2017, Flooding with memories dissociation and fragmentation:
She understood by that age her parents intention was to wean her out of the habit of cowering on her parents’ bedroom floor whenever the creatures would crawl from the shadows and out of the walls.
They didn’t know her only refuge was when they played with her, or read her stories, or gave her affection. She loved when they would answer her questions. But two babies came along. The eldest child was quickly shunned, for their second and third sons were much easier to raise.
They were peaceful babies, without any night-terrors or yelling into the early morning for their parents attention. They never screamed, rarely had tantrums, and abided by rules. Her parents invested all their energy, on their sons, who they felt were less damaged, their hypersensitive daughter could sense they had love for her siblings that they couldn’t give to her, and over her school years, as her behaviour became more bizarre, their disfigured daughter was forgotten, swept under the rug.
Not only did she feel alone at home, but she was shunned by her peers and they called her ‘weird”. She would wander the playground alone, looking for someone who didn’t slice a knife through her chest when she asked them if she could play with them that day, another no, and she was afraid tears would roll down her face; “crybaby, crybaby, what a baby!” and leer, the boys in her class would tease her, so she hid her face in disgrace. The out of bounds toilets and library a refuge, an escape.
Books were her friend, her final solution. She remembers a girl calling her a “grub”, for dropping a spoonful of yoghurt down her school jacket.
This deemed her unworthy of being allowed to play with these girls. Again. Alone. It was painful, and she cried all lunch, and could not get past it.
On her school worksheets she would call herself “Emily”, and her teachers called her parents to ask why their daughter didn’t write her real name. Her parents perplexed at why their child was deviating from what they had taught her at home. The inner shame endured before age 5 was to blame for her inner pain.
Never wanting to write it down on pieces of paper or books. She hated her name, because she felt she was to blame for hands creeping into areas where it gave her shame so virulent, it would make her retch and heavy. Her heart was heavy, full of trepidation and fear.
She would lie, mislead, and could not comprehend the instructions given. So she’d spend class head in hands, sobbing in her books because she felt stupid, for being unable to craft a woollen pom-pom, or finger-knit, or do cross-stitch. She would be unable to even loop a needle through a thread, and apparently this made her stupid, ill-equipped and unfit for normality. Rejected by society, she retreated in rebellion and secrecy. Breaking rules was always something that made her happy, because she gave up following them as she couldn’t get it right. It just seemed easier for everyone if she lived up to her “stupid” “bad” “naughty” “dirty” girl mentality.
She was really good at stealing at school, and made it a habit to take books from her teachers, once she hit second grade she learnt to remove the barcode from library books and sneak them into her library bag to smuggle home. Slowly collecting a collaboration of free things, her self-esteem had grown for each successful gain.
She would steal from kids bags who had been mean, and when the teacher confronted the class about it she would sit there silent, refusing to confess, letting other kids get the blame. Why should she suffer when they caused her pain? She would never be accused, because she had never been known to be one of the disruptive ones. She slipped by quietly in the back ground, until grade 4.
This was the beginning of a life of being outside, looking in, trying to disguise her true self and fit in with the rest of the kids. She never managed to get a grip, on her place in her peer group.
Kids can be cruel, but their words stung like hell. She had no sense of self to comfort her when she was laying in the dark, at night alone. All she knew was to imagine zooming out, imaging zooming above her house, above her neighbourhood, city, state, country and earth.
Into the universe she rose, trying to escape the evil on earth. She understood weather, clouds, planets, and the human body. She loved her computer when she got it, and learnt how to play sim city from scratch aged 7. She read books every night, and loved learning new facts. But she couldn’t get the knack of being like the rest of the pack.
Her first year of school, they said she was stupid because she couldn’t hold her pencil like the rest of the students. She learnt to read age 3, but never had the chance in school to read books for longer than 10 minutes, what happened at school, she will never actually know. She only liked reading, and when she had friends.
Sometimes her friends would ignore her for weeks on end and she would have to pretend she didn’t wander the playground without a companion.
She only remembers menial craft, sewing, barn-dancing, and repetitive songs in the quadrangle, boy girl dancing, and two straight lines holding hands. She also remembers inappropriate sexual conversations with the boy she sat next too, and her sleepovers with female friends always turned into orgies.
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| Scrapbooking helped me integrate through flooding |
She thought it was normal, it was only after these parties, when her friends disappeared, she became overwhelmed with shame, and blamed herself for their departure.
Carnal knowledge was her only friend, the only companion from beginning to end.
Where is the peace, where is the security?
The carefree bliss of childhood?
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