"Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?" - Charles Bukowski
i'm not sure if its my 40s or if its perimenopause, but I've been having a lot of memories come in from my earlier childhood. memories I wasn't sure if I had anymore. unfortunately, they are not so much good memories, but memories that i'm picking up on that were really, actually, kind of fucked up. maybe not fucked up to the point that I think that I had it as horrible as some, but still contributed and shaped who I am today. I shared some with my sister, who is younger than me so she doesn't have my earliest memories - its funny, when the universe picks out your younger sister, sometimes you think that they've been with you your entire life, even prior to theirs and they love you more than you ever thought possible.
she cut her hair when she was little. little little, maybe 3 years old. I was supposed to be playing with her - keeping an eye on her, my mother made sure to scream at me when I was called into the bathroom where she'd taken the scissors right up the backside of her head. I was at the age that I was beginning to have waves of wild emotions I had no idea what to do with - the first death in my family had happened and I was in 5th grade. I had no idea what to do with the grief - which I didn't know was grief at the time. in not knowing what to do with it, I wasn't sure who I was.
I carried a heavy guilt for not watching my sister and hearing my mother sob as she said that I was supposed to be watching her and that I had let her cut off all of her beautiful curly hair. that night, I wrote my first suicide note and took a large amount of Tylenol that I found in the same bathroom she cut her hair in. I made it until morning - waking up with a stomachache that i'd never experienced before and I vomited over and over, just piles of white globs over and over. I did this several times before I switched and had a brilliant idea - at least what I thought was a brilliant idea - i'd bleed the pain out. I'd get rid of it and let it seep out my skin. I took my mother's razor and tore it apart, hid all of the pieces except for the razor, I kept it and started with the front of my shins first - going from ankle to knee, over and over again until I had my entire shin covered. i remember it was getting warm outside and I asked my mother for knee high socks - the ones that are white with the stripes at the top. I needed something to cover my shins during physical education and when I was wearing shorts. I didn't tell her that but she did get me the socks for Easter.
this was the beginning. (while having this memory, I had the realization that was why I never had my older kids watch the younger ones - especially at that age. while they are older now, they are self sufficient so its not as stressful as it was before - panicked and never asking one to keep an eye on the other - always telling my ex husband that he couldn't do that to them - it was too heavy if something went awry)
around this same time - I was struggling to make friends. the friends I did make were not acceptable to my parents - my dad would even suggest that I try to befriend a girl in my grade that was part of the crowd that was not so nice to me. my dad was on the fire department, along with her dad. she wouldn't give me the time of day - i compared myself to her frequently over the years - thinking if I could be more like her that maybe my dad would love me more. maybe my parents would let me be happy, maybe they wouldn't be so cold.
I continued to cut myself and steal my mother's razors over the next several years. once I was old enough to drive, the friends I did have would buy me cigarettes, I had a lighter, I still had the razors. I would keep the lighter burning as long as I could hold the button down, get it nice and hot, it left little eyes on the insides of my arms, from wrist to elbow. I would be driving down the road - deep in thought - angry at myself, smoking a cigarette. when it came time to put it out, i'd put it out in the same area, squishing the cherry into my skin and letting the embers fall around it.
I never reigned that back in. I continued with Tylenol, continued with the razors, continued with the cigarettes. I ran with the "wrong" crowd, I had close friends but was always afraid that they'd leave me - a strong feeling of abandonment that i've carried my entire life. I had a few dates here and there, nothing serious. one day in the fall, I had a date with a man who was older than I - I was still in high school and he was his early twenties. he picked me up and we went to dinner, I never let on to my parents his age. I knew if I had told them that they wouldn't let me go. I only told them at a high level, he was cute and a pastors son at a church in town. this gave me their well wishes. we went to dinner and afterwards, he said he had something to pick up at his parents church - forgot his sunglasses. we got to the church and I thought I was waiting in the car - thought it would be a quick grab. he invited me in instead and I went. we got inside and he grabbed his sunglasses, asked if I wanted a tour. I hadn't grown up in church - just occasionally on holidays, nothing consistent enough to explore the inside of a church without a congregation present. it ended up being a tour that would keep me on the same path I was on - a self destructive one - he had me in the basement but wouldn't turn on the lights. I tiptoed through the dark with him, he led me to a classroom. soon we were kissing (i'd only kissed two other boys in my life) - it kept going and I felt like I was in the clouds. he was moving too quickly for me, I wasn't ready - he said I was. pushed me to the floor, pulled my pants down to my ankles, started thrusting while I was struggling, his hand over my mouth and slapping me in the face when I struggled too much. he was thrusting so hard that it pushed my head into the table leg - my hair, my hair, the only thing I finally had control over - caught in the caster wheel of the table. when he was finished, he pulled me up and I felt every hair that was pulled out with that caster.
I kept this a secret for nearly a year. I kept on with what I could control - my hair cuts, my hair color, the razors, the cigarettes, sleeping in the bathtub hoping i'd sink and never come up. one night I thought I had a hold of that control, I went thru the house and took every single pill I could find and then I took them all. I started to fade when i got scared. completely terrified, how could I leave, what if there was more, what if I could be who I was when I was with my grandma or who I was when I was with the close friends that let me be myself? who I was when I was sometimes alone on a good day - carefree, happy and you'd never know the struggles. I went upstairs and told my dad. he woke my mother and we went to the hospital. everything was a whirlwind from there, was this the ticket to my downfall?
activated charcoal and some sprite to wash it down. a transfer to another town and inpatient. I was inpatient for almost 3 weeks. I got in trouble for barking at the cleaning lady who would stare at my bright, midnight blue hair so that got me a ticket for a couple more days in. they finally let me out on a day pass to spend with my family - intent was to do something fun, instead, my mother had me at the salon getting the blue stripped out of my hair. the stylist couldn't get it all out - I was left with a blueish green hue with bright blonde Barbie hair. my curls weren't what they were.
while I was inpatient, my parents tore apart my room. they found my razors, lighters, cigarettes, and most importantly, my diary. they read every single page. then they got on the family computer and found my online diary that was on one of the first anonymous social media platforms. I had wrote anonymously but they found my login information. they printed off pages and pages - those detailing the church tour - and took them straight to the police station. I didn't know until I got out of the hospital that they had done that - my heart sank lower and lower, I couldn't believe it - they'd taken my "private" words and spewed them to the cops.
they brought him in for questioning. he denied, denied, denied. there was no physical proof - it had been almost a year. my parents told me that the detective said he finally asked for a lawyer and he couldn't proceed. I didn't care - i wanted my diary back, I wanted those printed anonymous pages back, I wanted what I wanted for me.
I turned 18, graduated high school and moved out. I found myself a little efficiency apartment, took my favorite little farm cat and started to meet people that were functioning adults similar to me - some of my people in the wild. within that year, i called the police station, told them I wanted my diary back. Surprisingly, they said I could have it, I just needed to come and check it out of evidence.
thankful to have my words back, I kept them close. anything I wrote on paper I kept just as close, I didn't want anyone to ever find my words again. I still wrote online - changing my username when I thought someone was getting too close, closing one account to open another. running, running, running.
I still struggle with this quite frequently - honestly, in reality though, i'm grown enough to tell them to fuck off, I just have to find that little voice inside that will let it be said out loud. thankfully, I've had a friend that has taught me a lot about that over the past almost 5 years. i've been able to be mostly unapologetically myself which is not something i've had with someone that has stuck through it. even though I do still hide some of my demons from him, because some are too much to let anyone know - in reality, he wouldn't bat an eye and he'd still answer me the next day. I hid lots of parts of myself from my ex husband, from my kids, from my parents, from my sister.
i'm tired of hiding - on the other hand, i've seen the ramifications of not hiding. i'm still scared, still feel like I am looking for something that i'll never find, still wanting to hide away.
I just want to be who I was before the world told me who I should be.
oh how bukowski articulates things that I see in me that have always been there, I just hadn't paid attention. </3