Opening Boxes
Opening boxes
My therapist and I built a safe room in one of our first official sessions before we started the difficult work required to process trauma to lower the triggers I had been experiencing. It was an imaginary room and could be anything I wanted it to be. Big or small. Decorated or bare. I was in control of the construction of the room. As I imagined it, it came to life.
The hard black floor shows you a hazy reflection of what the bugs see when you walk by. Three glass shelves line the wall to the left, and to the right of me. It’s odd that there are four shelves on the wall in front of me. I don’t know why I see four when I feel like there should be the same number of shelves all the way around my room. The shelves are clean and like magic, they never accumulate dust or bugs, a surprising contrast to some of the boxes that sit on the shelves on the wall in front of me. The walls are the same dark shade as the ground but absorb all light and cast no reflection. Three recessed lights line the ceiling above the shelves on each wall. There are boxes scattered on the shelves to my right and left, but they seem safer to me. They don’t have a particular order or size. They aren’t spaced apart evenly either.
Those boxes hold all the special, good memories. A few are from my childhood. Shopping at Ala Moana with my favorite grandma when I was ten. Getting lost in Costco in Honolulu with my brother and buying lemonade-flavored icees. Making a mailbox out of cardboard boxes with my nephew when he was four years old. He still believed in Santa Claus, but with his logical mind, didn’t want to write Santa any letters unless he had a mailbox to put them in because how would they get to Santa if he didn’t? Most of the boxes are from my adulthood. My kids’ firsts: smile, laugh, steps, words, meeting my favorite grandma. Traveling to Washington State and playing tourist, seeing snow fall from the sky the first time.
The wall in front of me is different, four shelves instead of three. Twelve boxes in total. Three boxes on each shelf spaced out evenly. The boxes on the first and third shelf are glass, radiate different shades of colored light, and number are etched onto the front of them. The first box on the top shelf emits a deep red color and is labeled with the number three. The second box is reads five to ten and emits a dark blue color. The third box bears the numbers ten to thirteen and casts a green light that I can barely see. The first box on the third shelf is labeled eighteen to twenty-one on it and shines a dark purple light. I can make out twenty-one on one of the shards of glass that made up the middle box that still glows green. The last box has twenty-two laser cut into it and glows red.
The six boxes contained on the second and fourth shelves have small, subtle differences that I seem to instinctively identify. They emit no light and are made of a metal that is foreign to me. They bear a common label also laser cut on the front of them: ‘Tracy’ and have different types of locks. Some require a key, a finger print, or code. These boxes are banged up, battered, and dull. It puzzles me to see that I’ve tried to open them before. Why can’t I open them if they are labeled with my name? Don’t I have the key, code, or fingerprint to open them? The wall in front of me demands caution upon approach. It commands me to look but not touch. These boxes hold the parts of me that need protecting. I've cut and bled and bandaged my wounds. Healing may require that I re-injure these parts so that they can heal and fuse with the rest of me the right way.
My therapist had me build this safe for the explicit purpose of protecting myself. She also gave me firm instructions on when I could enter this room and who could enter with me. I could go into the room to open the boxes on the left and right walls whenever I felt like it. I was never allowed to open the boxes on the front wall without my therapist there as a mediator. The things in the boxes with the hypnotizing lights and the battered boxes bearing my name need to be opened at the right moment.
For Aiden
There are so many things I want to tell you but I don’t have all the words to express how I feel. I’m going to try my best for you.
I remember when I found out I was pregnant with you. It was a hard time in my life and I wasn’t sure having another baby was that right choice. I agonized over the decisions I needed to make. I’ll always be happy that you are mine and I am yours. You are worth every single decision and rough moment I had during those months. You’re worth everything. Every. Single. Thing.
You came into this world quietly. I didn’t scream or cry while I labored and pushed. Birthing you gave me the smallest amount of pain only because I didn’t feel capable of raising another child and I wondered how you would turn out, how would I handle bringing up another boy by myself. The doctor caught you and exclaimed that you were “a big baby”, much bigger than he had anticipated because you came so early. The nurse cleaned you off and waited a couple of minutes for you to cry. I watched the entire time not sure of how I felt about this tiny human I was now responsible for.
I waited for that cry like you and your brother wait for your birthday or Christmas. You finally gave one loud long wail right before the nurse placed you on my chest. You immediately settled in that spot and into my heart, connected to me forever, and went to sleep as though being born was something you did every day. Those first twenty-four hours you hardly cried and I had to wake you to feed you and change you. The next day after the doctor came in and told me you were having trouble breathing, my heart beat in a broken rhythm for two weeks until I was able to bring you home from the NICU at Kapiolani Hospital.
You were the best baby. You slept when you were supposed to and you were awake and hungry when you were supposed to be. I fell in love with you each day and I continue to now in the little small moments that may not seem like much to you but mean everything to me. The way you wake up in the middle of the night after I get home from work or in the morning with a smile and a greeting for me. The way you sleepily wrap your arms around my neck while I place you in your bed makes me want to hold on to you forever and never let you go. The way you laugh, like dolphins playing in the ocean, full of joy and happiness. The way you proudly proclaim and insist that I’m the best mom ever because I cook great food and tickle you before bedtime.
You are so resilient and still so eager to know the world around you even though that world has hurt you. I know there are so many things going on inside of you right now. I know that you’re keeping secrets from me and everyone else. I understand. I kept secrets too. I want you to know that no matter what your secrets are I love you and I accept you. I’ll protect you and keep you safe. I hope you don’t mind if I share your – our – story with some people. Maybe one day when you’re older you can read this and we can start a conversation that will lead to healing and wholeness. You are the happy song sent from heaven and the blessing I get to see every day.
Love Always,
***
My son, Aiden, had been having night-terrors for weeks. It felt like they came in waves. Every night for five or six nights in a row he’d wake up crying and talking. A night or two, he’d sleep through peacefully. I wouldn’t have been seriously concerned if the nightmares were just crying and a little bit of talking. His behavior had escalated though, and I thought it would be wise to seek therapy for Aiden.
One bright day in July 2017, I sat in a cozy office. I practiced the grounding techniques that I’d learned from my own therapist and felt the fuzzy long carpet beneath my bare feet. I could smell the almost burnt hamburger from Burger King floating through the pretty four paned window that was open. There was a nice breeze. I could see it run its invisible fingers through the trees just outside the window. It held the promise of the Whopper I knew was cooking next door. Melissa sat cross-legged on the floor across of me. Her feet are so tiny, I think to myself. I want to think of anything but the conversation she’s trying to have with me. I’d ignored it for so long because I thought it was over with.
“How many nights did Aiden have nightmares in the last two weeks?” She’s asking me again. I guess the frozen fake smile and thoughtful look I gave her wasn’t going to make her change the conversation, I thought as I darted my eyes off her face and back out the window. When I finally drag my gaze back to her face, I see concern written there. There’s concern written all over this room.
The books on the middle cubby of Melissa’s shelf contain similar titles to Good Touch, Bad Touch. There are mindless sensory toys a child can find comfort in when they get anxious. My fingers itch to dig into the pink Play-Doh sitting in the bin on the ground. Anything, so I don’t have to have this conversation. There’s concern written even in the placement of the chair I’m sitting in. I have a clear view of the door and the cord that sneaks under it leading to the noise-maker on the other side of it. The low “shhhhhh” that emits from the other side of the door doesn’t cover the voices of my children arguing over which Pokemon is stronger out in the waiting area.
“Eleven.” I answer her, “Eleven out of fourteen nights.” Melissa’s face doesn’t show any change from the polite smile that’s super-glued there. The subtle twitch of her right shoulder and the jerk of her left foot indicates to me that, as my son’s therapist, she’s concerned.
“What happens during these nightmares? You don’t have to be exact. Just a description of one of them,” she tries to dig more information out of me.
“Aiden’s always been an active sleeper,” I explain to her. I give conscious effort to shutting off the emotional, feeling part of myself. I resign myself to the process of breaking silence and speaking. “He moves around a lot. Ever since we moved back from Oklahoma City, I’ve tried to get him to sleep on his own. He starts in my bed. Once he’s asleep I move him into his bed, which is a loft style bed with guardrails in the same room I sleep in. After a couple of hours, he starts to talk. Sometimes he stands up and paces on top of his bed, crying. He asks questions while my heartbreaks. I know I’m not supposed to wake him up because it can cause a further mental breakdown.
Sometimes he tries to jump off the bed. Sometimes he throws his stuffed animals off the bed. He screams. Sometimes he climbs down the ladder and gets in my face and yells at me. I don’t have a choice but to follow him around. When it’s over, not more than three or four minutes, he lays back down. Sometimes in the bathroom, the pantry, the hallway. I pick him up to take him back to his bed and he tells me he doesn’t know what happened.” The monologue tumbles out of me. It’s a struggle for me to remain detached and blink back the tears that want to pour out of me.
“Oh, I’m sorry that happens Tracy, you must have a hard time sleeping,” Melissa exudes empathy while I nod my head and try to focus on the smell of Whoppers coming through the window. “What kinds of things does he say?” She pushes harder. I know where she’s trying to get with this conversation.
“He says a lot of different things.” I don’t want to repeat them but the patient look on Melissa’s face has words falling out of my mouth before I can stop them. “He asks ‘Mommy where are you? Don’t leave me! No! Don’t do that. It hurts. Please. Where’s my mommy. Is anyone going to help me? Mommy! I don’t want to. Don’t do that.’” I stop abruptly. I surprise myself that my eyes are still dry. I rationalize the reaction to dealing with trauma in my personal life for years and my professional like for more than a year.
“Has there been anything else happening that’s different?” Melissa asks another question. I tell her how he smeared poop in the bathroom several times in the last couple of weeks since his last session with her. I let her know the matter of fact way he asks what rape is. Now it’s not just the room that has concern written all over it, Melissa’s face has concern etched into it. It feels like she can’t control the widening of her eyes in surprise or the way she gets up suddenly to pick up the toys arranged in messy piles by my own child.
“Tracy, here are my main concerns. Aiden’s behavior has escalated in the last couple of weeks. I know your work schedule has changed and you’re working more overnights. We both know that these behaviors Aiden is displaying is a cry for help. Before I asked you to come in, Aiden and I were working on appropriate boundaries and the thing he said that concerns me most is that ‘anyone can touch him if they ask permission’.” I nod understanding what she’s trying to tell me but still I want her to tell me, not imply anything. So, I sit silently wanting to put things back into the pretty box in my mind. With my silence I demand she continue. Maybe she can see that all over my face. She continues, “My fear is that Aiden is being actively groomed for sexual abuse or that there is active abuse going on,” she pauses. “If Aiden makes a disclosure, as his current therapist and working as a forensic interviewer for the Children’s Justice Center, I cannot take a statement from him because there would be a question of whether or not I coached him into a disclosure,” she pauses again. “I need to close him out of my service and refer you out to another therapist that specializes in child sex abuse and trauma. Are you okay with that?”
I don’t hear the question. After she mentions grooming, I only hear every third word. I sense my entire life slipping through my fingers and hold on even tighter. There’s a moment when I wish that I had never reached out for help. That I had brushed Aiden’s nightmares off as a childhood experience and thought nothing else of it. Unfortunately, my brain isn’t wired like that. Training at work, classes at school, and my own personal trauma tell me that Aiden is exhibiting all the classic markers of childhood sexual abuse. I’d spent his entire life trying to protect him. Trying to break the cycle of abuse that I hoped ended with me. Aiden’s questions during his nightmare not only tell me he’s at-risk, but they tell me I’ve failed to protect my child. Parts of me wished Aiden’s nightmares had been quiet. I’d have much preferred a quiet nightmare to a noisy one. My mind can’t help but wonder what Aiden’s safe room is going to look like and what color his box will be. My heart literally aches in my chest, the single line of sweat running down my back mirrors the crying my soul does as my children and I walk to the car.
***
Months later in December 2017, I was reminded of Aiden’s and my own story when I did a presentation for Tagi Qolouvaki’s English 100 class. Tagi’s requirements for this writing assignment were simple: an informal blog about the military and its response or lack of response to a social issue. We were to include data and had to cite sources to back up the data and the claims we asserted in our blogs. I’d wasted a week writing a draft for the military’s response to child abuse on bases thinking about the news story I’d seen earlier in the month about a toddler that died from child abuse and neglect on a military base in Oahu.
The draft sucked. I’d spent most of the semester writing two other papers that tackled social issues from an academic standpoint and somewhat detached from my own life. Tagi and I had several meetings where we discussed my writing style. She’d also questioned why I preferred to write from an objective academic stance. It was easier for me. I could do research and present either side of an argument, convincingly. Academia was shaping up to be my forte. Going deeper required me to use the emotional part of myself that I’d spent years turning off. It hurt too much to go deeper. I’d avoided topics that could impact me on a personal level. Until I changed my topic to the military’s response to sexual assault, the military’s response to my own sexual assault.
I didn’t have huge issues writing it. My hands shook at some parts and my heart beat so loudly in my ears I couldn’t hear anything around me. I didn’t know talking about a sexual assault after almost fifteen years would still have an impact on me. Only the people in my class were going to read it, so I pushed through. I stuffed it all down and put it in a pretty glass box in my mind and filed it away like I do everything else until December when I presented my blog. It felt like that pretty glass box where I put all my issues, anxieties, worries, and triggers, all my silence had shattered. Tagi’s class offered me the hammer. I didn’t know I felt about my pretty box being broken. I only knew that it was broken and with it my silence.
I got up and presented my blog and used the hammer that Tagi’s class had unknowingly given me. I dove in head first and talked about my writing process and how many drafts it had taken me to get down to the submitted blog. I talked about how well I communicated with my instructor and how the feedback process worked well for me, so well I could almost anticipate what the newest comments and suggestions would be. Then I sat down. There was something about the floor in K-101 that started me thinking about how it resembled the barracks floors at Fort Leonardwood, Missouri. The memory wrapped around me like a hug from your least favorite uncle.
***
It hurt. That’s all I thought over and over. How did I end up here?
The day started out fine. The drill sergeants cancelled physical training that morning. We were on holdover status, waiting to move back into basic training or waiting to pass a physical fitness test to move forward to advanced training and our next duty station. Instead of training, the drill sergeants instructed us to clean the barracks: females inside and males outside.
I moved through the barracks methodically mopping and buffing each bay’s floor to the acceptable standard. It was a mindless task so my mind wandered: back to the family at home and what they could be doing at that same exact moment, contemplating the decision to leave the man who was the love of my life up to that point. Things weren’t great when I left but we’d get back together when I got back, right? We could have a baby or get married. I thought about my upcoming physical fitness test. If I didn’t pass this one I would get sent back to week six of BASIC training after completing all nine and my drill sergeant said he’d “rip off my head and shit down my throat” if I failed again.
I was so absorbed in my thought of babies, family, physical fitness tests, and shit that I didn’t see or hear him come in. I realized he was there too late when the extension cord pull tight around my neck. Then I realized, only then, what was going to happen.
“Don’t say a word. If you do, I’ll hurt you worse.” The voice whispered in my ear while strong arms pulled me slowly from the room with white tile floors. When it was over… five minutes… ten…sixty minutes late, I didn’t know… I realized, I knew him. I’d spoken to him. Ate next to him. Marched alongside him to three meals a day for several weeks now. He held my feet down during my physical fitness test with the same strength he used to hold my hands down and cover my mouth. “Say anything to anyone and I’ll come back.” His grip tightened around my neck, “I’ll hurt you again, only it’ll be worse.”
The loop played over and over in my mind in the classroom that day staring at the clean white tiled floors. By the time I got to my therapists office I’d watched it more than my favorite movie. That day we built my saferoom with the happy boxes and the ornate dangerous boxes.
***
As a single parent of two active boys that works practically full-time, goes to school full-time, I crave quiet. I look for the quiet wherever I can find it. The bathroom, the car, the twenty minutes to an hour before my younger son comes barreling through my bedroom door full of stories about the exciting things he’s seen and learned throughout the day. Sometimes he’s drenched from a downpour, but more likely his hair and shirt is damp from sweat because he ran all the way home from the bus stop. He’s normally starving and always, always, full of love, kisses, and admiration for me. “The best mom in the world” according to him. My quiet is interrupted by this bubbly child I love and protect with my entire heart, soul, and being. The quiet I so crave is gone in an instant and I don’t mind at all.
Then, there’s a silence I wish would be interrupted. A completely different silence that I’ve taken to avoiding. These silences are deafening, paralyzing, full of fear and sick wonder. These silences I can’t stand.
There was a time in my life when all I could do was stand silent. Watch silent. Act silent. These silences meant equilibrium and security. Silence is the terrifying reality I have spent my entire life struggling against. Not as hard at first but, there is a desire that has been built up and destroyed over and over in my soul – a desire for disclosure and vocalization in my center that I can’t escape. A different kind of speaking rather than the one I did to recant the statement I had made that my foster dad’s father had molested me more and more frequently between the ages of eleven and thirteen. I realize now that when my foster mom asked me if I wanted to make things better in my family in the dry goods aisle of Cost-U-Less at age thirteen, I could restore equilibrium.
A single word has caused wrecking balls to go to work inside of that never-ending construction zone around my heart. A single word: SPEAK. It started slowly at first: that breezy July day in Melissa’s office, the not so comfortable day in December in Tagi’s English class when I presented my blog about sexual assault – my own sexual assault. As an adult, my core must be strong and flexible, swaying and bending in storms and gusts. Toxic silences have destroyed my flexibility. Maybe it was my heart finally breaking.
With my therapist, Kate, I feel like I can truly be me and say what I’ve been afraid to say since I was a toddler. In Kate’s office, sitting in a deep, white leather chair I try to focus on her voice telling me I’m okay and I’m safe. Taking me back. Memories swirl around me like leaves at the beginning of their flight on the wind.
“Bring up a memory of abuse or trauma”, she instructs me, “How old are you?”
“Twenty-one”, I reply. A turbulent wind starts to build and the leaves tremble.
“Further.” Kate pushes but I trust her.
“Nineteen. Thirteen. Ten. Five.” The leaves circle around me in a beautiful frantic dance I must watch.
“Go back further.” She directs me again.
The further I go, the faster the leaves get until they funnel around me. My head pounds with the noise and overwhelming pressure building up inside my chest. I can’t hear Kate over the screams the wind has become in my mind. I can barely see through the wall of leaves but - I can feel. The smell of dog and wet and fear overcome me.
There’s a sensation in my stomach that I can’t place. It’s like butterflies with sparklers for wings. I’m two or three years old now. A little tall for three with chubby legs and thick-lashed brown eyes. Long dark straight hair cascades down my back with a little fringe of bangs cut in a straight line above my eyebrows. I’m not wearing a t-shirt. I shiver and have goose bumps, not because it’s cold. My hands feel warm, almost hot. I’m scared. The screams of the wind have died down to a howl and Kate’s soothing voice brings me back. She’s asking me to describe what I see or how I feel. So, I tell her: “Fear. I feel afraid.”
“Focus on that – the fear and keep going. You are safe, and you are okay,” she tells me.
The wind finally explodes sending leaves scattering high above my head. As they rain down me in a graceful dance at the end of their flight on the dying wind, I see a hallway or a dimly lit room with fake wood panel walls. The carpet under my small feet feels coarse and thin – I can feel the hardwood or cement beneath it. I’m forced to look up into the face of an older boy I recognize because I trust him. He’s holding the back of my head with one hand; my hair is tangled in his fingers. Why are his pants down? I wonder to myself.
“Open your mouth,” he tells me. Now, I feel the tears that prick the back of my eyes and hesitate.
“Ugh, just do it. It’s a game. It’ll be fun,” my mommy’s voice sounds lazy and the words aren’t coming out right. She sounds funny over the buzzing bees in my ears. I don’t like when mommy’s voice gets like that or when her eyes are all shiny and wild, looking everywhere so I do what I’m told, shoving the scared and sick down. I trust my mommy. I play the game quietly because it’ll make her happy. Adult me and toddler me silence the cries we both know want to come out. Instead, we slip out of the dim room to the park down the road with the miles of green grass. Flying on the swings that creak back and forth. The sun shines on my face as I chase the pretty butterflies with the pretty wings. Best of all, or maybe worst of all, I’m alone.
Now it’s a different voice, a kinder voice…. Kate…. I’m in Kate’s office, safe and okay. I’m in Kate’s office sitting in that deep white chair that holds me like my Aiden does when he gives me a hug after an exciting day at school. “Safe and okay” repeat over and over in my mind. I've seen darkness and chosen light. The off-white walls and floors are clean and smooth beneath my feet. The clock on the wall is still ticking time away.
***
“Tracy, I need you to take a deep breath. I need to see it.” The air wheezes in and out of my lungs and I realize I’m still trying to quiet the sobs that want to pour out of me. Those leaves have settled, and I’m left once again to clear the rubble around my heart and rebuild. Kate checks on me several times over the next week by text message. She asks me if I’m experiencing any new anxiety or fears, is there anything intruding on my life that’s making it too hard to function. My answer surprises her and me: No.
I can recall this incident and not feel scared or a need to put it in a pretty box in the back of my mind and back away from it carefully expecting it to explode. I wonder if this is a good thing. Kate assures me that it is. The visualization therapy worked well for this incident. The fact that I can remember it and not feel triggered is a sign that this therapy is working. We schedule a session to try another incident for the following week.
The next week I was back in that big white leather chair visualizing the series of incidents that would change my entire life’s course. Kate’s voice took me back asking me to focus on a detail, but this time my eyes shut tighter and my chest tightened uncomfortably. The first thing that pops into my mind is my childhood home. The house isn’t spectacular. It’s older, built on post-and-pier. Three bedrooms and two bathrooms fit the four of us before my dad remodeled my sophomore year in high school to add a room for my sister and extend the kitchen. The first bedroom down the hall was mine with its treasure trove of ‘Reader Digest’ books handed down to me from my mom. TV never held any appeal to me but I could get lost in books and music. Now, I understand that books and music got me through the hardest year of my life.
I realized that this would be the memory that was the most difficult. Not the first one we had processed. That one was full of sensations and feelings. Nothing seemed real with that one. This one, this one was concrete. I could remember the smells, the time on the clock, the movie playing on the TV, the Winnie the Pooh pajamas I was wearing with the tan shirt and green plaid shorts, the feel of his body pressed into mine in the doorway of my room, my family less than thirty feet away enjoying the suspense and thrill of ‘Anaconda’. I was thirteen and he was well over seventy. This wasn’t the first time he had cornered me alone. It wasn’t the first time he’d cornered me with other people, my family, in such close proximity.
“Open your eyes and follow my fingers, hold on to your start point. Watch it happen but stay separate. You’re not back there, it’s a movie playing in front of you”, Kate broke the uncomfortable quiet I was sitting in with my eyes closed. I know the look on my face betrayed the confusion and pain I was trying so hard to hide as my eyes followed her fingers back and forth for almost a minute. “How do you feel?”
“Scared. Guilty. It’s my fault. I want to runaway,” I answer her barely above a whisper. I’m afraid that if I speak too loudly I’ll runaway.
“Where do you feel it in your body?” Kate asks.
“My chest. It’s hard to breathe. I want to vomit but it feels like my throat is all closed up,” I tell her.
“Hold on to it. Follow my fingers and keep going. It’s still a movie. You don’t get to pause it or rewind it. You’re still separate from it, just watch,” Kate raises two fingers and moves them back and forth in front of me like a pendulum on a clock. The scenes jump around from the doorway in my room, his body pressing against me and his mouth lowering to my own while his hand slips under the waistband of my Winnie the Pooh pajama shorts, to the golf cart at Naniloa Golf Course and his arm that looks casually draped around my shoulders but his hand gropes my chest, to the van one early morning before school where he asks me if what he did felt good, to half an hour earlier in the kitchen when I tell my mom “Papa touched me” and her only reply is that old people do that sometimes. Kate’s fingers stop moving in front of me but the movie keeps going.
“Close your eyes and breathe”, she instructs me again. It feels like I’m hardly breathing. The last bit of the movie plays over and over in my head, my confession to my mom and her response. I’m still confused. I’m still afraid. I still want to run. “I need to see you breathe Tracy,” Kate’s voice pushes the breath I’ve been holding out of me. “How do you feel? Where do you feel it?”
“It’s the same. I’m scared. I feel dirty and guilty. I’m confused,” my voice wavers and trembles because I’m struggling to keep the tears from bursting out of me.
***
Around and around we go for more than an hour. I keep hitting that block. The movie playing in my head stops at the scene in the kitchen and scrambles back to through incidents in the store, the car, the golf course, and the doorway. Over and over Kate asks me how I’m feeling and where I feel it. The answers vary but they stay mainly the same. Scared. Confused. Guilty. Dirty. Responsible. I've wished to die and lived. I've been lost many times and found many more. Kate and I look at each other. I feel defeated and ask if we can end this session because I can’t bear anymore. One tear makes cuts a lonely path down my face. Kate senses my distress and insists that we finish with a visualization to center my thoughts and to regain my sense of safety. I engage in the exercise half-heartedly knowing that as soon as I get in my car, I’ll cry the way I need to. I cry tears that have leave holes in my soul and stitch my essence back together sitting in the driver’s seat of my car.
After the high of the first session’s success, the failure of the second session feels immense. Kate attempts to end the session with a positive visualization and an agreement to meet in a week to check in and discuss whether I want to continue this type of therapy.
When I return the following week, Kate asks how I’ve been doing. I let her know that over the last week the vision in both my eyes has been affected. I can’t see anything in my peripheral. It’s like I have tunnel vision. We both agree that this isn’t the right time to continue with the therapy and that we’ll work on something else for the time being. There’s no research to show that the type of processing therapy Kate and I were doing manifests physiological symptoms. It’s clear that my body has decided to say, “No more”. We both respect that.
***
My family and I have an interesting dynamic. We still don’t speak about this incident or the other abuses I was exposed to and suffered. The forced decision to stay silent and maintain a façade of compliance has been the best defense mechanism in my life since an extremely young age. Sustaining that image has left me shaken at times, questioning at others, broken, bruised and confused constantly. The struggle to be cooperative while trying to preserve who I am, while everything inside of me knows it’s wrong, has left not only my essence and soul unraveled, I can feel it physically. My shoulders ache from carrying this burden. The burden of protecting my family – the family I was born into and the family that chose to keep me. My stomach shakes at the thought of making these experiences public. My hands get icy and numb with anxiety as they write these words because of the main thing that repeats over and over in my mind: “I love them. I love them still. This is going to hurt them.” I’ve never spoken about some of these things. Maybe I haven’t been brave enough in the past. Maybe I was too scared. I don’t know why they hold so much importance to me. I don’t know why my mom responded the way she did or why she asked me to recant my statement. I don’t understand why when I stand up for myself or my kids, my parents don’t acknowledge my birthday. I don’t know why my dad held my trauma over my head and said that he gave up his father for me. I often wonder if my siblings experienced the same things but silence regarding this issue is buried in the deep caverns of my family’s history. I don’t think I’ll ever know the answers, the reasons, the motivations for what happened. I don’t think I’ll ever know the answer to all the why’s I carry around with me and inside of me. The boxes with the captivating lights and various locks will always need to stay in place because, like I said, my family and I have an interesting dynamic.
***
I’ve found other ways to crack the boxes that held my silence prisoner for years. As a domestic violence advocate at work, my professional status allows me to disclose things about my personal life to let other victims of violence know that there are ways out and ways to persevere. My goal in sharing my experiences is to show that resiliency is attainable regardless of where a person comes from and what they have been through. We are not just the sum of our experiences, our failures, or our traumas. We are the product of what we do after an experience, failure, or trauma.
The day I built my safe room with the boxes Kate asked me to gather all of my pieces before putting them in their boxes to have a conversation with them.
“I’m sorry you’ve been hurt. I’m sorry I’ve ignored you for so long. I have to put you in the boxes, but it’ll only be for a little while. No one else will bring you out. I promise I’ll protect you. I promise I won’t let you out without help. I’m sorry I’ve been unfair to you and blamed you for all of my struggles instead of recognizing that you need help. It’s okay to cry and feel weak, I know you’ve been strong and continue to be strong. You’ve all been so brave and have done everything you can to protect us. It’s okay to take a break now. I’ll protect us, I promise. You’ll be safe here. No one can open this room except for me. I’ll be a good gatekeeper, I promise. We’ve all been drifting in a sea of lost identity. I embrace you with no labels or qualifiers. I’ve hidden you in the shadows of my heart. Our scars are the road map of our life’s course. We’ve been broken, bloodied, body and soul and we’ve still survived.”
The hard black floor shows you a hazy reflection of what the bugs see when you walk by. Three glass shelves line the wall to the left, and to the right of me. It’s odd that there are four shelves on the wall in front of me. I don’t know why I see four when I feel like there should be the same number of shelves all the way around my room. The shelves are clean and like magic, they never accumulate dust or bugs, a surprising contrast to some of the boxes that sit on the shelves on the wall in front of me. The walls are the same dark shade as the ground but absorb all light and cast no reflection. Three recessed lights line the ceiling above the shelves on each wall. There are boxes scattered on the shelves to my right and left, but they seem safer to me. They don’t have a particular order or size. They aren’t spaced apart evenly either.
Those boxes hold all the special, good memories. A few are from my childhood. Shopping at Ala Moana with my favorite grandma when I was ten. Getting lost in Costco in Honolulu with my brother and buying lemonade-flavored icees. Making a mailbox out of cardboard boxes with my nephew when he was four years old. He still believed in Santa Claus, but with his logical mind, didn’t want to write Santa any letters unless he had a mailbox to put them in because how would they get to Santa if he didn’t? Most of the boxes are from my adulthood. My kids’ firsts: smile, laugh, steps, words, meeting my favorite grandma. Traveling to Washington State and playing tourist, seeing snow fall from the sky the first time.
The wall in front of me is different, four shelves instead of three. Twelve boxes in total. Three boxes on each shelf spaced out evenly. The boxes on the first and third shelf are glass, radiate different shades of colored light, and number are etched onto the front of them. The first box on the top shelf emits a deep red color and is labeled with the number three. The second box is reads five to ten and emits a dark blue color. The third box bears the numbers ten to thirteen and casts a green light that I can barely see. The first box on the third shelf is labeled eighteen to twenty-one on it and shines a dark purple light. I can make out twenty-one on one of the shards of glass that made up the middle box that still glows green. The last box has twenty-two laser cut into it and glows red.
The six boxes contained on the second and fourth shelves have small, subtle differences that I seem to instinctively identify. They emit no light and are made of a metal that is foreign to me. They bear a common label also laser cut on the front of them: ‘Tracy’ and have different types of locks. Some require a key, a finger print, or code. These boxes are banged up, battered, and dull. It puzzles me to see that I’ve tried to open them before. Why can’t I open them if they are labeled with my name? Don’t I have the key, code, or fingerprint to open them? The wall in front of me demands caution upon approach. It commands me to look but not touch. These boxes hold the parts of me that need protecting. I've cut and bled and bandaged my wounds. Healing may require that I re-injure these parts so that they can heal and fuse with the rest of me the right way.
My therapist had me build this safe for the explicit purpose of protecting myself. She also gave me firm instructions on when I could enter this room and who could enter with me. I could go into the room to open the boxes on the left and right walls whenever I felt like it. I was never allowed to open the boxes on the front wall without my therapist there as a mediator. The things in the boxes with the hypnotizing lights and the battered boxes bearing my name need to be opened at the right moment.
For Aiden
There are so many things I want to tell you but I don’t have all the words to express how I feel. I’m going to try my best for you.
I remember when I found out I was pregnant with you. It was a hard time in my life and I wasn’t sure having another baby was that right choice. I agonized over the decisions I needed to make. I’ll always be happy that you are mine and I am yours. You are worth every single decision and rough moment I had during those months. You’re worth everything. Every. Single. Thing.
You came into this world quietly. I didn’t scream or cry while I labored and pushed. Birthing you gave me the smallest amount of pain only because I didn’t feel capable of raising another child and I wondered how you would turn out, how would I handle bringing up another boy by myself. The doctor caught you and exclaimed that you were “a big baby”, much bigger than he had anticipated because you came so early. The nurse cleaned you off and waited a couple of minutes for you to cry. I watched the entire time not sure of how I felt about this tiny human I was now responsible for.
I waited for that cry like you and your brother wait for your birthday or Christmas. You finally gave one loud long wail right before the nurse placed you on my chest. You immediately settled in that spot and into my heart, connected to me forever, and went to sleep as though being born was something you did every day. Those first twenty-four hours you hardly cried and I had to wake you to feed you and change you. The next day after the doctor came in and told me you were having trouble breathing, my heart beat in a broken rhythm for two weeks until I was able to bring you home from the NICU at Kapiolani Hospital.
You were the best baby. You slept when you were supposed to and you were awake and hungry when you were supposed to be. I fell in love with you each day and I continue to now in the little small moments that may not seem like much to you but mean everything to me. The way you wake up in the middle of the night after I get home from work or in the morning with a smile and a greeting for me. The way you sleepily wrap your arms around my neck while I place you in your bed makes me want to hold on to you forever and never let you go. The way you laugh, like dolphins playing in the ocean, full of joy and happiness. The way you proudly proclaim and insist that I’m the best mom ever because I cook great food and tickle you before bedtime.
You are so resilient and still so eager to know the world around you even though that world has hurt you. I know there are so many things going on inside of you right now. I know that you’re keeping secrets from me and everyone else. I understand. I kept secrets too. I want you to know that no matter what your secrets are I love you and I accept you. I’ll protect you and keep you safe. I hope you don’t mind if I share your – our – story with some people. Maybe one day when you’re older you can read this and we can start a conversation that will lead to healing and wholeness. You are the happy song sent from heaven and the blessing I get to see every day.
Love Always,
***
My son, Aiden, had been having night-terrors for weeks. It felt like they came in waves. Every night for five or six nights in a row he’d wake up crying and talking. A night or two, he’d sleep through peacefully. I wouldn’t have been seriously concerned if the nightmares were just crying and a little bit of talking. His behavior had escalated though, and I thought it would be wise to seek therapy for Aiden.
One bright day in July 2017, I sat in a cozy office. I practiced the grounding techniques that I’d learned from my own therapist and felt the fuzzy long carpet beneath my bare feet. I could smell the almost burnt hamburger from Burger King floating through the pretty four paned window that was open. There was a nice breeze. I could see it run its invisible fingers through the trees just outside the window. It held the promise of the Whopper I knew was cooking next door. Melissa sat cross-legged on the floor across of me. Her feet are so tiny, I think to myself. I want to think of anything but the conversation she’s trying to have with me. I’d ignored it for so long because I thought it was over with.
“How many nights did Aiden have nightmares in the last two weeks?” She’s asking me again. I guess the frozen fake smile and thoughtful look I gave her wasn’t going to make her change the conversation, I thought as I darted my eyes off her face and back out the window. When I finally drag my gaze back to her face, I see concern written there. There’s concern written all over this room.
The books on the middle cubby of Melissa’s shelf contain similar titles to Good Touch, Bad Touch. There are mindless sensory toys a child can find comfort in when they get anxious. My fingers itch to dig into the pink Play-Doh sitting in the bin on the ground. Anything, so I don’t have to have this conversation. There’s concern written even in the placement of the chair I’m sitting in. I have a clear view of the door and the cord that sneaks under it leading to the noise-maker on the other side of it. The low “shhhhhh” that emits from the other side of the door doesn’t cover the voices of my children arguing over which Pokemon is stronger out in the waiting area.
“Eleven.” I answer her, “Eleven out of fourteen nights.” Melissa’s face doesn’t show any change from the polite smile that’s super-glued there. The subtle twitch of her right shoulder and the jerk of her left foot indicates to me that, as my son’s therapist, she’s concerned.
“What happens during these nightmares? You don’t have to be exact. Just a description of one of them,” she tries to dig more information out of me.
“Aiden’s always been an active sleeper,” I explain to her. I give conscious effort to shutting off the emotional, feeling part of myself. I resign myself to the process of breaking silence and speaking. “He moves around a lot. Ever since we moved back from Oklahoma City, I’ve tried to get him to sleep on his own. He starts in my bed. Once he’s asleep I move him into his bed, which is a loft style bed with guardrails in the same room I sleep in. After a couple of hours, he starts to talk. Sometimes he stands up and paces on top of his bed, crying. He asks questions while my heartbreaks. I know I’m not supposed to wake him up because it can cause a further mental breakdown.
Sometimes he tries to jump off the bed. Sometimes he throws his stuffed animals off the bed. He screams. Sometimes he climbs down the ladder and gets in my face and yells at me. I don’t have a choice but to follow him around. When it’s over, not more than three or four minutes, he lays back down. Sometimes in the bathroom, the pantry, the hallway. I pick him up to take him back to his bed and he tells me he doesn’t know what happened.” The monologue tumbles out of me. It’s a struggle for me to remain detached and blink back the tears that want to pour out of me.
“Oh, I’m sorry that happens Tracy, you must have a hard time sleeping,” Melissa exudes empathy while I nod my head and try to focus on the smell of Whoppers coming through the window. “What kinds of things does he say?” She pushes harder. I know where she’s trying to get with this conversation.
“He says a lot of different things.” I don’t want to repeat them but the patient look on Melissa’s face has words falling out of my mouth before I can stop them. “He asks ‘Mommy where are you? Don’t leave me! No! Don’t do that. It hurts. Please. Where’s my mommy. Is anyone going to help me? Mommy! I don’t want to. Don’t do that.’” I stop abruptly. I surprise myself that my eyes are still dry. I rationalize the reaction to dealing with trauma in my personal life for years and my professional like for more than a year.
“Has there been anything else happening that’s different?” Melissa asks another question. I tell her how he smeared poop in the bathroom several times in the last couple of weeks since his last session with her. I let her know the matter of fact way he asks what rape is. Now it’s not just the room that has concern written all over it, Melissa’s face has concern etched into it. It feels like she can’t control the widening of her eyes in surprise or the way she gets up suddenly to pick up the toys arranged in messy piles by my own child.
“Tracy, here are my main concerns. Aiden’s behavior has escalated in the last couple of weeks. I know your work schedule has changed and you’re working more overnights. We both know that these behaviors Aiden is displaying is a cry for help. Before I asked you to come in, Aiden and I were working on appropriate boundaries and the thing he said that concerns me most is that ‘anyone can touch him if they ask permission’.” I nod understanding what she’s trying to tell me but still I want her to tell me, not imply anything. So, I sit silently wanting to put things back into the pretty box in my mind. With my silence I demand she continue. Maybe she can see that all over my face. She continues, “My fear is that Aiden is being actively groomed for sexual abuse or that there is active abuse going on,” she pauses. “If Aiden makes a disclosure, as his current therapist and working as a forensic interviewer for the Children’s Justice Center, I cannot take a statement from him because there would be a question of whether or not I coached him into a disclosure,” she pauses again. “I need to close him out of my service and refer you out to another therapist that specializes in child sex abuse and trauma. Are you okay with that?”
I don’t hear the question. After she mentions grooming, I only hear every third word. I sense my entire life slipping through my fingers and hold on even tighter. There’s a moment when I wish that I had never reached out for help. That I had brushed Aiden’s nightmares off as a childhood experience and thought nothing else of it. Unfortunately, my brain isn’t wired like that. Training at work, classes at school, and my own personal trauma tell me that Aiden is exhibiting all the classic markers of childhood sexual abuse. I’d spent his entire life trying to protect him. Trying to break the cycle of abuse that I hoped ended with me. Aiden’s questions during his nightmare not only tell me he’s at-risk, but they tell me I’ve failed to protect my child. Parts of me wished Aiden’s nightmares had been quiet. I’d have much preferred a quiet nightmare to a noisy one. My mind can’t help but wonder what Aiden’s safe room is going to look like and what color his box will be. My heart literally aches in my chest, the single line of sweat running down my back mirrors the crying my soul does as my children and I walk to the car.
***
Months later in December 2017, I was reminded of Aiden’s and my own story when I did a presentation for Tagi Qolouvaki’s English 100 class. Tagi’s requirements for this writing assignment were simple: an informal blog about the military and its response or lack of response to a social issue. We were to include data and had to cite sources to back up the data and the claims we asserted in our blogs. I’d wasted a week writing a draft for the military’s response to child abuse on bases thinking about the news story I’d seen earlier in the month about a toddler that died from child abuse and neglect on a military base in Oahu.
The draft sucked. I’d spent most of the semester writing two other papers that tackled social issues from an academic standpoint and somewhat detached from my own life. Tagi and I had several meetings where we discussed my writing style. She’d also questioned why I preferred to write from an objective academic stance. It was easier for me. I could do research and present either side of an argument, convincingly. Academia was shaping up to be my forte. Going deeper required me to use the emotional part of myself that I’d spent years turning off. It hurt too much to go deeper. I’d avoided topics that could impact me on a personal level. Until I changed my topic to the military’s response to sexual assault, the military’s response to my own sexual assault.
I didn’t have huge issues writing it. My hands shook at some parts and my heart beat so loudly in my ears I couldn’t hear anything around me. I didn’t know talking about a sexual assault after almost fifteen years would still have an impact on me. Only the people in my class were going to read it, so I pushed through. I stuffed it all down and put it in a pretty glass box in my mind and filed it away like I do everything else until December when I presented my blog. It felt like that pretty glass box where I put all my issues, anxieties, worries, and triggers, all my silence had shattered. Tagi’s class offered me the hammer. I didn’t know I felt about my pretty box being broken. I only knew that it was broken and with it my silence.
I got up and presented my blog and used the hammer that Tagi’s class had unknowingly given me. I dove in head first and talked about my writing process and how many drafts it had taken me to get down to the submitted blog. I talked about how well I communicated with my instructor and how the feedback process worked well for me, so well I could almost anticipate what the newest comments and suggestions would be. Then I sat down. There was something about the floor in K-101 that started me thinking about how it resembled the barracks floors at Fort Leonardwood, Missouri. The memory wrapped around me like a hug from your least favorite uncle.
***
It hurt. That’s all I thought over and over. How did I end up here?
The day started out fine. The drill sergeants cancelled physical training that morning. We were on holdover status, waiting to move back into basic training or waiting to pass a physical fitness test to move forward to advanced training and our next duty station. Instead of training, the drill sergeants instructed us to clean the barracks: females inside and males outside.
I moved through the barracks methodically mopping and buffing each bay’s floor to the acceptable standard. It was a mindless task so my mind wandered: back to the family at home and what they could be doing at that same exact moment, contemplating the decision to leave the man who was the love of my life up to that point. Things weren’t great when I left but we’d get back together when I got back, right? We could have a baby or get married. I thought about my upcoming physical fitness test. If I didn’t pass this one I would get sent back to week six of BASIC training after completing all nine and my drill sergeant said he’d “rip off my head and shit down my throat” if I failed again.
I was so absorbed in my thought of babies, family, physical fitness tests, and shit that I didn’t see or hear him come in. I realized he was there too late when the extension cord pull tight around my neck. Then I realized, only then, what was going to happen.
“Don’t say a word. If you do, I’ll hurt you worse.” The voice whispered in my ear while strong arms pulled me slowly from the room with white tile floors. When it was over… five minutes… ten…sixty minutes late, I didn’t know… I realized, I knew him. I’d spoken to him. Ate next to him. Marched alongside him to three meals a day for several weeks now. He held my feet down during my physical fitness test with the same strength he used to hold my hands down and cover my mouth. “Say anything to anyone and I’ll come back.” His grip tightened around my neck, “I’ll hurt you again, only it’ll be worse.”
The loop played over and over in my mind in the classroom that day staring at the clean white tiled floors. By the time I got to my therapists office I’d watched it more than my favorite movie. That day we built my saferoom with the happy boxes and the ornate dangerous boxes.
***
As a single parent of two active boys that works practically full-time, goes to school full-time, I crave quiet. I look for the quiet wherever I can find it. The bathroom, the car, the twenty minutes to an hour before my younger son comes barreling through my bedroom door full of stories about the exciting things he’s seen and learned throughout the day. Sometimes he’s drenched from a downpour, but more likely his hair and shirt is damp from sweat because he ran all the way home from the bus stop. He’s normally starving and always, always, full of love, kisses, and admiration for me. “The best mom in the world” according to him. My quiet is interrupted by this bubbly child I love and protect with my entire heart, soul, and being. The quiet I so crave is gone in an instant and I don’t mind at all.
Then, there’s a silence I wish would be interrupted. A completely different silence that I’ve taken to avoiding. These silences are deafening, paralyzing, full of fear and sick wonder. These silences I can’t stand.
There was a time in my life when all I could do was stand silent. Watch silent. Act silent. These silences meant equilibrium and security. Silence is the terrifying reality I have spent my entire life struggling against. Not as hard at first but, there is a desire that has been built up and destroyed over and over in my soul – a desire for disclosure and vocalization in my center that I can’t escape. A different kind of speaking rather than the one I did to recant the statement I had made that my foster dad’s father had molested me more and more frequently between the ages of eleven and thirteen. I realize now that when my foster mom asked me if I wanted to make things better in my family in the dry goods aisle of Cost-U-Less at age thirteen, I could restore equilibrium.
A single word has caused wrecking balls to go to work inside of that never-ending construction zone around my heart. A single word: SPEAK. It started slowly at first: that breezy July day in Melissa’s office, the not so comfortable day in December in Tagi’s English class when I presented my blog about sexual assault – my own sexual assault. As an adult, my core must be strong and flexible, swaying and bending in storms and gusts. Toxic silences have destroyed my flexibility. Maybe it was my heart finally breaking.
With my therapist, Kate, I feel like I can truly be me and say what I’ve been afraid to say since I was a toddler. In Kate’s office, sitting in a deep, white leather chair I try to focus on her voice telling me I’m okay and I’m safe. Taking me back. Memories swirl around me like leaves at the beginning of their flight on the wind.
“Bring up a memory of abuse or trauma”, she instructs me, “How old are you?”
“Twenty-one”, I reply. A turbulent wind starts to build and the leaves tremble.
“Further.” Kate pushes but I trust her.
“Nineteen. Thirteen. Ten. Five.” The leaves circle around me in a beautiful frantic dance I must watch.
“Go back further.” She directs me again.
The further I go, the faster the leaves get until they funnel around me. My head pounds with the noise and overwhelming pressure building up inside my chest. I can’t hear Kate over the screams the wind has become in my mind. I can barely see through the wall of leaves but - I can feel. The smell of dog and wet and fear overcome me.
There’s a sensation in my stomach that I can’t place. It’s like butterflies with sparklers for wings. I’m two or three years old now. A little tall for three with chubby legs and thick-lashed brown eyes. Long dark straight hair cascades down my back with a little fringe of bangs cut in a straight line above my eyebrows. I’m not wearing a t-shirt. I shiver and have goose bumps, not because it’s cold. My hands feel warm, almost hot. I’m scared. The screams of the wind have died down to a howl and Kate’s soothing voice brings me back. She’s asking me to describe what I see or how I feel. So, I tell her: “Fear. I feel afraid.”
“Focus on that – the fear and keep going. You are safe, and you are okay,” she tells me.
The wind finally explodes sending leaves scattering high above my head. As they rain down me in a graceful dance at the end of their flight on the dying wind, I see a hallway or a dimly lit room with fake wood panel walls. The carpet under my small feet feels coarse and thin – I can feel the hardwood or cement beneath it. I’m forced to look up into the face of an older boy I recognize because I trust him. He’s holding the back of my head with one hand; my hair is tangled in his fingers. Why are his pants down? I wonder to myself.
“Open your mouth,” he tells me. Now, I feel the tears that prick the back of my eyes and hesitate.
“Ugh, just do it. It’s a game. It’ll be fun,” my mommy’s voice sounds lazy and the words aren’t coming out right. She sounds funny over the buzzing bees in my ears. I don’t like when mommy’s voice gets like that or when her eyes are all shiny and wild, looking everywhere so I do what I’m told, shoving the scared and sick down. I trust my mommy. I play the game quietly because it’ll make her happy. Adult me and toddler me silence the cries we both know want to come out. Instead, we slip out of the dim room to the park down the road with the miles of green grass. Flying on the swings that creak back and forth. The sun shines on my face as I chase the pretty butterflies with the pretty wings. Best of all, or maybe worst of all, I’m alone.
Now it’s a different voice, a kinder voice…. Kate…. I’m in Kate’s office, safe and okay. I’m in Kate’s office sitting in that deep white chair that holds me like my Aiden does when he gives me a hug after an exciting day at school. “Safe and okay” repeat over and over in my mind. I've seen darkness and chosen light. The off-white walls and floors are clean and smooth beneath my feet. The clock on the wall is still ticking time away.
***
“Tracy, I need you to take a deep breath. I need to see it.” The air wheezes in and out of my lungs and I realize I’m still trying to quiet the sobs that want to pour out of me. Those leaves have settled, and I’m left once again to clear the rubble around my heart and rebuild. Kate checks on me several times over the next week by text message. She asks me if I’m experiencing any new anxiety or fears, is there anything intruding on my life that’s making it too hard to function. My answer surprises her and me: No.
I can recall this incident and not feel scared or a need to put it in a pretty box in the back of my mind and back away from it carefully expecting it to explode. I wonder if this is a good thing. Kate assures me that it is. The visualization therapy worked well for this incident. The fact that I can remember it and not feel triggered is a sign that this therapy is working. We schedule a session to try another incident for the following week.
The next week I was back in that big white leather chair visualizing the series of incidents that would change my entire life’s course. Kate’s voice took me back asking me to focus on a detail, but this time my eyes shut tighter and my chest tightened uncomfortably. The first thing that pops into my mind is my childhood home. The house isn’t spectacular. It’s older, built on post-and-pier. Three bedrooms and two bathrooms fit the four of us before my dad remodeled my sophomore year in high school to add a room for my sister and extend the kitchen. The first bedroom down the hall was mine with its treasure trove of ‘Reader Digest’ books handed down to me from my mom. TV never held any appeal to me but I could get lost in books and music. Now, I understand that books and music got me through the hardest year of my life.
I realized that this would be the memory that was the most difficult. Not the first one we had processed. That one was full of sensations and feelings. Nothing seemed real with that one. This one, this one was concrete. I could remember the smells, the time on the clock, the movie playing on the TV, the Winnie the Pooh pajamas I was wearing with the tan shirt and green plaid shorts, the feel of his body pressed into mine in the doorway of my room, my family less than thirty feet away enjoying the suspense and thrill of ‘Anaconda’. I was thirteen and he was well over seventy. This wasn’t the first time he had cornered me alone. It wasn’t the first time he’d cornered me with other people, my family, in such close proximity.
“Open your eyes and follow my fingers, hold on to your start point. Watch it happen but stay separate. You’re not back there, it’s a movie playing in front of you”, Kate broke the uncomfortable quiet I was sitting in with my eyes closed. I know the look on my face betrayed the confusion and pain I was trying so hard to hide as my eyes followed her fingers back and forth for almost a minute. “How do you feel?”
“Scared. Guilty. It’s my fault. I want to runaway,” I answer her barely above a whisper. I’m afraid that if I speak too loudly I’ll runaway.
“Where do you feel it in your body?” Kate asks.
“My chest. It’s hard to breathe. I want to vomit but it feels like my throat is all closed up,” I tell her.
“Hold on to it. Follow my fingers and keep going. It’s still a movie. You don’t get to pause it or rewind it. You’re still separate from it, just watch,” Kate raises two fingers and moves them back and forth in front of me like a pendulum on a clock. The scenes jump around from the doorway in my room, his body pressing against me and his mouth lowering to my own while his hand slips under the waistband of my Winnie the Pooh pajama shorts, to the golf cart at Naniloa Golf Course and his arm that looks casually draped around my shoulders but his hand gropes my chest, to the van one early morning before school where he asks me if what he did felt good, to half an hour earlier in the kitchen when I tell my mom “Papa touched me” and her only reply is that old people do that sometimes. Kate’s fingers stop moving in front of me but the movie keeps going.
“Close your eyes and breathe”, she instructs me again. It feels like I’m hardly breathing. The last bit of the movie plays over and over in my head, my confession to my mom and her response. I’m still confused. I’m still afraid. I still want to run. “I need to see you breathe Tracy,” Kate’s voice pushes the breath I’ve been holding out of me. “How do you feel? Where do you feel it?”
“It’s the same. I’m scared. I feel dirty and guilty. I’m confused,” my voice wavers and trembles because I’m struggling to keep the tears from bursting out of me.
***
Around and around we go for more than an hour. I keep hitting that block. The movie playing in my head stops at the scene in the kitchen and scrambles back to through incidents in the store, the car, the golf course, and the doorway. Over and over Kate asks me how I’m feeling and where I feel it. The answers vary but they stay mainly the same. Scared. Confused. Guilty. Dirty. Responsible. I've wished to die and lived. I've been lost many times and found many more. Kate and I look at each other. I feel defeated and ask if we can end this session because I can’t bear anymore. One tear makes cuts a lonely path down my face. Kate senses my distress and insists that we finish with a visualization to center my thoughts and to regain my sense of safety. I engage in the exercise half-heartedly knowing that as soon as I get in my car, I’ll cry the way I need to. I cry tears that have leave holes in my soul and stitch my essence back together sitting in the driver’s seat of my car.
After the high of the first session’s success, the failure of the second session feels immense. Kate attempts to end the session with a positive visualization and an agreement to meet in a week to check in and discuss whether I want to continue this type of therapy.
When I return the following week, Kate asks how I’ve been doing. I let her know that over the last week the vision in both my eyes has been affected. I can’t see anything in my peripheral. It’s like I have tunnel vision. We both agree that this isn’t the right time to continue with the therapy and that we’ll work on something else for the time being. There’s no research to show that the type of processing therapy Kate and I were doing manifests physiological symptoms. It’s clear that my body has decided to say, “No more”. We both respect that.
***
My family and I have an interesting dynamic. We still don’t speak about this incident or the other abuses I was exposed to and suffered. The forced decision to stay silent and maintain a façade of compliance has been the best defense mechanism in my life since an extremely young age. Sustaining that image has left me shaken at times, questioning at others, broken, bruised and confused constantly. The struggle to be cooperative while trying to preserve who I am, while everything inside of me knows it’s wrong, has left not only my essence and soul unraveled, I can feel it physically. My shoulders ache from carrying this burden. The burden of protecting my family – the family I was born into and the family that chose to keep me. My stomach shakes at the thought of making these experiences public. My hands get icy and numb with anxiety as they write these words because of the main thing that repeats over and over in my mind: “I love them. I love them still. This is going to hurt them.” I’ve never spoken about some of these things. Maybe I haven’t been brave enough in the past. Maybe I was too scared. I don’t know why they hold so much importance to me. I don’t know why my mom responded the way she did or why she asked me to recant my statement. I don’t understand why when I stand up for myself or my kids, my parents don’t acknowledge my birthday. I don’t know why my dad held my trauma over my head and said that he gave up his father for me. I often wonder if my siblings experienced the same things but silence regarding this issue is buried in the deep caverns of my family’s history. I don’t think I’ll ever know the answers, the reasons, the motivations for what happened. I don’t think I’ll ever know the answer to all the why’s I carry around with me and inside of me. The boxes with the captivating lights and various locks will always need to stay in place because, like I said, my family and I have an interesting dynamic.
***
I’ve found other ways to crack the boxes that held my silence prisoner for years. As a domestic violence advocate at work, my professional status allows me to disclose things about my personal life to let other victims of violence know that there are ways out and ways to persevere. My goal in sharing my experiences is to show that resiliency is attainable regardless of where a person comes from and what they have been through. We are not just the sum of our experiences, our failures, or our traumas. We are the product of what we do after an experience, failure, or trauma.
The day I built my safe room with the boxes Kate asked me to gather all of my pieces before putting them in their boxes to have a conversation with them.
“I’m sorry you’ve been hurt. I’m sorry I’ve ignored you for so long. I have to put you in the boxes, but it’ll only be for a little while. No one else will bring you out. I promise I’ll protect you. I promise I won’t let you out without help. I’m sorry I’ve been unfair to you and blamed you for all of my struggles instead of recognizing that you need help. It’s okay to cry and feel weak, I know you’ve been strong and continue to be strong. You’ve all been so brave and have done everything you can to protect us. It’s okay to take a break now. I’ll protect us, I promise. You’ll be safe here. No one can open this room except for me. I’ll be a good gatekeeper, I promise. We’ve all been drifting in a sea of lost identity. I embrace you with no labels or qualifiers. I’ve hidden you in the shadows of my heart. Our scars are the road map of our life’s course. We’ve been broken, bloodied, body and soul and we’ve still survived.”