Pandora's Box

                    “Pandora’s Box”

“According to legend, when Pandora opened the box, horrible things flew out, and all of life's miseries were let out into the world. I think my Pandora's box contains your memories, which will spill out of that box like ghosts tearing apart the fabric of the soul and bursting forth.”

― Shahid Hussain Raja

The memories keep coming.  I want to stop them, but I know that part of what has kept me sick for all these years has been pushing these memories down and away.  I have not wanted to deal with them - I mean, who would.  And in the act of not wanting to know them, I have protected them, kept them in my own Pandora’s Box.  They have been locked away, safe in a way that I never was as a child.  

I asked the trauma therapist at the rehab I just attended, why it was that they began surfacing now and with such fervor.  She believes that the little girl in me can no longer stay silent.  The little girl in me is drowning and needs to be heard and saved and that I need to finally let her speak her truth.  I don’t know how I feel about that.  I don’t know personally or professionally what I believe anymore.  I wasn’t even sure about repressed memories until I started experiencing them for myself.

When they come it’s like I am transported back in time and for a moment I am re-living what happened.  It feels real, I suppose you would call it a flashback.  I can recall the sights, smells and textures and what was said.  It is beyond terrifying.  I would not wish it on my worst enemy.  I would not wish it on my abuser or parents even.  Afterwards I feel like a lost little girl and have the emotional capacity of a limp rag.

I am exhausted just about all the time.  I am in group therapy three times a week for three hours.  I am about to start EMDR in individual therapy today.  I am on a myriad of new medications for mental health and some for a medical issue I am dealing with at the moment.  Three of the medications I take cause fatigue.  I want to sleep all the time, but I don’t.  I have to get up and keep going.  If I don’t face this head-on now, I will continue to cycle in and out of active addiction and in and out of rehabs.  To say nothing of being a constant source of disappointment and concern to the people who care about me most…  I don’t want to die… not anymore.

I want to live and live well.  I don’t want to be so haunted and afraid.  I want to walk through life and exist congruently.  If that means that for now I have to open my Pandora’s Box and deal with all the terrors and evils that are in my past, then I will.  

I have to remember that the last thing to come out of the original Pandora’s Box was hope.

Her Favorite Store

 “Her Favorite Store”

“She shrieked and shrieked for her mother, but her mother was already there. Her mother was the monster.” – Holly Black

I was sitting in group therapy the other day listening to someone else share when I had a memory resurface out of nowhere. It hit me like a wave and knocked me over as if I were standing, wading by the shore and was taken down by the undertow.  The previous day I had gone with Wren and her good friend shoe shopping.  

Wren wanted to get a pair of thigh-high boots.  She asked me if I would help her pick them out, so off we went to shop for shoes.  We strutted into the store and stalked through the aisles of DSW looking for what she wanted.  We found some options in the sale section in the back and she plopped down to try on options while I pulled more boots out for her to try. She rejected some until she found the pair she liked.  She put them on and knew they were the right ones.  She knew because they made her feel herself and they changed the way she walked.  I knew what she meant.  I have a pair of cowboy boots that do that for me.  When I wear them I walk differently, like I own the room.  I had her walk the length of the room and she looked like a runway model, sashaying her way around, all boss-like and confident.  It was a great shopping experience capped off by lunch.

Fast-forward to group the next day and the tidal wave of repressed memory resurfacing… I am having a very different shopping experience with my own mother.  I am maybe eleven years old and we are in Al-Khobar in Saudi Arabia.  There were no stores in my own town of Dhahran apart from the commissary so we had to shop in Al-Khobar for everything else like clothes etc..

We had gone to buy shoes.  Because we were out of the main camp we had to cover up.  I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and a skirt that went to my ankles.  I needed new shoes and as my mother browsed for shoes for herself among the aisles she had me get my feet measured by the Lebanese salesman.  He began measuring my feet, but as he was doing so his hand reached up under my skirt and it began moving up my leg.  He kept his eye on my mother and began to fondle me under my skirt.  I froze.  I did not know what was happening and I did not know what to do so I did nothing.  I was terrified, disgusted and confused.  My mother did not notice.  Eventually we bought shoes and left.

Once outside, I began to cry and my mother asked what was wrong.  I told her what had happened.  Her immediate response was to tell me to not tell my father.  She told me that he would “do something stupid and end up in jail” and it would “ruin all our lives”.  She made me promise over and over all the way home.  She didn’t comfort me or ask me if I was alright or hug me.  

The next time we went shopping in Al-Khobar, she steered me toward the shoe store and tried to go inside.  I refused and she became angry.  She insisted we go inside but I again refused.  She told me it was her favorite store and I was ruining her shopping trip.  I continued to refuse and she didn’t speak to me for the rest of the day.  She would continue to try and force me to go back to that store every time we went shopping in Al-Khobar and I refused every time.  Every time she would get angry and stop talking to me.

I never told my father.

Betrayal

 

“Betrayal”

“Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart and the wound lasts a lifetime.”

― Mineko Iwasaki

Years ago, I watched a movie with John Travolta. It was called “The General’s Daughter,” and it wasn’t all that great.  Basically, Travolta is an undercover army detective tasked with solving the murder of a general’s daughter on an army base.  During the course of the movie, it is revealed that she had been raped years earlier, and her mentor tells Travolta that there is something worse than rape. Travolta asks what could possibly be worse than rape, and by the end of the movie, he understands that the betrayal of her father, who covers up the rape, is worse.  I remember watching this movie and feeling punched in the gut as I understood this on a molecular level.

On February 6th of this year, the alarm went off in our bedroom to let us know we needed to get ready for work.  But instead of getting up for work, I turned to Tony and told him I had relapsed and had been drinking for a while.  I then told him he needed to take me to the psych ward because I was suicidal and I had a plan.  He drove me to the hospital, and I stayed on the psych ward for ten days before transferring to rehab for a further thirty.  I make no excuses for drinking again, but I had begun to remember things; horrific things.  I will tell you that even as a therapist, I wasn’t sure about repressed memories until I experienced them for myself.  I always knew I was molested and by whom, but the details were fuzzy.  When I spoke at meetings and told my story, I would say that there was a lot about my childhood I did not remember, and I considered that a blessing.  But now it seems the memories are surfacing, and I cannot stop them.

I talked to a trauma therapist at the rehab and asked her why I pick up drinking when it is the last thing that I want to do.  She told me that because the memories are returning, she believes the little girl inside is seeking oblivion and doesn’t know of a better way to cope.  I don’t know how I feel about that, but I am exploring it.  What she said next has impacted me greatly.  She told me to stop chasing forgiveness.  She said, “Fuck forgiveness.  You can’t forgive an unforgivable act.”  She talked about allowing myself to get angry at my abuser, and then she said, “And now we have to talk about your parents”.  She told me they were supposed to protect me, and they didn’t.  They were supposed to defend me and, at the very least, help me after I told them, and they failed at every turn.  She told me not to let them off the hook with excuses like, “they were from a different time”, or, “they did the best they could”, or, “it was an impossible situation”.

I had never really looked at it that way before.  I had always been told by other therapists that I would never heal unless I could forgive.  Well, I don’t think I have ever truly been able to forgive.  Not him, and especially not them.

When I broke down and finally told them, my mother’s first words were, “Well, at least he never hit you”.  Let.  That.  Sink.  In.

We travelled extensively as a family living overseas.  They continued to put us in the same room in hotels.  Once, the hotel made a mistake with the reservation and gave us a room with a queen bed instead of two twins.  My dad’s solution to this was to put pillows down the middle of the bed as a vain attempt to separate us for the night.  Looking back at these examples now, I cannot fathom what they were thinking.  There was no humanity in these actions at all.  I was just a sacrificial lamb.  Did they care about me at all?

Ask anyone who knows me, and they will tell you that I am very emotional.  I am a crier.  I cry in empathy.  I cry when I am happy, when I am sad, I cry when I am frustrated, I cry when I am watching commercials, and sometimes just because it is Thursday.  When my father died, I went to his funeral and sat through the whole thing dry-eyed.  When my mother died, I did not shed a tear.  There is a lot of anger there.  I just don’t know how to access it yet, but I am working on it.  I no longer want to misdirect it at myself.  I deserve better than that.

The Scratching on the Wall

“The Scratching on the Wall”

"There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it." — Alfred Hitchcock

I am so tired.  I am tired all the time.  I tried to lock the door to my room earlier tonight

but my mother caught me and yelled at me again.  She shrieks every time she catches

me.  I don’t fully understand why it angers her when I lock my bedroom door but it isn’t

allowed.  On the nights when I can manage it I get uninterrupted sleep and it is so

glorious.  I worry that tonight will be one of those nights.

I am about to fall asleep when I hear it.  We share a wall.  His bedroom is next to mine. 

He scratches on the wall with his fingernails.  He does this on the nights that he comes. 

I don’t know why, but it is a forewarning of sorts.  It’s his way of telling me to get ready. 

“I’m on my way” it says.  The scratching is almost worse than what comes after.  My

gut clenches and I begin to go numb because I know what this will entail.  It means I

will suffer and my mind begins to blessedly drift and my body starts to shut down.

There have been countless nights like this one.  Countless nights of terror.  Countless

nights of no sleep.  Countless nights of being an object of perversion.  Countless nights

being left feeling empty and disgusted.  Countless nights being left to feel dirty and

unloved.  Countless nights to build up walls and tear down my self-esteem.  I already

feel I have no worth and at fourteen I no longer feel I have the right to dream of a future

that has any light.

On this night, when it is over, I have had enough.  I am angry and disgusted and

exhausted.  I wait until I am sure he is asleep and the house is quiet.  I am fueled by

rage.  I leave my room and go to the kitchen.  I stand in the light of the moon and search

for the largest knife I can find.  I creep to his room and up to his bed.  I stand over his

sleeping form.  My face is twitching with rage - murderous rage.  I hold the knife above

my head for ten seconds, twenty, thirty - I lose count.  It feels like an eternity.  He sleeps

on unknowing.  No one is aware of what I am doing but me and God.  And maybe it is

God who stops me, I don’t know.  I have a moment of clarity.  If I do this, this suffering

will stop, but a different suffering will follow.  My life will change forever and it won’t

be for good.  

I bring the knife back down to my side.  I stand there for a long time watching him

breathe and I cry silently.  Eventually I walk back to the kitchen and, with hands

shaking I return the knife to where I found it.  I stand there asking myself in disbelief

what I was thinking.  I am horrified by myself.  I could have killed someone.  I was fully

capable and had every intention of doing so.  The rage I felt was oceanic and I am

petrified.  I go back to bed disgusted by myself on a whole new level.

This is the night that I shut the door on anger.  I turn it in on myself rather than risk

hurting others.  This leads to stuffing my feelings with food.  It leads to drinking and

other forms of self-harm.  I often have suicidal thoughts and I begin to actively hate

myself.  I hurt myself over and over throughout the years, denying myself the grace I

so freely give to others.  This marks the beginning of most of the problems I cause

myself.

The abuse will continue for two more years.

Through the Blue Glass

“Through the Blue Glass”

“We've been shattered and reconstructed, told to make an effort every single day to pretend we

still function the way we're supposed to. But it's a lie, it's all a lie; every person, place, thing

and idea is a lie. I do not function properly. I am nothing more than the consequence of

catastrophe.”

― Tahereh Mafi, Unravel Me

    I lay on the couch in the front room.  On the couch, we are not allowed to sit on -

in the front room, which we are not allowed to use.  It’s the middle of the night, and

I am watching the cars that occasionally drive by our house.  I’m catching the

reflection of the headlights through the blue Yemeni glass bottles in the front windows.

    My mother has been collecting these glass bottles for years, and the light that reflects

from the headlights calms me.  I do this on the nights he comes to my room and cuts

away at my innocence over and over again.  He then leaves me there, goes to his room,

and falls asleep as though nothing has happened, as though I don’t matter, have no

consequence, and my existence is just an extension of his perverted desires.  

    I am left to pick up my pieces.  I lay there on the forbidden couch, catching the pretty

blue rays, trying desperately to lull myself back into my own body.  I am trying to put

my pieces back together like a jigsaw puzzle.  Over time, though, more and more pieces

go missing, and the puzzle looks less and less like me.  

    On the forbidden couch in the room we aren’t allowed to use through the blue glass.