That Which is Forbidden to Exist

“When we are told that something is not to be spoken about,
we understand that to mean that this something
should not exist-
should not,
cannot,
must not,
does not exist.
In that moment, our reality and,
consequently, our lives
are distorted;
they become shameful and
diminished.
In some way, we understand this to mean
that we
should not exist.

To protect ourselves,
we, too,
begin to speak only of the flat world
where everything is safe,
commonplace, and
agreeable,
the very small world about which
we can all have consensus.
Soon
we don’t see
the other worlds we once saw,
for it is difficult to see
what we are forbidden to name.”
~Deena Metzger Writing for Your Life~

This was not written as a poem; I separated the phrases so the emphasis fell where I wanted it to.
Altered literary art. heh

I’m combining this with a writing prompt I read on Laura Davis‘ blog:   Brainstorm a list of things that would be dangerous to face in your writing. Then write about one of them.

It is, of course, dangerous to name the forbidden.

But consider this statement from Literary Trauma:  “…psychoanalysis believes,” Deborah M. Horvitz writes, “that crucial to recovering from an experience of trauma is the capacity and willingness to incorporate that traumatic event inside one’s self as an indispensable piece of personal history and identity.  Since, in the fiction in this study [Literary Trauma], narrative is inextricably entwined with memory and the process of remembering, the greater one’s ability to “make story” out of trauma, which is defined differently for each protagonist, the more likely s/he is to regain her or his life after that trauma” (6).

So.
Telling our story is crucial to our recovery, but we’re forbidden to do so because:

• it will disrupt the family
• it will ruin the family reputation
• an important member of the family may go to jail
• the family will disintegrate–children will be torn from parents
• it’s better left in the past
• it’s not happening NOW, is it? Why can’t you let it go?
• PTSD? Is that even real?  Besides, you were never in any war.

I wonder if the stories we cannot share nest themselves in our bodies and manifest as sickness….

Edited: May 14th, 2012

Out of the Woods intro

When I was little, my mother read fairy tales to me. She never read stories about fainting princesses who languished until a handsome prince rescued them. She read Little Red Riding Hood to me, and Hansel and Gretel, and Babes in the Wood. When I learned to read, I read them every night before bed.  In a way, these fairy tales and others were harbingers of what lay ahead for me, although  I didn’t consciously connect any of the stories to my life, not even later, when life events mirrored parts of the stories. I had zero sense of impending doom.  In retrospect, though, it seems it was all spelled out to me in the stories, and later, in the books that I loved.

Of all the stories, Babes in the Wood is the one that has resonated most strongly in me.  It is a story of abandonment with no rescue, which reminds me of something my mother wrote me when I was in foster care and I had just learned that the father I’d never known existed lived in Oregon:  Stay away from Twinkies so you don’t end up fluffy, and remember: no Prince will ride in to save the day.  Not even your daddy.

I wonder if messages about my family’s history were unconsciously transmitted via folktales.  The children in Babes in the Wood were left to die in the forest. Five of the six children of my generation on my mother’s side were put into foster care by their mothers. I’m not sure why my little brother made the cut, and I’m not sure he fared better than the rest of us, after all.

Mama’s nonchalance–hell, her outright silence– about the story’s ending baffled me for many years.  Now I think that it was like a bad smell you get used to after you’re exposed to it for a while.  It was her own reality, after all:  her parents put her and her two older sisters in an orphanage when they hit adolescence.  Other families sent their children to boarding school, or to summer camp.  Ours sent the kids into the wilderness.   (Fortunately for the parents of both generations, none of us followed the path of Oedipus.)

Yeah, I did therapy.  Started with group therapy–safety in numbers.  Grew brave after a year–and by that point, desperate–and started seeing a therapist by myself.  The prevailing sentiment then was that people who went through  therapy came out psycho.  My Nana, for example, was very worried for my mental health because I was hashing up things that were better left buried.  I should mention here that it was her son who molested me.

When I entered therapy, I was aware only on a superficial level that my perspective was shaped by my childhood.  It seems obvious now, like how we marvel that the Columbine parents and teachers didn’t see the massacre coming. I didn’t know, for example, why I was indiscriminate in my sexual relationships before I got married.  Conversely, I didn’t know why I felt guilty when I didn’t want to have sex with my husband.   I didn’t know why I felt so ugly, even though people told me I had beautiful children who looked just like me.  And I thought there was something wrong with me that I felt so crazy around my family.

My take on the new person who emerged:  Yup.  She was psycho.  She went in psycho, and came out a new and improved psycho.  She was missing some of her cogs for functioning in her family machine.  She forgot her role.  The cliche is scapegoat; I reject that.  I like black sheep, and not for the obvious reason.  Farmers put one black sheep in their flocks for every 100 white sheep.  That way they only have to count the black ones to know how many sheep they’ve got.  I think the black sheep is the one who carries the story of the flock.  A friend told me once that families will often send one of their own out (by way of shunning) in unconscious hope that that one will bring back the elixir and heal the family.

I don’t know if I care enough to bring back an elixir.  This may change with time.  Or not.
The best I can do now is carry the tale.

to be continued

Edited: May 11th, 2012

How to excavate a story from your past: Memoir ideas

Telling a story from one’s childhood is not the same as excavating it.  One may think that simply writing out a vignette from one’s childhood addresses issues plainly, but it ain’t so.

Here’s the thing:

First you have to write out the memory exactly at is has been playing in your head for the past umpteen years.
Then you have to go back and fill in the sensory details: Was Mama’s apron black? Or red?  Janey insists it was black, but you know it was red.  Mental note: dig up old pictures, if possible.

Was music on the stereo?  What color were the curtains?
Was the TV on?  Were there toys on the floor?
How many people were in the room?
Dinner on the stove?
(Even if you’re in your bedroom, you can smell dinner, right?)

You’ve got to make sure you’ve got the dialogue right–what was said, exactly?  You have to write that down to the best of your recollection before you can feel around the edges of the words for sharpness, or hidden meanings.   And you can’t just go groping around smashing the dirt this way and that.  You have to tread gingerly.- And you have to use the right tools:

these don't serve the same function....

That flat shovel can lift an unbelievably thin layer of soil. The round point one is the tester–you know something’s down there, so you cut into the soil with it.  (If you click on the picture it’ll take to to a right proper archaeology site )

There are some memories I’ve had to sneak up on, just like I would a wispy dream.  I tell my brain that my fingers are just fiddling around on the keyboard, and I ignore any possible typos at this point because I’m typing like Stevie Wonder–my eyes are closed, and I’m leaning a little to the left because maybe that’s the way the car was going, and I’m swaying because I know Daddy’s got Johnny Cash on the radio and I’m trying to remember that empty lot on the corner that I liked to play in because the dirt was greasy.—-

After you write the bare-boned scene, ask yourself why it is so important.  What holds the meaning for you?  Why does it hurt to remember it?  Or why does it make your heart burst with joy?  Maybe you’re standing on the front seat of your dad’s old white Pontiac, your small hand tucked into the collar of his shirt, and your face is snugged up under his chin where you can smell Old Spice and tobacco, and the memory holds both deep delight and terror, because you know your daddy’s driving drunk…..

These are things you must excavate and give meaning to.

Edited: March 30th, 2012

Regurgitation: It’s what’s for breakfast

“As writers we live life twice, like a cow that eats its food once and then regurgitates it to chew and digest it again. We have a second chance at biting into our experience and examining it. … This is our life and it’s not going to last forever. There isn’t time to talk about someday writing that short story or poem or novel. Slow down now, touch what is around you, and out of care and compassion for each moment and detail, put pen to paper and begin to write.” —Natalie Goldberg

This idea is repulsive.

I’d prefer not to envision myself as a cow in any way. Furthermore, throwing up what I just ate?  And pawing through it to find the good chunks to chow down again? Just thinking about it makes my stomach heave a little.

But I have done this in my writing.
I’ve ingested life through all my pores and then vomited the experiences onto the page.
It’s a matter of having taken in too much too fast and then needing to put all of it into one place so I can pick through it and draw out meaning.
I don’t have the words for anything unless I write it out.  If it stays inside, it stays unnamed and unclaimed.

I ingest indiscriminately the first time. The second time I’m far choosier, and those are the things that stick to my bones.

I so wish this didn’t sound like a promotion for bulimia.

Edited: February 6th, 2012

scars

Scars mark the places where life and sanity were threatened, ordeals endured, wounds opened and closed. They evoke a queasy awe in the best of us. We stare and look away, want to ask what happened but don’t dare broach the subject, as if these patches of mended flesh identified experience beyond the realm of human discourse. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the word ‘scar’ is one letter away from ‘scare.’ -Kat Duff

Scars are irrefutable proof that something happened.

I got my first huge scar when I was six years old.  I’d stacked three scabby-barked logs in the back yard then stepped back a few feet to take a running leap over the stack.  I barely cleared it; I dragged my leg over the log and tore a gash in my shin.  The scrape was about two inches long, and deep enough that I sported a hideous jagged scar for many years.

The scar is gone now, except for a tiny patch of puckered skin that’s nearly invisible. Like many of my childhood experiences, that leap seems like it might not have happened, after all.  I no longer have proof that I scraped the shit out of my shin, and if I don’t have proof, did it really happen?  Never mind that I remember the messy scrape and the serious owie (but I don’t remember crying. huh.)–never mind the vivid sensual memory. The scar’s virtually gone.

Emotionally disruptive events leave marks, too—I hesitate to call them scars because in many cases they’re just lessons, however much they hurt.  And I think that for a fair number of those lessons, it’s our choice whether we regard them as lessons or deeply scarring traumas.

Maybe all of them.

I don’t know.  Betrayal, for me, feels traumatic. But if I consider my expectations, open and hidden, and if I consider what I learned about myself because of a betrayal—I just can’t comfortably label it a traumatic experience.  I feel like I have a couple of horrible scars, and like they should be visible…but they’re really just lessons learned. When I look at them like that, it diminishes the emotional reaction I have to the memories.  I welcome this.

Edited: February 1st, 2012

Song Sung Blue

Edited: December 26th, 2011

Tom Dooley

Edited: December 26th, 2011

Sweet Baby James

Edited: December 26th, 2011

NaNoWriMo: Day 13

About a year ago, as I was finishing up my thesis for my MFA in Creative Writing, I had a stroke. A small thalamic stroke, they called it. It happened on the day my thesis was due; I think I’d just emailed it when I noticed I was feeling numb on the left side of my body.  When I say numb, I don’t mean to the core.  It was just my skin that was affected by a tiny pinhole of a stroke in the region of my brain that controls the sense of touch.

Is it coincidental that something erupted in my brain when I was writing about being molested as a kid?  I think there’s a connection:  my body finally said enough of this bullshit.  After two years of dredging up childhood abuse, it was just time to stop.   And so I have, for over a year.  I was afraid of causing another stroke if I went back to revise, even if I was balancing it out with all the good in my life.  The brain is the one thing in my body that I don’t have a handle on –a stroke isn’t like getting period cramps or even a headache.  That sucker hits you with no warning, not even a pop to let you know a blood vessel’s awry.

I have two symptoms that remind me of the stroke:  the ball of my left foot feels like it’s asleep, and the left side of my gut has what feels like a brick in it.  That brick is my barometer for stress.  Most days it’s a faint sensation, but when I’m feeling any kind of stress, the heavy feeling comes back full force.

I’m a little jittery about writing. I wonder if I can trick my brain into thinking I’m writing about someone else, or if I can pull back enough to be able to view events from a distance—and it is a distance, of years.  Writing it, though, makes it immediate.  I have no trick for creating psychic space, but I’m hoping that this year off has worked some time-magic and I’ll find the psychic safety net is already there.
Here’s to the brick in my gut.

Edited: November 13th, 2011

NaNoWriMo: Day 7

I found a letter from my mother dated April 12, 1989.   The date meant nothing at first read, then I read, “No, I don’t think your father will ‘go to hell’ (grin)” and I remembered that my father died in early April of ’89.  I’m not sure why I would have asked Mama if I thought he was going to hell.  I was sure of it.
She further writes, “I think, rather, that he will be busy learning differences in the types of love that there is.  I believe that he is just fine.  Instead my concern lies in anyone who could see what happened to him and yet continue to surrender to those forces that shaped his unhappiness.”
This—and the rest of the letter—makes me nuts.  I’m incensed that she wrote about him learning different types of love (I sneer here) when she knew what he did to me. It’s a crap thing to say to a daughter who felt the ‘love’ from that man. And the letter sounds so…reasonable, even with its roundabout finger-pointing at Dad’s mother , the mild terminology (Dad wasn’t unhappy; he was miserable,) and the complete lack of acknowledgement of my truth.
She writes, “Sometimes people make choices, act a certain way, do certain things for unacknowledged ends. They live by and within a set of rules with the expectation that their compliance will ensure a set outcome, whether it is money or returned affection or a gathering of objects or maybe the fending off of loneliness.  Perhaps it is a combination of all these things.  Then, after years of minor and sometimes major compromises, the person doesn’t get whatever it is that he or she “purchased” with the prescribed actions.  What then?  Maybe the person interpreted the “rules” incorrectly, maybe something else—but the changes in the person are accomplished anyway, the goal is unattainable, and the perceptions of the person are so altered by the day to day compromises that he or she has forgotten the rules of living according to inner clarity.  A fine mess.  Oh, well, I guess it is pointless to say any more on this. (smile)”
Actually, it’s brilliant.
And I’ve re-read the paragraph before her comment about Dad learning about different types of love.  I’m busted again—I still skim my mother’s letters because they’re so hard, so painful, to read word for word. She writes, “I’ve been reading about incest…and…the conclusion I’ve come to is that there seems to be many kinds of incest, not all of them physical.  Perhaps it can all be crystallized into the concept of a failure to love, or a failure to understand the nature of love—how to love—“
This makes her no-hell comment less inflammatory, but I’m still angry. Part of it is that I want to be, I think, but I’m also puzzled/peeved that she was reading about incest 25 years after the fact, and she spoke so dispassionately of the matter, like it had never touched her. Like I was a friend she was counseling. Gag me, ok.
Finding this letter is a blessing.  It’s opened a vein, not of gold but of molten lava that I’ve tried for years to access.  I’ve been unable to feel anything other than baffled grief regarding my mother, and I’ve known that it was superficial, that mere pain didn’t do justice to either of us.  I’m not sure at this point how it’s beneficial to her that I feel angry, though. :/
I think…I think that when I’m authentic I’ll be able to see her more clearly, and thus be able to present her more fairly.  I miss —having a mother. And sometimes I miss her.

Edited: November 7th, 2011