I asked my grandmother once what we are, my family. And where we came from. That's when I learned my mother was adopted, that she was one of many children taken from my biological grandmother who was half Cherokee half Irish, after a house fire left her badly burned and somewhat insane. My German immigrant grandparents adopted her and changed her name. I remember listening to her tell me these things and feeling as if she were a story teller weaving a good yarn, these things couldn't be real. This was the same woman who told me not to wander too far from home because mountain lions would eat me, or a hawk would carry me off. I knew she said these things so I would stay inside with her. She was lonely. Often I was happy to stay with her, but most days I needed to be alone outside at least for a little while. I needed to walk, to feel the distance growing wider behind me.
But this stuff about my family, it was unpleasant. Eventually it became one of many things I would choose to ignore. The here and now was always more pressing. There was always something to fear, something to dread. Dealing with the here and now was all I could do then. It was years later that I would sit quietly trying to remember her voice telling me about the tall grey eyed woman in the insane asylum in Denver. Years trying to reconstruct a past I just simply could not recall.
I was three years old when my mother married my step father. I don't suppose we remember much from that far back. I certainly don't. I have three sisters and two brothers. I can't say where some of them are. The divorce and remarriage devastated them. The two oldest, a male and a female were already on their own. The one remaining male dropped out of high school and joined some branch of military service as soon as possible. The next oldest female refused to live with our step father's physical, mental, and sexual abuse and ran away repeatedly until she was allowed to live with our biological father. That left two, my sister and myself. She's ten years older than I. As a young child I idolized her. She was everything I wasn't, blonde and blue eyed, so different from me with my black braids and chocolate eyes. She was more than beautiful, she was my protector and would run interference when the step father was after me, often taking the beating in my place. When she turned eighteen she married the boy she had been dating and left. I remember her saying she was sorry. She felt guilty for leaving me to deal with the parents alone, the abusive step father and the mother who was in denial and given to fits of rage. I would have told her then that she didn't need to feel so badly about it because I'd developed an alternate to deal with the step, but of course I didn't know it myself.
I was around age 27 when peculiar things began happening. Once, waiting in an examination room I heard a child screaming somewhere in the building. When the doctor and his assistant finally came in they found me in a corner curled in a tight ball, rocking back and forth. That was the beginning. About six months into therapy the alternate surfaced and told the doctor she was wasting her time, that if she wanted to know anything she'd have to ask him. Yes, him. His only function is to take over when horrible things happen. I don't know what he has dealt with on my behalf, and I don't want to know. Against the therapist's strong warnings and advise I stopped going to her. Some things are better left buried.
I'm not sure why I'm bothering to put these truths here. They aren't important to anyone but me. Families don't talk about ugly things like this. And friends wouldn't stay around if they knew. So you write the words on paper in books that no one will ever read. You log-on and pour it out. Purge all the poison you've carried around for 41 years. And when it's over there is a kind of peace. That's it really, I can't see anything beautiful when this horror is bleeding into everything around me. It has to be gotten rid of. Otherwise the world is faded colors, muted laughter. I'm on the inside looking out. Listening, missing everything and everyone. This is the inside that no one can find. The room at the end of the hall, the floor no one is allowed on. A sign on the door says "Condemned."
7:04 p.m. - 2006-06-27
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