“The brain protects itself from trauma,”
she tells me
“It shuts off corridors full of memories in order to allow you to continue living in the house.”

The house,
which may or may not be a crime scene,
feels like a maze.
Like despite living here my whole life,
I’m not sure where certain hallways lead to,
or what that door opens up to display.
Like walking in the pitch black,
your hands dragging against the walls,
hoping you’ll end up somewhere familiar,
but there are more locks than entryways
and I just don’t have the keys.

“It’s to be expected, you know,”
her voice breaks me from my journey.
“Normal that parts of you are a mystery,
and I just want you to know,
there’s no guarantee you’ll ever get the answers you’re looking for,
but that doesn’t mean we can’t try”

I can hear the words hidden between her teeth,
a soft suggestion,
reminding me that these parts of my history are gone for a reason.
That maybe,
behind those doors is a monster that I don’t want to meet.

“The brain protects itself from trauma.”
Protection like this can sometimes feel like
you’re keeping secrets from yourself,
like somewhere deep down there is a child
who draws pictures and burns them before anybody
gets a glimpse at what her eyes have seen.

Sometimes I don’t care
about the past.
I wake up in the morning,
look at where I am now,
and can almost convince myself that it’s outside of me.
That I’m not affected by what I can’t remember.
I bask in the denial,
in the fact that I can’t be called a victim,
if I don’t recognize the violation.
I can’t suffer at the hands of a faceless,
and nameless atrocity,
only at the impact.

At the ways my hands shake when he moves too fast.
At how, as an adult,
I’m just now learning what it’s like to feel comfortable in my skin
and in others.

I realize I’m poking at a monster,
like every white person in a horror film,
I am investigating the basement when I should just move out.
but when your body is the building,
you have limited options of where to go.

I have ran in the other direction for so long,
and I’m so tired of the unknown.
If one day this door does open,
I don’t know what I will be confronted with.

But I do know that I am stronger than whatever it is that dwells here.
So when I can hear the door **** shake,
I no longer tremble with it.

I have learned to hold my ground,
to move towards the sunshine,
towards the garden,
to water the flowers there
and enjoy the growth.