Ten

Ten Things I Will Never Tell my Daughter:

1. I never thought I wanted children.
2. How terrified I was when I was pregnant with you.
3. The truth about my parents.
4. The truth about my childhood.
5. What a wreck I was the first 2 years of your life.
6. I bought a pregnancy test and filled a prescription to overdose. You saved my life.
7. How much hatred I hold inside.
8. I sometimes resent the childhood you have because it makes me grieve for mine.
9. The times I cringe when I see his mannerisms in you.
10. The truth about your father.

Children are not created to carry adult burdens.  I hate my mother for doing this to me.  I listened to her rage, was the brunt of her hatred, and I now carry the shame of her truths.  These are the things I will never tell my daughter.  She deserves better than the truth of who I am and the secrets that I carry.

My mother destroyed herself and in the process, nearly destroyed me.  I carry her woundings and hide them as best I can.  They don't heal; they only fester. 

The inner conflict I feel makes my skin too tight.  I love, I hate.  I am numb, I feel.  I despair, I hope.  My heart blisters and I cut.  My screams of hate are silent lines and hidden scars.

Pressure

It's all in my head.  The pressure is all in my head.  I have spent the later part of Monday and all day yesterday with yet another hideous migraine.

I get migraines and then I get migraines.  The second version is the pounding, searing, scratching my brain kind of pressure that no medication will touch.  I have tried prescription after prescription for migraines and nothing has ever cured them completely.  Sometimes a medication will stop a migraine and that is a good day.  The rest of the time I endure the pain, counting on someone else inside to work through their unrest to alleviate the mental throbbing. 

Coincidentally, or not, the very day I wrote here about control of my feelings and memories, I ended up floored by a whopper of a migraine.  By Monday evening, the voices in my head had reached a fevered pitch.  With the noise increasing, I began to compensate by telling them to shut up.  That didn't work very well and the tension continued to build.

I spent yesterday sleeping in our closet.  Not my favorite place to sleep and even upsetting for some to spend anytime in a dark closet, but necessary to shut out the external sounds and light.  It was then, and continued today, that I began to actually listen to what the others were saying.  A novel idea...

It is the teenager-types this time; upset about our treatment by others.  My father and his friends specifically.  Almost as if our father grew tired of the monotony of abusing us he invited his friends to enjoy us as well.

Money changing hands.  Hushed words and names spoken.  Our names.  He was telling them how to "work" us. 

Say Sara for a blowjob...  Cooper if you want a boy...  Jasmine if you like to be rough...  Lively if you want a bad girl...  Sissy if you never want a word spoken...

And so they learned our names and exactly how to get what they wanted.  He hurt us so much that he knew that we had different names.  He fucking knew.

They take their turns watching and egging each other on.  Suggestions of what to try.  A fight for who was next.  An invitation by him for all to join in towards the end.

A mess is what we are.  Humiliation is sticky in our hair.  We are dripping with ammonia-smelling shame.  Numbing blood covers our legs.  We are reduced to a heap of fluids, their laughter, their pleasure.  A human hole.

My head is pounding with shame.  The screams speak of silent terror.  There is no medication to stop this pain.  This migraine is wrapped up in silence that is unbearable to hear.  The pressure of the secrets, the pressure of the shame is just too much.

What

How far does one venture into the black hole of a childhood? 

The more I think, the more I write, the more I feel, the more I allow myself to remember, the more horror I unwrap.  One of my biggest fears is drawing near.

What if I cannot stop? 

Stop feeling, stop remembering, stop hurting, stop crying, stop traveling at light speed face-first into the fist of my past...

I have been this close to facing this fear before.  And then I found convenient excuses to stop.  Or run.  I'm pretty much out of excuses these days.  I am stable; my medications are doing their job.  I have good support.  I am not being abused.  I am not in the midst of any sort of crisis.  All of these positives are stepping stones in the right direction.  Great.

I enjoy writing; I think that is probably pretty obvious.  I enjoy the control.  I share what I wish and I conceal what I do not wish to share.  It works out perfectly.  Or at least I like to think it does...

My husband tells me to just start talking.  I think he's being ridiculous.  No one just opens their mouth and starts spilling their secrets.  When you spill something it is hard to control the mess.  I like control.  What if I lose the little control that I have?

I keep telling myself that I have already been through the worst of this.  But what happens when feeling and remembering leaves a mark?  What if who I find is maimed, ruined, and disfigured? 

Then what?