3:21am September 7, 2013

explosions

What I wrote earlier today seems to have opened up a can of worms in my head.  I don’t think it’s argue can of worms.  But I didn’t realize the extent to which I’ve tried to forget some things.

Particularly the thing where I took any opportunity to get out of that house. And my dad slept in his running shoes so he could catch me.  I think usually in the end he must have caught me. Or gotten me somehow to come back into the house.

But there was also the time I rammed my way past him and I got as far as the sidewalk outside my neighbor’s house. And he caught me there and tackled me. And I was fighting with him and screaming at the top of my lungs.

And all of the neighbors have to have heard the commotion. But only one came out to ask if everyone was okay. And she called 911 and I think I got locked up, and I know that was the time the paramedics took bets on whether I was on PCP.

And I think this was all nobody’s fault not mine not my dad’s not anyone in the immediate surroundings.

Although maybe the psychiatric system had set us up for this. And something about the house I lived in. But the system seemed to rip or family to shreds without anyone noticing what was doing it. People blaming each other and ourselves. And I think there are still gashes in our family that may never heal.

And violence seemed like a tangible thing in the air.  It wasn’t specific to me.  It was something that could happen in any of us.  Directed inward, directed outward. Physical, emotional, sexual, cognitive, whatever. It ripped through all of us, each in different ways.

And now we all look away from it and pretend the explosion in our house never happened.  I think I pretend less than the others, but around them I try not to talk about it because it just sets it off all over again.

And for years every night I dreamed I was trapped in that house pounding and kicking and scratching at the walls or whatever people showed up in the nightmare.  And the dreams seemed to feed off that violence, so I had to train myself, “I am dreaming. I need to get out of this house. Don’t hit anything or anyone. Just get out. Now."  And the air would turn solid or there would be doors on top of doors. But I still learned to get out and keep running until I was out of the neighborhood. Those dreams were too accurate, every blade of grass exactly where it was in real life. I never dream that solid or that accurate otherwise.

But I don’t have as many of those nightmares as I used to. I had to learn how not to react. I had to learn to put distance in the way.

But better to have nightmares now than live the nightmare back then. It was like getting hit by a whirlwind and I never want to experience it again.

But I’m aware of it. I’m always aware of it.  However much I try not to think about things, I’m not capable of deliberate forgetting.

But I’ve never understood. Sometimes I try to force myself to understand things. I’ve learned that’s a very bad idea. When I try to force understanding, I come out with false answers. The same way that when I force language, I get random crap that sounds right but means nothing.

So I don’t have answers. All I know is that an explosion hit the family. That violence of many kinds happened. To all of us. From all of us. And that whether the psychiatric system ignited the whole thing or not, it certainly made things exponentially worse. And that while I’m sure everyone wants to forget it ever happened, the effects are never going to go away, whether we pretend they don’t exist, or not.

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