You might not know if the W in “WTF Am I” stands for Who, What, or Where. Don’t worry, we’re gonna answer all of that. Also, I’m just gonna talk to y’all like we’re besties, and this book is gonna be extraordinarily disorganized. I’m gonna jump from topic to topic like a rubber bullet ricocheting off the inside of a metal can. It’s just my personality. #sorrynotsorry.
I started working on this book prior to my first and only visit to the nut house (which, of course, we will cover in great detail in later chapters). As of August 2018, these were the working titles for this book:
Sunrise Mountain Lion
Escape Artistry for Dummies
When Purity Kills
Virginal Suicide
Dumb Bitch
The Smartest Girl in the World
Here was (and still is) the confirmed subtitle:
“A memoir of surviving sadism, evangelical escape, and the poison of purity.”
Right now, I’m nestled away in a ridiculously boujee treatment center in Los Angeles. My stay was prompted by a sudden series of vivid flash backs chronicling my painfully abusive childhood. These PTSD black outs started September 2nd, 2018, after a long nine-months of EMDR with the greatest doctor on the face of the planet. #karenismyhomie.
EMDR is fuckin’ amazing. But before I go into details about that (see the future chapter on memories and the utterly magnificent brain), let me explain what I know about myself...for sure.
I’ve been clean and sober for over 12 years, and became quite the therapy nerd in college. I didn’t graduate high-school on time. I was too depressed and unstable and abused to show up for class on a regular basis. I never slept, but didn’t know I never knew it. Drugged with anesthesia. Intense, I know…we’ll get into that later.
In 2006, I achieved recovery from alcoholism and self-harming behaviors (bulimia, mostly), and I did a shit-ton of homework. Brain homework and heart homework and soul homework and dancing. I was a broken high school student, but a brilliant client and expressive artist. I was determined. A sponge. I had to be. If I wanted to live.
I believe we all have persevering resilience buried within us. The problem isn’t our ability to change, thrive, or spread the loving light we carry. We’re all capable. We’re rad. Each and every one of us. As human beings, we have access to the accumulative power of small, incremental changes. The problem isn’t life. The problem lies in our untangled minds; they are full of illusions that find us and bind us and blind us. The human body is riddled with false narratives and competing voices that keep us trapped in cyclical patterns of behavior we wish to transcend…but typically can’t…
But we can…we can change...if we become escape artists.
I didn’t know I was a master escape artist until I had a semi-crush on a boy I didn’t even want to be with. It wasn’t really a sexual crush, per se...it was more like a “friend-crush.” That “OMG, we HAVE to be best friends or my life will be missing something SUPER important even though I’ve been absolutely fine without knowing you until this moment.”
Let’s call him Ian. We attended the same Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous meeting, which was frustrating, since I was attending these meetings to eradicate crushing in the first place. I love my husband. He rocks. I’ve never been unfaithful - and didn’t wanna start - just because my vagina was screaming profanities...insisting I should pay attention to tattooed, rebellious, bad-boys trapped in pretentious, nice-boy clothes.
But even though I ignored my vagina...and my “friend-gina”...I listened carefully to his story. I listened to the crush’s story, that’s is. I read between the lines. And the message he shared was nearly identical to mine. And when he spoke, memories of my blocked out childhood came back quite suddenly. The poetry flooded my being. The art of my soul told me the facts I’d sworn to forget.
Because I was simultaneously doing EMDR, Crush Boy’s memories were triggering mine. He didn’t even need to say much. Mention a little church. Mention a little family. Mention a little fantasy. He was literally giving me back my brain.
Here is an example of the extraordinarily strange journal entries prompted by attending SLAA, and befriending my Bro, Ian:
Yesterday, Ian and I verbalized what we already knew – that we were all equally fucked up. All of us sitting at the table had been both manipulated prey and manipulating predators. While being petrified of each others’ sexuality and its infinite magnetism, we refused any fictitious power our traumas held over us…and that’s when we became teammates. Ian and I. We became real human friends instead of weird, crush-avoidant, half-strangers. At least, that’s what happened for me. To be frank, he could have felt nothing. Which is hilarious to imagine.
But there’s something else that happened at the end of the meeting. We held hands during the serenity prayer, and there was energy pulsating from our palms (my palms). And even though I didn’t do it, because it would have been outrageously inappropriate, I wanted to grab his fist and hold it up to my face, and squeeze it as hard as I could. I wanted to break the bones in his hand with the seriousness of my convictions. I wanted to look him straight into his pupils. I wanted to burrow my She-Powers deep into his amygdala, and tell him he’s going to make it. “Dude, you’re gonna make it. Don’t give up.” #talkabouttransference.
You know what I really wanted to do? I wanted to sober up his fucking brain. My brother’s brain? Ian’s brain? And which brother? I don’t know. I didn’t know for sure.
I wanted him to remember everything. Everything that had ever happened to him. I wanted him to remember, like me. I wanted us to match so I had a partner in crime. I wanted him to be my ally. #thisiscalledtraumabonding.
I wanted to say:
“Dude, Bro, you’re going to make it. You’re going to make it out of this fucking house. You’re gonna make something of yourself, and be big. Get out. Get the fuck out of here. And if I have to stay behind so you can get out, I will. I’m going to do it. I’m too far gone. Too broken. But you’re a runner – I know it. Big brothers have longer legs.
“M—, he’s never let you run before; he tried to break your legs like he broke mine. But you’ve always had arms, motherfucker! You use ‘em. You put him in his place before he puts you in yours. You’re mischievous. You can crawl out the crevices of these barred up windows once he’s asleep. You can sneak out without getting caught. You’re addicted to travel. So just do good...‘be good.’ Perform. Stay secretive. Keep your head down, and get out. Forget Jesus! Save yourself.
“Hey A—, Bro – listen to me. Look me in the eyes. Do it! Do what I say, damn it! Look me in the eyes even though you’re used to staring at the floor. You’re a bad ass. You have resilience and strength and tenacity even though he never let you know it. You’re tough, even though he softens you. You’ve got brains, and wit, and demons in the closet that were stripped away from me when he made me into his stripper.
“Hey, M—. Big Bro. Hey, I’m not done yet. Don’t run away yet. I know it seems surreal. But I’m not full of shit, I swear. Despite what he tells you. I don’t have a fuckin’ ‘mood disorder.’ So listen. Support me for once. Placate me if you have to think of it that way. It’s just one more thing, I swear. I’m locking the door so you have to listen.
“You have Superpowers, Bro. Superpowers I don’t. You can dance people’s minds! You trick mine all the time. I’m gullible and virginal and femmy and young. But I trust you. Why? Because I know you know how to read him...and dodge him...and stroke his ego to evade the strokes. I watched you watch him my whole life. You’re a quiet watcher with knives in your back pocket. I put them there. I put those knives there. I gave them to you so you could stick it to him. I was your helper. I tried to cry wolf, but I was too weak...and Mom couldn’t hear...’cause she was ‘asleep.’ I know you’re sharp, but be careful. Be kind. Don’t be like them. Don’t hurt the lambs. Be good to the weak. Your competition is fierce , so remember we’re broken. It’s the only thing that will bring gentleness into your life...empathy into your heart. You think you know how to empathize, but you don’t. You punish on accident...when people inconvenience your image...when they threatening to steal your trophies...when they know something about you, you think they have ‘leverage.’ But they don’t. They’re just humans. Stop being mean. It’s not your fault when it happens...you just can’t remember.
“And Little Brother, A—, I made sure you knew you were something. Something worthwhile. Something important...worth saving. Be kind to yourself like when I was kind to you. I held you every night to make sure you made it to sleep without dying from the shivers he sent down your spine. Sometimes I thought you were dead. A dead, lifeless baby. Cold and blue, just like you were born. Dad always said you were born blue in the face. Maybe it wasn’t a story.
“You were paralyzed and couldn’t move. That’s what happens when we visit the doctor...or they visit us. I was terrorized by the thought of you being in danger...because, like me, you always were. Panick was my middle name. An obsessive checker and light switcher and counter of steps. Superstitious and careful to stay the the lines.
“Hey, hey. Calm down. It’s cool. Don’t freak out, Man. Sorry. I know it’s a lot. I know it’s so much…you’re probably gonna have a mental breakdown, but you have to know you’re perfectly sane. It’s just a trauma response. It happened to me when the flashbacks returned. Don’t be afraid. Ask for the help you need. Tell a shrink what’s going on. Print out this blog if it helps. But just listen, please? You gotta listen. Just listen to what happened...Ok, thanks.
”I know it’s random, but remember when Mom died? When she turned into a manikin puppet? An emotionally absent Mother Theresa? It’s called ‘battered woman’s syndrome.’ Remember when she became deaf and dumb and gave up her brain to be his eyes and ears? Maybe that didn’t happen to you...’cause you were a boy...and she was needy of your attention. She loved her sons. Can’t let them go. But she got rid of me as soon as she could. As soon as I got my period. She didn’t want her mistress living in the house. Her emotional absence was cold and lonely. Her silent avoidance and vengeance could break my heart. It killed me.
“Remember when the Great Black Cloud snuck into our rooms to ‘punish us’? Do you remember being in the crib, like I do? I was surrounded by a mobile of dirty sensations. It was terrifying. I was cold, wet, shivering under the ceiling fan. Do you remember him ‘crawling into bed’ with us to ‘tuck us in?’ Remember when he had to ‘teach us a lesson?’ Lessons that gave us nightmares of being trapped? Suffocating? Drowning? Chased by criminals? Do you remember the Boogie Man? Remember how Mom had no idea what type of pain she instilled when she threatened to report our ‘rebellious behavior?’ When she threatened to ‘tell your dad?’ When she had the power to inform Him - God of the Universe - of our our ‘disobedience’? Can you see how his chosen religion kept the the demonic hooks active in our brains? 24-hours a day? We revered this patriarchal evangelical god-figure because we ‘were born into sin.’ Sinful for having been born onto Planet Earth. Sinful because it’s a ‘fallen world’ that belong to a fallen angel.
“Well, listen up, Knuckle-Head! Knucklehead who cries uncle. You’re a dumb bitch like I was. And there’s a reason we never feel forgiven. There’s a reason we feel guilty for not answering their phone calls...for parking in the wrong space...for breaking the rules. And there’s a reason we hate going back. For Christmas. For dinner. Especially dinner. We eat alone...subdued...keep to ourselves for a reason.
“Bro, I need you to know that I took it for you...I took it for you. I took it for you as long as I could to keep you safe. I wanted to protect you, Dude. I wanted to protect you. I wanted to protect you! I’m bawling, I’m sorry; you hate it when I cry. I cry all the time, and you can’t stand feeling responsible even though you’re not. I wanted to protect you - I wanted to protect you so bad, and I took it as much as I could. I was told to watch you in the daytime. I babysat like it was my job...’cause it was. And he held your safety over me like a dirty blackmailing judge. I hated him for hurting you. It was a murderous rage....a rage turned inward...which - as the therapists explain - creates depression.
“Oh man, I wanted to protect you…I’m so sorry. I hated myself for failing. For being so pathetically small. For being a stupid girl! For flailing about like a ‘pansy.’ That’s what he used to call us: pansies. I hated myself for being young and disabled. But I didn’t fail all the way. I made myself his favorite. And I eventually got out. You got out, too! And so did M—. He got sucked back in...when he had kids...and they needed support. But we all got out in our own way. We’re out of that damned house. And I gotta remind myself that to stay strong...
“Hey, chin up, Little Bro. Hey Bro, I said chin up! I know I’m mean to you sometimes, but gimme a hug. I’m trying to make you emotionally calloused because I see your pain. It mirrors mine. You display the vulnerability my brain refused to remember. Until now. I play with you and shun you when you’re small. I was a terrible big sister sometimes; you never felt fully included...you always wondered if you belonged. Well, you do. So come here, you Douche! I’ll never dismiss or ignore you again. Never! Never, ever. We got this. Fist bump me. I’m gonna hold onto you as long as you need me. I’m right here. I’m two hours away. I’m alive now. We escaped. We’re safe.
“You can cry if you need; don’t be afraid. No one’s watching us anymore. We don’t have to stay off the grid. We don’t have to be home-bodied agoraphobic, claustrophobic weirdos. Not anymore, at least. We don’t have to be afraid of our own bodies. We don’t have to shower twice a day or live in the squalor of our immature messes. It’s 2018 and I’m not going anywhere. In fact, I came all the way to California to be with you. Treatment centers are everywhere, but I needed to be close by. To see you, and remind myself you’re a grown man. And your capable. Strong. Ready.
“I hate to do this, but I gotta tell you the rest. It’s gonna take a long, long time. It’s a fucked up story without redemption. But I’ll always try to be your Christ. Your bearer of ‘good news.’ Good news that’s so awfully bad it’s pure sin. Bearing the weight of this cross is painfully heavy, but I have to keep you informed. You have to know the details so smiling can happen to you again.
“You used to smile a lot...when you were three...and I was your protector...you real mom. When we lived in the old house...the one you were born in. Caleveros Dr. Our phone number was 602-494-0125. Wait, was that it? Or is that the second chamber we lived in? Oh, the second I lived in. Your first and my second. I forgot about the rental house. When the family was poor...and M— and I ate off TV trays...I always picked Care Bears. Care Bears and He-Man. Those were our favorites. This was before Atari, before you were brought into this cruel family named ‘Curry.’
“‘Dr. Curry. Everyone knows how brilliant his is.’ He’s admired. Left to live on his high-horse alone in the dark. He reads Einstein’s book of relativity for fun. He’s a strategist. Revered at the office. In the hospital. His work. His delightful escape from reality.
“You have to hear the details so you can sleep soundly again. So you can have intimacy with your wife. So your sex life wont be as fucked-up as mine was for six whole years. Knowing is power. The truth will set you free...
“I kept him in my room on purpose. I poked the bear and spit in his face, and I didn’t let him pay a moments’ attention to you so long as I was awake. I tried to do for you what M— tried to do for me when the wooden spoon was his weapon of choice. And I was proud of being a total dick-face. A dominatrix Bitch. I was mean and strong and ready to fight. You know why? ‘Cause you were my son - my baby. Five years younger is a lot! And I was not gonna let my son get devoured by a fucking wolf! I was not gonna let what happened to me happened to you any longer than necessary. And I’m sorry I had to leave; oh God, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. God, that stings. The tears don’t stop. The guilt is hard; it aches. It cuts through my ribs, and sinks to my pelvic floor. God, I’m sorry I left you, A—. I was so torn. Literally. I was 18, 19. I saw the proctologist for anal fissures. There was always blood in my stool. Everything hurt. I even had sphincter surgery. Twice. Grant was my savior. I had to get out.
“‘Why did I leave you?’ Your sweet, young face is staring into the hollowness that I’ve become. I’m a shell of a person. A battered skull. A filthy crotch. A dumb bitch, that’s all. I was always keeping busy to stay away from that monster. Dancing. I was a competitive dancer until Mom made me quit the team. I hated her for that.
“I’m sorry you felt abandoned. Oh babe, I never left you. I never left you, I promise. I just had to get my body out. Out of the room, out of the house, out of the state, out of the country, out of his medicalized drug-obsessed hand, out of his munchausen by proxy, out of that shame-based religion, out of the patriarchal politics, out of anything he’d ever touched. I had to get out because he was going to kill me. I had to detangle his web. His wrecklessly orderless black-windowed web off inevitable death.
“I know you don’t believe me, but he had plans to kill me. I knew it; he said so. He talked about Hell and death with an absense of empathy. Girl Interrupted. You know that movie? I didn’t want to be her. Institutionalized for life? That sounded worse than suicide. Maybe the death was metaphoric; so what. It doesn’t matter. He was going to keep me handicapped and silenced and passed out, withering away in that mansion forever. Living on his million-dollar paycheck, dependent on his doctor friends and pastor friends and considerate contacts. He wanted to build me a guest house in the back yard. He wanted me to dance to Christian music and hang artwork in the church. He resented mom for rejecting me because it kept me far away, pushed me out of the house, made me headstrong, and gave me the strength to cut ties.
“Before I escaped, he wanted me to remain disabled, but blamed me for acting helpless. He wanted me to be a good-little-obedient lamb of God, but scolded me for acting powerless. He’d come into my room at night and punish me for things I’d never done or thought to do. He was obsessed with my virginity…and loyalty…and faithfulness to him…no, wait, to God…no, wait, to Him…no, wait, Christianity…no wait...wait....they’re all the same.
“The ‘Big Black Cloud.’ The incessant shame. The confused reality. It’s just a big mess. A mess he made for us to clean up. A mess he made for us to get tired and submissive and worshipful. A mess he designed to ‘cause us to stumble...into sin’...into lust. Lust for pain. These are the things you might not know in your brain, but recall in your bones. Because they happened to you, too.
“Dude - A— - he made sure everybody thought I was crazy. I’ve been on SSRIs since age eleven. Since the move to Horseshoe Road. Dr. Riccardi was his name; another friend of Steve’s, so happy to see me. He made sure everybody thought I was crazy, and everybody thought you were lost. But guess what? We weren’t! I was stable, and you were smart, and we were doped up on prescription strength antihistamines three times per day. M— was, too. Delsym cough syrups and breathing machines before bed. Cholesterol lowering statins to erase our memories. Read up. Read up on the side effects of that shit. Get smart. He can’t slap the sass out of you anymore. You can’t get too smart for your own good anymore. Get sassy, get smart, spit out the pills.
“Man, we didn’t know WHAT the fuck was going on back then. But I know you knew that I knew you know that I know we knew that there was something between us. Something we couldn’t remember, but never forgot. A traumatic bond that M— had suppressed to survive. He was the first born, the golden child, but I don’t think he was spared. Not in infancy, at least. Not before age seven. Not before the age of reason.
“He said I was an emotional liability, that being myself brought shame to the family. He said I was dangerous without using that word. He was afraid of my body, and resented it. And so did I. He needed me to fear myself and resent myself to stay quiet. But guess what helped me shine? You. You, Bro. You saved my life so many times over, and you never even knew it. How? You didn’t believe him. You never believed him when he called me a liar...because you loved me...and you knew I wasn’t. Thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you for holding my hand, for sending me sunshine, for being my brother, and for keeping me alive.
“When he said I was crazy, I watched your loyalty. I cherished it like a diamond. Besties. We had a pact, a bond to stick it out. But then, I broke. I got weak in the knees. I saw all your ticks. All your compulsive quirks that mirrored mine. An obsession with not getting dirty, a terror of the new things, walking on egg shells to evade getting ‘punished.’ Chatting at school, and quiet at home. Crying over spilled-milk...not because you were entitled, but precisely because you weren’t. None of us were entitled to our own bodies. We had no autonomy. We were medicalized and ruined. And this inner-knowing of mine - this preteen ability to sense you’d been prey - it was like an electrifying awakening; a strike of lightening inside me. It was pure HATE. A hate that could actually KILL. A hate I swallowed, and then refused to swallow, and then swallowed again in a different way. A hate that made me suicidally anorexic.
‘Wait,’ I thought, ‘the same ticks? The same ticks my niece has? The hand-flapping and water-drinking and shivering and robotically stuttered speech? The nightmares and night sweats and chronic sickness? That seeming sudden regressive child developmental stage?’ And I know I’m a sinner for saying it, but I wanted him to die. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to kill him for touching my son. My niece. My nieces! My son. GAWD! FUCK!
Ian! Help me! Ian, I’m so fucking confused. I’m like your dumb bitch mom! You hate me and love me at the same time; you don’t know why I’m your prototype. But I’m NOT your mom! I swear! And I’m healed from my issues...I think. You’re my friend; just give me some fuckin’ advice already! Tell me what to do! You’re my Big Brother! But we’re adults now - we don’t have to wrestle, we just have to TALK. So what do you think? Can I tell them this?
Whoa. What the fuck is happening to me. There are two voices: ‘Ian, you’re the only one in SLAA who’s gonna get this shit. Because you’re my eldest sibling, and I need your help. If I tell my family the truth, they’re gonna hate me and shun me and accuse me of ruining their lives. What if there’s no evidence? Will you hear my 5th Step?’ And the OTHER voice: ‘Wait, no! That’s not appropriate. Tell Bob, Rachel. Tell Karen and Dr. Schulte and Bob. No, don’t tell Bob. Tell the others, but not Bob. Bob freezes up, gets stiff and awkward. He can’t handle the emotionality of being alive. He can’t handle intimacy. He’s like Ian, when married. So Bob’s passion lives elsewhere and his numbness at home. He’s a predator in the office, a corporate success. He’s attracted to prey...but never the powerful ones. For some reason, he doesn’t like them when they have power. He wants to save the innocent train-wrecks. The virginal dumb bitches. The sweet ones. Like me. The self-sabotagers who hold themselves down on their own. He needs you to be girly to feel he’s safe. But you’re not. You HATE being a girl. You’re a WOMAN...a Lioness, damn it.
Oh, Bobby. Sweet Bobby. He loves you but doesn’t know how to love you. He’s such a good man, a safe man, your favorite man. He just can’t handle your pain. He runs away from you. It’s dusguised as work, but hurts the same. Just like Mom. He’s avoidant and absent and impenetrable. He ignores you and pretends he forgot. You’re so fucking tired of playing dumb. But your loyal. To his needs. To his image. That’s how I was trained before we met.
Fuck. I’m stuck. I hate feeling trapped. I have to get outside. Be barefoot and far away from the house...
‘Hey Rach, it’s gonna be Ok. Just wait. Do nothing. Remember. Just remember. Relax and remember and breathe slow. Feel peace. Relief. Self-soothe. I know how to do that now. We know how. We have a Higher Power...sort of. We have a Higher Way. So be still and trust the process.’ That’s what my voice says. My Real voice. My Real Self. My Highest Self. Thank god I’m discovering She’s Me.
“Lil Bro, once I knew you were his prey, something in me lit on fire. Cracked and burned and shot through the sky like bottle rockets on steroids. It was deep and red and overpowering. It was alchemy gone bad. This virginal lamb by day turned into a dancing gazelle at night. I had so much adrenaline in my body; no amount of ‘medicine’ could keep me limp. I starved myself because I wanted to die. And I did die. I died of shame and believing I was evil.
But a few years later, I was sick of hating myself. I was sick of dying. I knew he’d fuck me into suicide. So I started eating...a lot.
I ate the house! I was a crazy, binging, bulimic wreck. I turned my boney anorexic corpse into a Fucking Mountain Lioness. I became a huntress dressed in the skins of prey. I glided. I danced. I worked out like crazy. I was agile and fast and brilliant and dominated every time.
“‘If you dominated, then why did you keep losing? Why we’re you always crying? How did he keep winning?’ you ask. Dude, you don’t remember the shots? He told us about them. At the dinner table, in jest. You have to eat your meat, he said, or I’ll shove it up your rectum.
You better be well-behave, he said, or I’ll give you a shot. And then there was always his routine complaint: Why doesn’t Rachel take her medicine?! He raged when he found dozens of useless pills collected in the trashed up top drawer of my pretty pink bathroom. The medicine I never needed. The medicine prescribed by his charmed-up, philanthropic doctor friends. The same friends convinced of my unwarranted diagnosis by a helicopter parent named Steve. ‘Wow,’ they’d say, ‘You’re so lucky to have such an involved father.’ Samples and samples and samples and samples. Never a real prescription. Well, isn’t that interesting?
Gross.
“He is a toxicologist, after all. He has a 200 square-foot closet of drugs labeled in neatly organized file boxes. Labeled and stacked; a collection of treasures. Let’s not be dumb bitches anymore, Boys. I’m all done being a dumb bitch.
“I know you’re tired. I know you’re tired but wired and want to sleep but can’t. But before you go, I need to talk about the move. The move that killed me. I know you were only five. Matt was thirteen. I wonder if puberty saved him...because he was a boy.
“It was the move that ripped me away from the escape of my Phoenix friends, and fantasy school, and girlscouts. The Calaveros people were suspicious. They were suspicious because I told them. But they were poor; protective of their own kids. There was no internet back then. No dirty laundry hung out to dry. People thought it was shameful, not sad. And so there was nothing. And I don’t blame them.
“When we moved to the rich side of the tracks...to a gated community in Scottsdale...he made sure my bedroom was far, far away from yours. From yours and Matt’s. And I was crushed. Crushed. Lonely. Scared. I was so confused. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t be by my brothers. Isn’t this floor plan a split master? You personally designed this 4,000 square-foot house! I remember - you had Collins build it. Rick Collins. A friend from church. There’s a 500 square-foot guest room up there! There’s even an extra entertainment room for the boys...and there wasn’t room for me? For ME?! Not even a closet? Not even a goddamned chamber? Why am I WRONGED for being female? Why do you need to watch me so close, and put me bedroom next to yours, you sick fuck? Why are you such an evil master-minded sociopath? That’s what I thought. Those were the things that I thought. That’s why I cried myself to sleep. And that’s when he called me depressive. That’s when I swallowed the pills. That’s when I let him medically rescue me from being medicalized, from playing Doctor with the Devil himself.
”I missed you guys. Your protection and comfort. Maybe I just missed the company. Those were the saddest years of my entire life. It’s why I tried to starve myself to death, stave off my period. I wanted to disintegrate. I wanted to die. I was so ashamed of having been born. I was terrified of getting pregnant, of being punished for becoming a woman. Can you get pregnant that way? I didn’t know. I was terrified of my own fleshiness. So I prayed to be a boy...
Dear God, make me a bird (a boy), so I can fly far far away from here…’. Oh Jenny, I get you. God, please make me a boy. Please? I’ll do anything! Make me a boy, so I can be with my brothers. Make me a boy. Take away my period. My hips. My budding chest. Take it away. Please, I’m begging you! If you can move mountains and I have the faith, please just make me a boy. Mustard seeds galore.
“Hey, Big Bro! M—! Don’t shut down on me now! Don’t block me out! I know it’s painful. I know it’s like spears in your brain, behind your eyes, entrapping your jaw. I know I’m giving you migraines and neck aches. I know the truth is painful, and the disassociate fantasy-version of your childhood is reasonably tolerable. But don’t leave me yet! Please! Please, keep listening! I need you to know me. I need you to know who I am. A filthy, used up little girl who hates wearing dresses and never picks pink. I need you to know what a dirty, slutty, sinfully dumb bitch I was so you can tell me I’m alright and I’m accepted. So please, please don’t leave! Just tell me I’m loved, that I’m not a piece of trash. And don’t leave me alone in the house with him. M—, why’d you have to join a band? Why’d you have to get so busy? Can’t you take me with you?
“Don’t go out of town, Bobby. I know you’re working, but we’re married. I know it’s important. I know it’s your job, but please just stay home. Just this ONE time? You haven’t touched me I ages. It’s as if you’re repelled by my existence. It makes me feel empty and cold and rejected. Why won’t you touch me? Or hold me? Or kiss me? Why do you want me to be your wife, but not your lover? It’s just me in this gargantuan building we call a house...it’s just me and the dogs. I get so lonely….
“Bros - both of you - you may not believe me, but I allured him away from your bedrooms with a murderous rage shoved in the closet of my chest. My ribs cages were bursting with rebellion! It’s the only reason I got fat at age 15...and stayed fat…because it was just one more thing for him to hate…and punish…and it kept him busy. My body fat was compacted with passion and terror and anger combined. It wasn’t even an emotion; I had no feelings. This bundled up tension and pain was more like an energy that embodied me. I was a ventriloquist doll, just like Mom. And he was the puppet-master. But guess what? I still had my brain and eyes and ears. I placated him. I let him think I was compliant. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t. I NEVER was. Not Once.
“Hey. Hey for real. A—. I gotta tell you something important. Because he did to you what he promised he’d never...because he betrayed our father-daughter contract once I was paralyzed with anesthesia...because I threatened to tell if he touched you. And because of what a sociopathic sadist he is, you might not feel like a man. But you are. You’re more of a man than he’ll ever be! You’re a fuckin’ MAN’s man! You BOTH are!! And you might dress metro and geek out on nerdy, artsy, cultured hobbies, but don’t fool yourself. Brothers, my two Brothers, I know you’re a machismo in the closet. And it might manifest as accidental misogyny on the dark web, it might slip out in affairs with sluts or work or strung out addictive vices, it might cause sexual anorexia and emotional avoidance...but don’t worry. Like I said before – you’re gonna make it. You’re gonna get out. You Just. Have. To. Remember.
“A—, M—, Bob, Ian, Caleb, Erik, Mike, Grant…I don’t know who I’m talking to anymore. But this is the message I have to proclaim:
You might not feel like you’re strong or masculine or good enough or rich enough. You might feel guilty and obliged and pressured to perform for invisible reasons. You might become enslaved to the approval of authoritative figures you secretly hate. But you’re wrong about thinking you’re weak. You’re wrong about believing you’re bad. You. Are. Good. I don’t care if you’re a fuckin’ rapist. I don’t care if you black out and come to. Dudes, you’ve got hope in your bones and power in your hands and too many layers of sandpaper protecting your hearts. You’re tenacious and tough and hardy and courageous. You are awesome; the strongest men I know; survivors and thrivers. So whether you’re trying to escape, or trying to stop setting traps, don’t give up. Don’t choose to forget...to justify it away. Your past was heinous...and I need you to remember...
“...I need you to remember, ‘cause I’m already dead. I’m eleven years old, and I die everyday. So be vengeful. Be vengeful for both of us. Go get justice. Go get justice and kill the motherfucker. Kill what’s left of him. The part of him that lives in your brain.”
Uhm, obviously I was shocked when this came out on paper….err, in my iPhone notes. It happened while hiking, which is when these strange parceled memories would spill out of my guts. Just like EMDR, the bilateral stimulation of scaling a mountain was making connections in my brain that were fragmented and shadowed with ambiguous metaphor...but not this time. This time everything was crystal clear, in perfect focus, zoomed in. Crispy. Karen said that would happen...eventually.
I took a break from hiking to bawl my eyes out. I remembered the sodomy and terror and the protective anger I suppressed to survive. I remembered his sociopathic arrangements and strategies. But then it kept going – the writing, that is. Sometimes I was talking to A—, but other times to my older brother, M—, And I’m not sure how my friendships with Ian and Caleb brought all of it out of me, but these four men mixed together like a swirling, abstract, lucid dream.
I’m not going to keep typing. I’m done for now. My heart is so heavy. I need to rest.
G’night.