Apr 2020
I've got lingering memories from the earliest days of my life.
Just a short few. Involving sloppy joes, Sonic the hedgehog, almost drowning in a pool. Probably a few of the better ones.
Saturday morning cartoons watching angry beavers with my sisters. Being with my mom. My sister taking me for adventures.
The good ones are far and few between though. These all come from this short period in my life when I was about three, and I stop remembering anything from then after I turn five.
But the rest of the memories are hard to talk about.
A man who used to ****** my sister's. **** them. Who used to torture us when he wasn't dealing it out to one of us by ourselves. A man killing himself by jumping off the roof of our apartment complex. Probably more that I can't get to.
Then I remember...very suddenly...I don't even remember everything leading up to it...these memories are so fractured and broken, my dad coming to pick me up in the middle of the night doesn't even make sense anymore.
That's not new though
That's science.
That's memory. Trauma. The brain deciding it can't handle all the input and closing things off. To make it easier to exist.
I've never understood that. The brain closing off abandoned hallways, refusing to let me access things that could make me shut everything down.
If we acted in exact patterns with our brain, and we were more connected to the parts of our minds we have no control over, I would feel less like I am a stranger in my body.
Inside of me is a computer, in all of us, that acts without our foresight.
That exists within us making choices and decisions that we have absolutely no say in.
That protects itself from what I might do if I knew everything, felt everything.
So when I try to think back on Danny making us duct tape mummies and refusing to let us breathe, my brain skips from that to my mom in the kitchen. From there to a neighbor's apartment playing video games and eating food we didn't have at our home.
Then that jumps to a day at the pool and that jumps to me in it.
From there to me drowning. Accepting I would die at four or five.
Then a body ripping me from the pool and me coughing out all of the water id just let in because I couldn't hold my breath any longer.
From there to the police lights flashing. My mom forcing us to stay inside so we wouldn't see the man's body on the floor.
And then it all sort of...fizzes out. I just remember driving to Kansas City with my dad and my stepmom.
Leaving my family. My sister's. And...I don't even really know why.
Because my brain won't let me remember what happened the night I left.
I don't fault it though.
Im sure my brain is right.
I'd have killed myself a long time ago if I could remember everything.
I mean, this poem is only two years of my 27.
And even then only two of my first five.
Just a short few. Involving sloppy joes, Sonic the hedgehog, almost drowning in a pool. Probably a few of the better ones.
Saturday morning cartoons watching angry beavers with my sisters. Being with my mom. My sister taking me for adventures.
The good ones are far and few between though. These all come from this short period in my life when I was about three, and I stop remembering anything from then after I turn five.
But the rest of the memories are hard to talk about.
A man who used to ****** my sister's. **** them. Who used to torture us when he wasn't dealing it out to one of us by ourselves. A man killing himself by jumping off the roof of our apartment complex. Probably more that I can't get to.
Then I remember...very suddenly...I don't even remember everything leading up to it...these memories are so fractured and broken, my dad coming to pick me up in the middle of the night doesn't even make sense anymore.
That's not new though
That's science.
That's memory. Trauma. The brain deciding it can't handle all the input and closing things off. To make it easier to exist.
I've never understood that. The brain closing off abandoned hallways, refusing to let me access things that could make me shut everything down.
If we acted in exact patterns with our brain, and we were more connected to the parts of our minds we have no control over, I would feel less like I am a stranger in my body.
Inside of me is a computer, in all of us, that acts without our foresight.
That exists within us making choices and decisions that we have absolutely no say in.
That protects itself from what I might do if I knew everything, felt everything.
So when I try to think back on Danny making us duct tape mummies and refusing to let us breathe, my brain skips from that to my mom in the kitchen. From there to a neighbor's apartment playing video games and eating food we didn't have at our home.
Then that jumps to a day at the pool and that jumps to me in it.
From there to me drowning. Accepting I would die at four or five.
Then a body ripping me from the pool and me coughing out all of the water id just let in because I couldn't hold my breath any longer.
From there to the police lights flashing. My mom forcing us to stay inside so we wouldn't see the man's body on the floor.
And then it all sort of...fizzes out. I just remember driving to Kansas City with my dad and my stepmom.
Leaving my family. My sister's. And...I don't even really know why.
Because my brain won't let me remember what happened the night I left.
I don't fault it though.
Im sure my brain is right.
I'd have killed myself a long time ago if I could remember everything.
I mean, this poem is only two years of my 27.
And even then only two of my first five.
