What happened to him that I may have not payed attention to like my mom did to me?
Or is it that I try so hard to protect them, that they look too much to me for comfort..and now that he’s growing up he doesn’t know how to deal with normal day to day stresses.

Could it be that he is such an empath that he is truly affected by my husband and I having issues. Even though our issues never involved violence or abuse, so I can’t imagine that is enough to give a kid anxiety and anger.

All I know is that I’m here for him, I love him with all my heart and soul. And I will do everything in my power to make sure he has a better life than I have.




Ad: