Writing about Complex Trauma and Childhood Neglect
Hello! I am writing a short story on my experience with complex trauma and childhood neglect. My brain is telling me that this is a waste of time, but I put a lot of energy into this introduction. Can you read and let me know if this would entice you to keep reading?
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I am twenty-four years old, which is the age my mother was when she had me, and that has been on my mind lately.
The first thing you should know is that I cannot remember most of my childhood. I have tried to remember. I have sat with therapists and notebooks and other people’s photographs and stories, and I have pressed against the years the way you press a bruise to see if it's still there. Most of the time there is nothing. Not pain. Not memory. Just the soft place where something may have been before. Sometimes, if I press hard enough, a scene appears.
The scenes are my memories. They float, untethered to any larger story. The baseball bat to the car windshield. The vase shattering against the wall above my head. My brother, four years old, crying in the back of a Ford Expedition, ice cream dripping down his hands, red and blue lights flashing around the vehicle. Razor blades hidden under my mattress. The thirty Tylenol in middle school I swallowed to find happiness. The grandfather I had never met, who I prayed to anyway. The pumpkin pie on that one Thanksgiving before Adam was born. The wasabi in the bathroom of the primary bedroom the five of us shared. The locks on the pantry and the bedrooms converted to prison cells, with only a mattress and pillow. The notebook I had to wear around my neck because my memory was bad, hanging there like a bell on a cat, so the household could hear me coming and know what I was. The cocaine as an excuse to escape. The cries and sobs. The screams and the silence.
I am told that this is dissociation related to complex trauma. I am told that my brain does this on purpose, a kindness to fight for survival. I do not feel kind towards my brain. I do not know what to feel about it. It is the thing that does the feeling.
I am twenty-four years old. I live in Arizona now, in a house with a yard my husband works on. The sky here is blue and clear, and at certain hours of the afternoon it turns a color I have no word for. I stand in my kitchen, holding a cup of coffee, and I think: I am alive. I am still here. Then I think: for what.
That is the part I want to tell you about. Not the not-remembering, but the standing at the window. The for what.