CHAPTER 13

            So here I am now, sitting in the car as my mom and I drive home from the grocery store. The radio, as is only natural, plays a healthy dose of “oldies” in the background. My mom and I are talking about some random thing, as we always do, when a song from my past steals into my senses.

            What song is this? you ask of me.

            Ah, the memories which come flooding into my mind with just one line, one simple lyric, even half of the melody playing where I can hear it.

            The song is ‘La Bamba,’ by who I do not know. All I know is that the instant I hear that song I remember one day, one glorious, not-too-hot, sunshine-filled afternoon in Texas.

            This is, overall, a good memory. Nothing bad about it whatsoever, unless you count the fact that it includes my father.

            I can’t think how to describe this day. How to start?

            My father was in a bad, as you well know, and his band played a lot of those popular soft rock songs of the late eighties, early nineties, such as ‘Lil’ Red Riding Hood’ or ‘Free Falling’ or even ‘Last Kiss’ One of his band’s favorites (and one of mine) was this song: ‘La Bamba.’ They were especially good at it because their drummer could do the lyrics to perfection, to me he sounded almost better than the original.

            That day, a Saturday, there was a Fair of sorts downtown. In the midst of this bumpy-street, aluminum-siding, church-every-Sunday, rural town in the middle of Texas, was a gathering such as only young children dream about in Sunday school.

            They had a band (subtle hint) to provide the ideal atmosphere, they had a moonwalk for the energetic children, they had table upon table lined up on the sides of the downtown street just full to bursting with various treasures.

            There were colorful slinkies, little animals dangling from puppet strings (my personal favorite at the time), figurines, those little metal jacks, yo-yo’s, toy cars, miniature dolls, stuffed animals, and anything else you could think of. To a child’s eyes, these tables gleamed in the warm sunlight, sparkling, shimmering, and simply demanding to be gazed at.

            Not only did they have this, they had actual helium tanks across the wide street for blowing balloons or making balloon animals.

            In short, this day was set for pure and unadulterated pleasure.

            At this time I am a youngster, I could be seven or eight, maybe older, and maybe even younger (my sense of age in time is highly warped), so I am literally a tidal wave of energy. Children must release this excitement somehow, must they not? They run, they bounce, they soar, they fly. When you have a boundless source of energy and optimism within you, you will seek to release it in any way you can, and without reserve.

            I have but one word for you, my dear reader. Moonwalk.

            Yes, imagine it, picture it, see it, feel it, and delight in it.

            I was a ball of lightning as a child. I never seemed to tire or lose my smile and laugh. And I dearly, deeply, loved the moonwalk.

            On that day alone, I’m certain I must have (or rather my father must have) purchased an endless number of tickets to get access to this beacon for repressed energy. I’m certain I stood in line upon line full of kids my size or bigger, just anxiously waiting for another turn and another try at this marvelous adventure. I’m certain I bounced on my toes (something I still do today), and shook and trembled with impatience. I’m also certain that each and every time I finally reached the front of the line, I scurried through the tent-like opening in the front of this blue, wobbling monstrosity, and proceeded to bounce and jump as high and as long as earthly possible.

            I could not get enough of it.

            And all that time, playing distantly, strongly, in the background, was that song. When I wasn’t standing in line, when I wasn’t browsing the tables and ogling the helium tanks, I was hovering in front of the band.

            It was set up before the Bank, on the wide expanse of concrete that framed the soaring glass windows of the first floor and towering upper stories. Now this building shows up very vividly in my memory. I don’t know exactly why, yet it does, each and every time.

            It reigned over the rounded, dull grey city streets of almost molded, pebble-like consistency. It appeared faintly old, thought it was new. It was grey and silver, dull and brick-like, steel and concrete and glass. I cannot describe what this building looked like, not very well, but you are getting, perhaps, my impression of this building which I have not physically seen in over ten years. But those grey streets, that balcony of white-grey concrete, and that dull silver and glass building dominate my memory even today. Maybe they are what I remember because they were what surrounded the band, on all sides, from every front. The band was my focus, that afternoon, all I concentrated on.

            That day was splendid, full of sunshine, laughter, love, and a sense of togetherness. We were a community, that day. As one: devoted to the happiness of others. It could not have been more perfect if someone had brought it to life on a sheet of paper.

            Yet whenever I hear that song, ‘La Bamba,’ hear it ringing in my ears and my mind over and over again, it does not please me to see the joy and perfection of the day. No, it pains me instead.

            But why would it, how could it?

            Quite simple, really. So simple you’ve already figured this one out.

            This memory is overshadowed, immensely so, by one single, solitary fact, one connections which soils it completely for me.

            My father.

            I see his face, and the sky, the buildings, the laughter fades.  I hear his voice and the song, my favored and absolute favorite, fades and stops abruptly, leaving me in a cavern of silence, broken only by the lies and deceit of the man who claimed a superiority over my life and freedom.

            A man who refuses to speak to me, even today, as I begin to head off to a new and unfamiliar life. A man who stays purposefully out of my life just when everything I know is about to be washed clean, and any familiar ties to my past are becoming ever more vital to my strength in the future, and especially the present.

            A man whose selfishness astounds me still today.

*****In case you wanted to hear these songs, they are the songs which I feel represent my father in my mind. Whenever I hear these songs, at least, I think of him.*****

Moonwalk

Inside a Moonwalk

I am a little overwhelmed with my school work at the moment, and my stepdad is demanding some ‘changes’ in my lifestyle/habits that demands a bit more of my focus and attention. The next chapter was one that I added in between the other chapters just recently, so it still needs to be written, thus the reason for the delay. If you want me to comment on your blog when I have finally posted the next chapter, just leave a comment here and I’ll be sure to notify you. Otherwise, check in however frequently you deem it necessary.

Again, I am sorry for this delay. My past will have to take lesser precedence to my present and future. Thanks to you all who have come here faithfully and read my story. I appreciate it.

Until then.

            I flee into my room, collapse on the floor in front of my bed, struggle not to fall apart, to hold myself together just a little more, just a little stronger.

            But in my head I know I have no more strength, I am tired of staying together, strong, perpetually in order like a cardboard cut-out from an Ernest Hemingway novel. Strong and graceful in the face of pressure.

            The pressure is too much: the pain, the terror, the anger, and that unending despair and sadness that just won’t go away. I rock back and forth, back and forth on my floor, sobbing freely, willing him to come back so that I might lash back while fervently praying never to see him again, knowing any resistance would break me yet again.

            Words race around my head: phrases, sentences, cries, plaintive calls for help or solace.

            I can’t do this. I can’t. It’s too much, I can’t stand it. It’s too much, too much. I need help, someone to help me through, someone to hold on to, someone to be strong for me. I just can’t do it anymore.

            I let loose with a storm, I pour my heart out in torrents, let it gush forth from my soul and wash away the tragedy of it all. The only audible sounds in my bedroom are my tears.

            But eventually I pick myself up, and I pull on a coat: one that’s not very thick, just a sweatshirt. My favorite one though, tried and true in all situations. I choose it like a child chooses their favorite, thread-worn blanket or a ratty, stuffed animal over a newer object: the comfort and security in something known, something trusted. I grab my house keys, and sneak through my front door into the darkness without.

            During this time, I live on one of the main streets in my city, as I’ve explained before. My small house sits two houses from the end of the block. Around the corner, across the street, and halfway down awaits my older sister’s house. This is my destination.

            Through the crisp, clear, breath-fogged night I walk, footsteps ringing on the sidewalk, eyes wandering warily between the dark houses and the cloudless sky. My arms are crossed defensively over my chest, my head up, my neck strong, my steps sure. The last thing I want is to invite some despicable to get it into his head to assault me, so I try to appear as confident and sure of myself as I can. ‘Dangerous and untouchable’ I think, as my heartbeat pounds strong in my ear. Though I find it hard to feign such an apparent lack of vulnerability, hard to ignore what I truly feel, and channel a different emotion. But my mom believes it a necessary act if seeking to avoid becoming the victim. Ironic advice, I would say.

            I see my sister’s house: her small concrete porch steps glow beneath its little yellow light. I check both ways for any stray cars, then cross the street, cutting a diagonal to get there quicker.

             I ascend the four short steps, pull open her screen door, and knock once, twice, wait a few minutes. In my state of mind, I do not at first notice that her car is not parked on the street. When I get no response, I finally turn my head, see its lack of presence, and realize slowly, painfully, that she is not there. It is not that my sister is sleeping that she doesn’t answer the door, it is not that she doesn’t care, she simply is not there. Still, the fact does not deter me, I am stubborn, and, at the moment, wholly desperate.

            I’m scared to death. I do not want to return home, and the night that I am forced to keep company with terrifies me with its calmness, its silence, its darkness. Anywhere, around any corner, inside any shadow, something or someone could be hiding, watching, waiting, ready to pounce or strike, prepared to cause harm. While, beneath my sister’s bright porch light, I am on a stage, under a spotlight, like a lighthouse for anyone unsavory in my mind, guiding them ever closer, past all obstacles. In my vulnerable position, my brother could see me there and come back, do something more. But this is necessary, just as it was before. My security depends on the success of this.

            I wrap my arms around my knees, clasp my hands against the biting cold of the night. In between keeping a lookout on the street around me, I debate whether I should try and run to someone’s house for use of their phone and help, or not. Ignoring my thoughts and the cold, I watch the sky, the stars, the moon, and the individual, wispy clouds racing by.

            Very rarely do I get to see the night sky, drink in its twinkling sureness, appreciate its presence so away. Its distance provides me food for thought, gives me small comfort, peace, calm. I become more one with the night, share in its history, breathe in its acceptance and add to its sorrow. In the night, I am briefly the same, momentarily a part of it, in its embrace and up there, shining forevermore.

            I shift on the step, my legs, my limbs from the waist down, are numb from the cold of the air and the concrete upon which I sit. I wipe my face, brush the bangs out of my eyes, and push my frozen glasses up my nose. Absently, vaguely panicked, I wonder how long I have been sitting there and waiting. I cannot tell. All I know is I have looked at the moon long enough to have memorized its pattern and nature long ago. Its silvery silence is soothing, comforting, like a mother with eyes shining in understanding and love.

            The night is cold, frigid, the temperature somewhere between thirty degrees and oblivion, but still I sit, and still I wait. I try to hold back more tears, to block the words pounding in my ears telling me it’s senseless, useless, that she isn’t coming home for the night, that if I am determined to wait for her I’ll be waiting until past morning. I look at my hands, cold, pale and small, then wrap them more firmly in my sleeves. I scrunch my neck against the soft wind that has arisen, blowing from my left with promises of snow to come. My eyes water, in response to the wind and my helplessness. I know that I must return to my house but, Gold help me, I do not want to. I’m terrified, scared witless. But I am also cold, and getting colder, the numbness is creeping higher, the darkness of the night growing deeper, the moon climbing higher, then falling.

            What time could it be now? How long have I waited in vain so far? Will he still be awake, still alert, still ready to attack? I wonder, I puzzle, I dread. But I also know that the night is too cold to stay, my coat is too thin to hold the frosty winter air out and away from my chilled skin.

            “Just five more minutes,” I think to myself, “five more and if she still isn’t here then I will go back.” The thought sends shivers down my back, and I silently will my sister to come driving up, I will her headlights to come bobbing down the street, fresh over the horizon. In my mind I beg her to come home, to just please, come home. But still nothing happens. Every now and then, a car goes rushing past, bringing the wind along, blowing my bangs back into my face. Aloud I mutter irritably, “Come on (—), come home already.” It does no good. The faint, widely spaced street lights, as old fashioned and outdated as they can be in a modern world, flicker and buzz in the background. Still the street stays empty.

            Another ten minutes pass, long and achingly slow. I sigh deeply, my heart heavy and unwilling to faced going back. But I know that I simply cannot stay out here. Distantly in my mind I wonder if I would freeze to death, if I decided to stay on the porch step waiting, watching, hoping for someone to come, help, save. Would they find my body in the morning, curled up on that last porch step, lips blue, eyes half open in exhaustion, hands held tight to my chest? Still waiting, still watching, still hoping? Would they wonder why? Why that quiet, sensible girl left her home one block away, and sat on her sister’s front porch? Would they scratch their heads in bewilderment that she had decided to sit in the cold, when she had her house keys in her pocket? Would they wonder why she chose to stay from her home, her bed, blankets, and warmth, and instead sit on the cold concrete steps and slowly, gradually freeze, grow numb, senseless, lethargic? Would their conclusion be indecisive, inconclusive: a puzzle that will never be solved, and left at that? Would my brother tell them nothing, or spill the whole story? Would he help them, or hinder their search for an answer?

            Almost I wish I could just sit and wait, sit and discover if the cold and numbness will come, will seep into my bones and leave me paralyzed. I could almost wish I had. But no, I rise, adjust my thin sweatshirt, pull up my sagging pants, take one last longing look at the door, then the street where her car should have come. I sigh, take first one step, then another, until finally I walk slowly, warily, back to my house.

***In the interest of trying to avoid a cliffhanger, or any annoyance on your part, I left this chapter whole. It is long, with much redundancy I’m sure. Comment if it became annoying. I can’t really tell myself.***

            The difference of the previous memory to the one I am about to tell you comes out of my emotional and mental maturity. I have a new expectancy for the violence of my brother, but I have also a new knowledge that he won’t turn it against me. By my freshman and sophomore year of high school, such incidents are thankfully rare and far between. His focus is on the more “potent” experiences of drinking to excess, smoking, and getting high on all sorts of things with his friends in the basement.

            I believe the time is somewhere near the beginning of my freshman year in high school, I am probably around the age of fourteen. It is once again a Saturday night, and my brother has taken advantage of my mom’s absence (she is working that night, as she did for many other nights as well) by throwing a large, raging, pounding party in our unused garage.

            The rap music is powerful, carrying a vibration all into the house. The lights in the garage are hazy, obscured by the cloud of smoke from their pot and cigarettes. The people lounge about on the couches and chairs my brother obtained from the alleyway. They are intermittently loud and raucous, and then quietly languorous, mellow to the point of being in a drunken, pot-induced stupor. Some of the people my brother knows, some he doesn’t, some he likes and some he hates.

            He drifts around the whole group, sometimes lounging along with them, other times looking for some thing he can wreck or destroy, trouble he can get into for more attention. For my brother has, and will always, desire to be in the center of any party’s attention. He thrives on the attention and approval he gets.

            On that night I sit in our living room, in our dark, relatively quiet house. In my large, empty, vacant, hollow living room, it is light. But surrounding it is the night, like the sphere of light a dim candle gives off at midnight, flickering and stuttering, shadowed as though by some sort of veil.

            I sit comfortably in a computer chair in front of the TV, for we have no couch at this time, my knees and feet curled up beneath me. I am watching one of the “Lord of the Rings” movies I borrowed from my sister, because I have still not seen them. Chin propped in my hand, I watch the movie, wholly absorbed in the lengthening night.

            It is about ten or ten-thirty, the battle on the screen climaxes, and in walks my drunken brother. Now, to head off any horrible visions of domestic abuse from a crazy, mad, angry drunk, I must tell you that, as a drunk, my brother is nicer. In fact, as a drunk at this very moment, he is more of a brother to me than he has ever been.

            All of a sudden he is sitting in one of the small wooden chairs which belong to my mother’s “other-era” kitchen table, which she got from her mom. The chair is shorter than the towering one I am in, though my brother’s personal heighth takes away from this advantage. His chair has curved arms, coming forward to provide easily for the user’s elbows to rest on. Sprawled in this creaky, wooden support, my brother begins to talk to me. His words are slurred, his speech slow, and his eyes are heavy as his lids droop over them, but he is calm.

            He talks to me of many, highly varied subjects. He tells me about all of the drugs he has tried, tells me “shhh, don’tell mom, but I tried cocaine once, along with s’mother stuff,” his voice slurred and dragging along. He urges me to come to him when I decide to start drinking, to not get drunk my first time without him. I warily refuse, tell him I haven’t any intention at all of drinking, then or in the future. But he just gives me a lopsided, silly-drunk grin, and tells me in a knowing voice simply, “You’ll see. I gar’ntee it, you will.”

            I am almost seventeen now, and I have yet to drink or do any of the things my impaired brother seemed to predict for me that night.

            But where is this violence I told you of? All I have relayed conveys an amusedly affectionate brother, drunk and trying his best to be protective.

            Where is that monster I know so well?

            Patience, friends, is a virtue, if you are to fully comprehend this all.

            So, our stilted conversation drifts on, climbing over various more topics, drifting over the guy I was “seeing” at the time. The nature of said relationship is entirely irrelevant, because the guy in question never worked up any guts to talk with me in person, so it wasn’t really anything, in the end. I don’t know, I must be an intimidating person, but only you or others can answer that question. Anyway, moving on.

            The conversation topic turns, the mood and tension changes and heightens. Somehow, I don’t recall the true reason why, I have made him angry enough to lash out. He must prove to me that he can hurt me, or harm me enough to show that, yes, he is bigger than me, and that yes, he is stronger. He lurches out of his chair and places both hands hard upon the arms of mine (chair, that is). He towers over me, leans into my face, drenching me with his foul, alcohol-soaked breath. The chair, the kind which tilts and swivels, starts to take on a precarious angle. There is a flurry of motion, everything is blurred, we struggle as he tries to maybe hit me or take hold of my neck yet again. I do not really know.

            Six years have passed since his last attempt at strangulation. Perhaps it is his preferred method of dealing with me, his trademark move.

            This event, however, is more blinding, more terrifying, more confusing than the others. He pushes, tries to hit, and eventually the chair gives way, twists and topples. Both him and chair land on top of me, the hard plastic handle of the computer chair digging sharply into my hip. I scramble out from under them and quickly bound to the telephone, trying to dial that vital three-digit number that would call help to me, or would, at the very least, call my sister to come and get me.

            My fingers close around the white, cordless phone and attempt to dial, anything. Dancing out of his reach, though, isn’t enough: his arms are longer than mine. He roughly pries the phone from my hands. Then, pushing me out of the way, he unhooks the cord from the phone jack, removes all hope of calling anyone at all that night. Cord in hand, he angrily and triumphantly leaves the room, confident that I will not be able to call the police on him and his hatred. Confident of his victory and superiority.

CHAPTER 10

            Let us go back to the absolute worst two years. Maybe of my life, but I’ve yet to truly know the validity of that statement. Give me another fifty years and hours more of self-analyzation.

            The time was turmoil. I was in the fifth and sixth grade, and in these years we live in a spacious double-wide trailer in one of the suburbs of my town. My mom works until six or sometime late; my sister is with her friends, I believe. After school most days, no one except my brother and I are home.

            It is about four o’clock, late in my fifth grade year, there is a feeling of summer laziness in the air, warm and stuffy, yet cool, breezy, tinted with chlorine and refreshing pool water. Once again, my brother and I are arguing, fighting about something. The details of the day quite escape me.

            Just so you know, we fought about a lot of things. He never seemed to be able to understand where someone else might be coming from. It was the entire world against him, no one could see his side, no one wanted to see his side, no one cared to. Unfortunately, he never chose to see mine.

            We are standing in the kitchen, barefoot on the cold linoleum. I am, on average, a short person, just as my brother is a tall person. In between the center island and the refrigerator we stand a foot apart, yelling. He towers, his voice carries louder, but I am determined to try and stand up to him despite my urge to cry and run away, to cower. This could not end well, I knew. It never had before.

            The argument crescendos, climaxes, reaches its breaking point, and my brother snaps. Suddenly, his rough hands are around my ten year old, scrawny neck. This is his demonstration of superiority and strength, his dominance and threat of its use. A lesson he continually tried to force into my mind over the years. A fact he attempted to make me believe, remember, and fear.

            My eyes widen as he tightens his fingers, the glint in his brown eyes scares me the most. If he wanted to, he really could do this to me; he does not have to stop. My mouth opens wide, flapping, seeking air. My hands clasp around his wrists, trying to pry them off, pull them away. My lungs, my heart, my body, all are paralyzed by the maniacal gleam in my thirteen year old brother’s face.

            Times slows, stretches, the seconds dragging along a road of molasses. My terrified mind attempts to panic, but a haze of black seems to break into the process before it is able to take over. I am fully in the mercy of the twisted and severely troubled soul before me, frozen in the moment. My life, however short, is in his hands and he knows it.

            Up until that time I had always known that he had the capacity for extreme acts of cruelty. One of his favorite pastimes was locking my black kitten in his room with him and refusing to let him out, all the while describing to me vivid images of my cat if my brother decided to electrocute him.

            Things like blood coming out of his eyes, foam from his nose and mouth, smoke out of his ears, and the like relayed in a sly, bent-on-evil voice made me scream and bang on his bedroom door for an hour or more just to get him to give my poor baby back, safe from harm. My voice would be hoarse and raw, bitterly defeated in the end, when he would finally release him.

            To this day my cat does not like, nor can he stand, closed doors. He can be perfectly content sleeping on my bed, up until the moment I close the door. Then he freaks out, and goes to the door, begging to be let out.

            Can you see the ripple effect here?

            So I, of course, knew that my brother had no deficit of imagination, nor lack of capacity for violence, judging by the destruction in his room, our house, and our yard; judging by the destruction on his body.

            As his fingers tighten their hold on my neck, I frantically wonder whether he could, or would, actually do it. Would he kill me? With my feet barely clinging to the ground, I certainly do not doubt that he could, but still I fervently hope that he won’t.

            Eternity passed, disguising the fleetingness of the seconds. Finally, abruptly, unexpectedly, he let go. Just like that. Like he had found what he was looking for in my oxygen starved face, my panicked eyes, my scrabbling fingers.

           What had he found: An acceptance to his nature? An acceptance of death? Defeat? And did it scare him, or satisfy?

            Yet his hands fell away and I didn’t wait to ponder why. I did not pause to look at what he was feeling or planning. No, I ran. Or, to be more accurate, stumbled, blindly back to my own room: my safe haven, across the house, far away, behind a door, and on a bed. I sobbed into my pillow, on my stomach, and let the minutes go by, willingly prodded them to race away and leave this horrible moment far behind, in the past.

            I never told a soul. I locked the memory up and covered up my fears and feelings, repressed them, pushed them out of my consciousness, and never let myself think of them again. Until now, of course.

CHAPTER 9

           And now I sigh. It hurts my heart to think and especially remember these things: the origins of my fears. For example, my fear of being seen to “more than like” any of my girl friends (not so much my guy friends, really) stems from my brother taunting at me, between the ages of seven and twelve, that I was a (dare I say the word?) lesbian because I had girls for friends, who I played with, even to the point of playing hide-and-seek in the girls’ bathroom (when I was seven) just to waste time during Day-Care after school. It is thanks to my brother’s ever-present verbal abuse as I was growing that I have (or rather, had) an extremely low self-esteem. I even took a class for it in fifth grade, who knows if it helped me then?

            In my brother’s words I was everything imperfect, unworthy, despicable in society’s mold. The actions of my father have only served to reinforce those ideas. It has taken a lot out of me to overcome those feelings of obscurity and ineptitude, inferiority has finally dropped from the dominant feeling of my life. Though, God knows, it is still there. I doubt it shall ever be erased, and maybe that is a good thing, so long as it stays in the background: silent, insignificant, and wholly obscured in shadows and accomplishments.

            Have you discovered yet the extent to which my brother strove to destroy me, break me, tear me into little pieces as I struggled to grow up, to ignore and move past him? The full degradation, the entirety of his corruption, especially when he was in his teens, still astonishes me even today.

            My mother termed what little she saw or knew of as mere ‘sibling jealousy’. Apparently, my brother was simply jealous that I saw my damnable father and he’d never seen his (we both have different fathers). Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t.

            Know what I think? Utter rubbish, that’s what. I believe he was tormented, but the “why” will have to remain locked up in its owner’s troubled mind, still lost and likely just as unsure as I am now.

            From my verbal descriptions of my brother, you may have formed a picture, an idea, of my impression of him, as I saw him while I was young. Certain words come to your mind: angry, twisted, demented, domineering, cruel.

            Wait, maybe not all of those, not yet. I will explain their sources more fully, and soon. I promise.

            I will explain, and the words that come to my mind, will quickly come to yours.

CHAPTER 8

            Finally, I realize the door will not open, and turn to the partially open window. I wrap my thin fingers around the top edge of the glass, and strain to push it down with all of my might. Nothing. As an afterthought I remember the handle, that saving grave which turns in a circle to roll down the window. But my hasty, shaking, jerky fingers cannot seem to perform this mundane task. I yank, twist, pull, push. The handle turns only halfway around, from its formerly vertical position to sitting somewhere at seven o’clock.

            My wide eyes lift to the opening of the window and see the gap, one foot wide, or nearly so. My hands fall from the useless, forgotten handle. My breathing is fast, shallow, white stars and clouds dance across my vision. From my crouching position I start to stand, first kneeling and then bending over the crack, my back bowed and hunched over.

            My avenue of escape is chosen, freedom and cool, refreshing air brush against my hot face. I place both hands on the edge, shove my head through, and start frantically scrabbling, trying to get out, somehow, someway.

            The next part is a blur. The hole, or gap, provided by the window was by no means all that large. The drop from the truck’s window to the ground was by no means a short distance. Though small as a child, how could I have been that small?

            But incredibly, eventually, I found my way out of that truck, that box, by squeezing, squirming, wriggling, forcing myself through the gap.

            My feet hit the ground, the gravel crunching beneath my rapid steps as I raced across the lot to the front door and the light, the noise, the chaos, the security, at last.

            I swung the door in, open, and sped in, and found, after what felt like the end of a ten-years’ journey, the warmth and strong beating heart of my now-absent father.  Laughs and adult condescension met my rapidly beating heart and nightmare.

            Have I conveyed the potency of this memory? Do you fully grasp the terror and panic which gripped my heart in those brief moments? Keep in mind, I was only six or seven years old.

            How could something like that happen? And how on earth, of all the things in my life that have happened to me, did I happen to remember this incident?

            The power of the mind, the memory of the heart, astounds me yet again.

            Today, I am quite sure all of my feelings and emotions from that event slam back into the present whenever I’m in an especially closed up, claustrophobic space, somewhere I feel confined, stuffed into an area too small and inescapable.

            “Fear,” my history teacher said last year, “is caused by three things. Fear of the unknown and fear from experience, the things you know and have been through.” (I have, unfortunately, forgotten the third thing, but it is, currently, irrelevant.)

            Now, you will no longer wonder why I get panicked and claustrophobic in cars at seemingly random times. A thick coat, a seatbelt, and a dark tunnel, combined, can send me into a frenzy in which I must remove the seatbelt, strip my coat, lean forward, breathe, open the window, and spread out, lean out of my little enclosed space. I can feel that feeling of being trapped, helpless, rising up quickly, and I fight to keep that panic at bay the only way I know how: Get out.

            Now this, I will admit, is a broad and highly generalized topic, this “gone through,” which encompasses a great many (to me) “traumatizing” experiences. The degree of traumatization, I suppose, could be measured by how vividly I remember the event. How sharply and quickly the sensations and feelings jump back into my memory bank and leave me trembling, shaking, shuddering, and fighting the tears, can only tell me just how much I was affected by the incident. After all, I have a highly selective memory, often forgetting what I’m watching in one room as I walk into another. But those truly terrifying moments in one’s life, those mind-numbing, utterly shocking, snap-at-your-heels moments stick with you forever.

            The problem I face at this time is choosing the order in which to tell. My main selection numbers at three, and unsurprisingly, two involve my brother.

            Tears snap at my feet as I think about these memories. They are poignant, powerful, pure, sharp, and heart-stoppingly painful for me. I feel a sense of urgency, I must tell you, starting with the earliest of them all, one that still affects my world today.

            In this vision, as I close my eyes, two words come to mind: blackness and panic. I am young, maybe seven, six, and I’m in my father’s truck, the front seat. It is night, a Friday, maybe midnight or later. I’m alone, the truck is parked in a gravel lot in front of one of the many cheap bars in “rural” Texas, somewhere distanced from Taylor, Texas in the heart of the countryside. Cicadas make their noise in the star-dotted darkness. The bar pounds with the engorging sound of nineties rock music, shining bright in the oasis of dirt and emptiness, lifted above everything else with its almost tangible pressure and need for escape.

            As I’ve said, I’m alone. I assume, though I do not know, that I fell asleep, so my father put me in the truck, the windows cracked four inches to let in the cool, rustling night air, and the doors locked for my ‘safety’.

            Now, hold the phone, why would he have taken me to a bar? Not very responsible you tut, well, he was the band. Does that explain his way of thinking, reasoning, and explanation, a little better? I suppose it was his very profession which left me a little deaf at times, much to the frustration of those who have had to repeat things to me numerous times before I can comprehend them. Okay, back to the highly detoured story.

            I had fallen asleep, the deep sleep of the innocent, the trusting, the physically and mentally exhausted. Don’t forget, I am a child, I still hold trust for men.

            But suddenly, unexpectedly, I awaken, disoriented, jolted into consciousness for some unknown reason. The rough and clinging fabric of the truck’s one connected, bench-like seat rubs and scratches, sticks and pries at my skin like some odd mixture of sandpaper and rubber. Previously on my stomach, I push my only partially awake self up. Sitting like the familiar mermaid on the rock, I kneel on my knees, sideways, back arched, stomach barely raised from the seat, head thrown back, palms flat on the scratchy material and look around, bewildered.

            My eyes meet nothing but an unfamiliar background, the pitch black vacancy of the car-filled parking lot and beyond screaming out a warning in my head.

            Where am I? My befuddled mind wonders, as fidgety and jumpy as the deer on the highway, caught unexpectedly by a car’s blinding headlights as it crosses to the other side.

           Panic, stark and stinging, overwhelming in its intensity, wells up within me. Within seconds, it’s all I see, hear, feel, know. It chokes me, grabs at my heart and lungs, yells devilish nothingness into my head.

            All I see is black, the roof of the truck is falling, the doors squeezing in tighter, the seat lifting higher as the windshield is replaced by a wall. I’m trapped. I yank on the door handle, pull, push, frantically willing it to work. I am pulling with all of my body, holding on to it as though it truly meant life or death, now. Still, the locked door does not budge. It gives a few creaks, a couple groans, protests the battery, and then settles back into silence.

***Have I thoroughly annoyed you yet? Don’t worry, next installment tomorrow at 1 pm wordpress time. Be prepared.***

CHAPTER 6

            That day I walked to school with a fury and desperation in my heart. But, instead of becoming the proverbial ‘bug on the windshield,’ I continued on to school. In the hallways, eyes dry, heart heavy, I walked to the counseling center and left a note for my counselor – a short, large woman who cannot seem to remember my actual name. I paste on a questionable smile, arrange a plausible mood, and continue my day, letting no one in, letting no one know what that shadow is behind my eyes, that sad note beneath my laugh, the hollow ring to my words.

            My last period rolls around and a student delivers a green slip to my Latin class. I pick up my folder, and walk down the short hallway to my counselor’s office. In the usual course of things the conversation proceeds, my level of disclosure gradually increases in tandem with the tears that now refuse to stand back and watch. I tell her what I had been thinking that morning, what I had thought about, all those nights before, the list of possible “options” I had compiled according to my stipulations. I opened my folder and showed her the poem I had sketched, a few stanzas about slitting my wrist with a razor, a poem I have since finished and named ‘An Empty Well.’ My counselor has me show her my wrists, swear I haven’t done anything to myself yet, am not planning something for that night or in the near future. Yadda yadda yadda, so on and so forth, blah blah blah. Such careless concern from the wrong front, and in some ways, completely ineffective.

            This is not the first discussion I have had with her, we’ve discussed my father, my life, but never my own, personal pain and the solution I wish I had.

            Somehow, the meeting winds up, the time goes by, my eyelashes are still wet but my eyes are drying, the faintest ray of light is filtering into my life, dim and through many layers of secrets and lies, but sifting through nonetheless. My counselor, as I will continue to call her for a name is entirely unneeded, reaches for her phone and asks me if it is okay if she calls my mother and tells her what we had discussed. I jerkily nod my assent and she, quite simply, tells my mom that I had been thinking about killing myself. I was right there when she told my mom. There is no way my mother could not know.

            I get home that day, nervous and as fidgety as I am able to be, anxious for the moment my mother will bring up this issue of mine, palpably hovering over my head and in the air like a great big boulder hanging from a slowly thinning rope. Minutes pass, hours, nothing seems changed, everything she does differs from her regular schedule not a whit; her voice, expression, face, betray nothing out of the ordinary. Slowly, my anxiety fades and is replaced by a simmering indignation, irritation, anger, and, surprisingly enough, sadness. To my way of thinking, my depression is not important enough to her to occupy any more time in her mind than the time it takes to take off (or discard) an old pair of sneakers.

            A day passes, then a week, and still my mother, the one person other than my high school counselor who knows that I had planned, had thought about, and had looked over the idea of killing myself numerous times in my mind, still my mother said nothing.

            She had chosen not to see my pain, had chosen not to let herself know that I was not well in my world. What would she have done if I had gone through with it then, all because she chose to ignore me? Would she have finally seen me? Would she have recognized a lost soul, one who she, and possibly she alone, had the ability to guide back to safety? Or would I once again be overlooked?

            Weeks later, maybe a month or so, I work up enough courage to bring up the issue and the fact of how, though my counselor had told her, she still had not even cared to discuss it with me. What, pray tell, do you suppose her reaction and response was to my rather direct question? Do you believe she acknowledged it, and said that it hurt her too much to talk about, that that was why she hadn’t? Did she offer to talk to me about it now the topic was breached?

            Many different situations are running through your head, whirling around, spinning in hurricane force gales with no clear edge or definition, no seen meaning.

            Let me tell you now, to clear and eliminate all curiosity.

            My mother’s response was, as it always is now and every time I try to talk to her about anything deeper than the layer of mulch in a garden plot, is to, somehow, make herself the victim in our conversation. I can usually get out two sentences, maybe (often less), before she says something like, “How do you think I feel?” and then bursts out crying as though I’m the callous one, the inconsiderate one, the one who deserves every available bit of reprobation the world can dredge up. Then, sometimes, if I haven’t left the room myself, she leaves the room in a great flurry of emotion. Okay, that was a lie, most of the time she leaves the room. Somehow, I’m over-dramatizing everything I’m going through and especially everything I’ve gone through. Somehow I’ve exaggerated myself, and thought I was important enough to fix.

CHAPTER 5

            Flash back to the beginning of my junior year in high school. As it stands, I am still living approximately three blocks away from school, and, as I still have no driver’s license, nor yet see the need to obtain one, I still walk the short distance every morning. The morning of the day in question starts off in a very different tone than the ones previous: very different, and yet so very much the same.

            My mood that morning had been rather black; I found myself snapping at my two cats for every little thing. As usual, they simply cannot understand the reason for my sharp reprobations, nor why I might become irritated when they insist on winding themselves between my legs as I stomp quickly, and angrily, throughout my house during my morning routine. My mood, at the moment, could not get any worse.

            But, silly me, here I am, giving you only a portion of the full picture, showing you what rages on the outside. You are being shown what any person might be able to perceive or observe on a whim.

            Underneath my anger, my dark and tumultuous mood, lies something devastatingly powerful, something even I did not know was there. I only know what I know in retrospect, now that I’ve unconsciously examined my self. Of course, what happens next tells me quite blatantly as well. Roiling inside, fairly boiling, bubbling over and ready to burst, is my own personal despair, something I am still hesitant to share with any other.

            The clock strikes 7:38, and I slam the front door behind me; there’s nothing I hate more than being late. I’m seething inside, fighting the tears which burn at the backs of my eyes, tears I don’t even know yearn to escape.

            Living on a main street, there are always a couple of cars around, even at such an early hour. Before I cross, I look first left, then right, ascertaining the locations of all approaching cars. I have enough time, I decide, and step off the curb. A car to my right is approaching, “If I walk slow enough,” I think to myself, “it just might hit me. What then?” Normally a chicken on city streets, I usually speed my way across the road as fast as possible, while still maintaining what little dignity I own. This time I walk slowly, leisurely, halfheartedly willing that car on the right to come closer, faster, daring it to take me by surprise. At the moment I don’t really care at all if I get hit. If I break a few bones, become paralyzed, or even die. I wonder, as I walk, if anyone will really miss me, if anyone will really care or remember me.

            I wonder about my funeral. Will there even be one? Or will it be like it was in a book I read: the main girl kills herself, and then is quickly forgotten, too much an embarrassment to acknowledge even in death.

            That whole week previous had been just me thinking about a way “out.” I ran through the available methods, ticking some off, adding some on, according to how they met my criteria:

            1. It cannot be something that would leave lasting visible effects if it fails.

            2. It cannot leave me in a position as to be found by my mother; god knows she’s been through enough. Though in spite I might not mind what happens to her.

            3. I don’t want to leave too big a mess, that would inconvenience someone and the point of this is to rid myself of being an inconvenience.

            I’ve imagined these scenarios, too, quite vividly. Pondered, planned, examined, and plotted out. Never executed, no, but quite close to it. Many times, quite close to it. Starvation, privation, insomnia, strangulation, slicing my wrists, cutting unnecessarily, taking too many pills, walking in front of a car. You can’t imagine how much has flashed before my eyes, how very much.

            There were likely other stipulations, and other chosen methods in the running, during that whole process of selecting my mode of – dare I say it? – suicide. It is a rather unpleasant, unsavory word to contemplate, especially considering the fact that it once presided quite comfortably over my mind for some time.