Something
It's nearly midnight, I've been 38 years old for 24 hours, and I'm not sleeping. I forgot to take my pill. Richard is snoring away, and I'm thinking about why I can't sleep. For many years it was a mystery to me; a brain defect that no one could explain, a female thing. Sleepwalking. Night terrors. Imagining things, remembering things. Remembering. Ay, there's the rub.
For years, since at least the year I turned seven, I had this scene in my head, starring me. It never made any sense. How could I remember something that didn't happen? Did I see it in a movie, or read it in a book? No, because it was dark and it was my bed, and there was a man in it. I knew things I shouldn't have known. Should I? Should I have known what the truth was? And then one night, during the time of my greatest crisis, when the desire for my own death was the strongest thing I knew, I suddenly knew something else. What my father did. And why my brain was turning against me. Everything became clear, and intercourse was suddenly something else. Forever. How could I have grown on, had sexual experiences of my own, and not have known? I don't know. I only know my brain was hiding it from me. Or trying to hide it. But like an incomplete puzzle, my brain never had all the defenses available. It hadn't been able to build them. The trauma was too great. And now, when sleep should come and gift me with blessed forgetfulness, and healing rest, my brain can not let go. Can not let me sleep. Can not let me dream. In case I might remember. It keeps me up, tense, waiting. Anxiety was the thing that protected me; ever-vigilance, like a soldier at her post. If I was awake, I would know when it would happen again. I could defend myself. Surely.
Now, ever-vigilance is my curse. At night, when there is no longer any danger, I wait. I wait for the door to open, for the glint of light in the hall. For the grunting, heavy steps. For the knob to turn. For my father to come into my room. And I am afraid. Afraid to be called "baby." Afraid to be forced to touch him in a way I was too young to even remotely comprehend. Afraid that something frightening would happen. Years later, when I know what that frightening thing was, and my father is dead and gone into ash in a box, I am still afraid of . . . I don't know what. Afraid. Vigilant. Watchful. And awake. And no matter how much I wish for relaxation, wish for logic, wish for reason to make my body rest, all I have is wakefulness. The hours tick on, and I am awake. Awake so much, I wonder if I'm losing my mind. Awake so often, I don't know what it is to be alive. To be rested. To be safe. Even when I am.
A bright girl
When I was small, I would lie in bed, tense, waiting for my father to come home. The hours would tick away, the night impossibly long. I remember heat, sweating all night, the sheets refusing to be cool no matter how many times I turned over my pillow. The hallway: not quite dark, and full of shadows. I remember the way the light from the streetlamp would throw strips of light on the wall from between the blinds on the window, and the slow-moving pan of a spotlight moving across the ceiling, changing shape as it went, when a car would come down the street.
It was Staten Island; we were broke. The elevator didn’t work in the projects we were in. That was fine with me though, because the elevator was a dark horror to me that I would not, could not, enter. It had a mouth, with snapping, unpredictable jaws for doors. The hallway was tiled institutional yellow, with brown flecks in it. I would move down the hall, counting the tile blocks, and reading the many warning signs.
The world had opened up for me, and there was a universe to know through its words. I read cereal boxes, toothpaste tubes, and every magazine at the doctor’s office, every sign at the welfare department, every ad on the bus. The adults around me were always whispering about me. They told my mother I was a bright child; maybe even too smart for my own good. When I wound up in the hospital that summer from a fall, I told the doctor who set my broken wrist and told me that I was a brave girl, that I also knew what a penis was. I was four, or nearly four. And every night, I was afraid.
"How it has been hard like flint . . .
. . . and soft as a spring pond;" that's my life (althought the words are from Mary Oliver). The dark patches have been very, very dark, and the pain struck like a match given spark, without warning, and they scarred. But when seen as a whole, the dark patches are like black and blue threads shot through a richer tapestry, and the good has been, is, pretty good. In every day, there is kindness. Here's the best part: every day now, I get to work for someone who gives a damn, and as anxious as I am about it, it absolutely charges me up in the mornings. I want to go to work again, and do well. That's a great feeling. The dark stuff; well, perhaps it will always be there, but passion is everything. Wanting to be good at something, wanting to succeed, and getting excited about it. I have a boss who gets absolutely charged up about promoting his business. That makes marketing a very good place to be indeed. And lucky for me, the office is (literally) full of light. No dark patches there.
I realize I'm speaking vaguely. The fact is that the stress I am under is very, very hard to talk about. Not that I couldn't go on about it; I could. But it is of a subject that changes the relationships I have with people. Being someone who's dealt with, dealing with, sexual trauma is to live with not only the stress of what happened, but the stress of being treated differently, if you're honest about what happened. You are forever the person who "that terrible thing" happened to, and how can you not be fragile? The fact is, I can be as hard as flint, steel, rock; I can ignore the pain for years on end. I know, because I have. The mind is an incredibly strong organism. It protects itself. Stress happens, and I just keep on charging on. It is only when I have to slow down, when I have to depend on other people to deal with the stressors that I break down. It's like running out of a burning building, and then realizing you are on fire. That's when I feel vulnerable, when I have to ask someone else for help with my damned problem. I can function if the topic is work: marketing, strategic advantage, customer positioning, communications, collateral, image, brand. But when it's about me, I don't even want to be in the room. Can't someone else deal with me, the inside of my head, the dark chasm that opens up in my brain in the dark, when I'm supposed to be resting? Ah, but the dead of night is when the monsters wake up, isn't it? Darn, sorry. I'm being vague again.
I suppose I'll just have to start talking about the problem, won't I? Be who I am, rather than seem to be something I'm not. I know I can be both people: the one who can make things happen, and the one who had things happen to her and survived. Because I am her. I don't know why I want to pretend I'm one and not the other. Probably because it would be really nice not to be her. No such luck, though. She is who I am.
