what I am conscious of is enough. My therapist says the body doesn’t lie. My mother says I was always such a happy child. My sister says nothing.
Here is what I think I know, though I would not swear to any of it: 1) I was alone on the bus riding home from my clarinet lesson at age 12; the bus driver stopped the bus. He put his hand between my legs and pressed them open. I shut my eyes. When he finally let me off the bus, I ran home. I stopped taking buses. 2) My mother established an educational program with inmates from Western Penitentiary. One man would call our house and talk dirty to me on the phone. I stopped answering. 3) I was raised in a sexually open household, where boundaries were minimal and sex, lauded — an art. I was curious. I had no boundaries. My first sexual experience was with an 18-year-old dropout when I was 14. It hurt. Afterwards, he stopped dropping by. 4) I was 17 and in college when my mother allowed her boyfriend to fondle me. We were watching TV. I pretended I was asleep. She did not object when he suggested a threesome. I stopped coming home.
Remnants
Here is what I don’t know, but see: A large, faceless man and an empty house. Smoke and the smell of floor polish. There is a swing and woods and a sandbox. Sometimes there is a hospital bed. Other times there is a hole. Eventually there are spiders and dismembered body parts. Usually these appear in dreams or when I am having a low blood sugar — when my consciousness/control is compromised. Now they appear as my therapist encourages me to free associate; allow my mind to wander without judgment. I am to keep my eyes on the spot. There is a six-year-old girl that turns into a monster, a twelve-year-old girl dressed in a bonnet and prairie clothes — modest. Her hair is whipping through the wind and I can see through her. I look away.
Questions
There are a lot of them and they accrue as I try to understand that some people don’t drink every night; they don’t vomit.
I have begun reading about sexual abuse. What if somebody touches you but you are too young to say no? What if you were a baby or infant? What if you have detached from your hurt self? I am disgusted with this Sybil approach to my life — the cliché.