Where is Air

    A few weeks ago I was at the park, out for a run, believing that my lack of time exercising in the last year would have no impact on my ability to sprint. When I say I was running you may mistake my words for the literal definition instead of the figurative meaning I am implying. I mean I was running, well jogging would probably be a more accurate title, but I was desperate to get away from all the hurt and despair and hopelessness that felt like bags of sand attached to each ankle. I wanted to run from the pain that felt like it was killing me alive. I began to jog and for the first few miles I was painfully holding pace and then a sharp pain screamed at me from my side. The urge to hold in each breath hit me like bricks because with every breath the sharp pain roared to life and the thing I was doing to stop the pain was now the source... and the thing that would ultimately bring healing to the stitch in my side, breathing, felt like the very thing that was at the root of it all.
   There are days like today when breathing feels as useless as the idea of swimming the ocean in it's entirety. I have found myself again desperately seeking help and freedom from this eating disorder and instead of feeling hope I feel nothing but the lack there of. I don't understand how it is possible to want something so desperately, to seek it with such ambition and to find myself covered in the fingerprints of my indulgence. As humans, when we are in pain, we find a way to make it stop. It is honestly a instinct of survival and for me it has turned into a seduction unto death. I find myself broken tonight. I have put myself in a place where people are making decisions that they believe are best for me and yet those decisions feel like the pain of the abandonment and rejection I was running from to begin with. I put myself in this position where I don't have a voice. I am the patient and they the professionals get to tell me that I am wrong about my theory that punishment based consequences do not motivate me unto recovery...but instead they reinforce the pain that is there to begin with. I go along with it because I am taught that my opinion doesn't matter because I am blinded by my illness, or that it matters but it doesn't change the contract being put in place. How am I supposed to leave and be in a place where I can make decisions based on my intuition instead of having to look to an exterior source for guidance. How does this not continue the cycle of doing whatever I am told as to not have love and care withheld from me. I am broken into pieces, running from that which is myself...running, running, running until breathing becomes too sharp and furious and staying alive is no longer worth the air that keeps me surviving. I just want to stop running. I just want to stop breathing.

Why

Why

Asking me why I do the things I do is similar, in my opinion, to asking me why I wear a seat-belt when I am driving, why I wear a helmet when riding a bike. Each time I fasten my seat-belt I don’t stop and think to myself, I am going to wear this because it will protect me in a car crash. I guess if I stop and think about it that is the reason. However it is so automatic, so reinforced by repetition, that it is just part of the process of getting from one location to the next. I do it because I know it keeps me safe.

There is really no rhyme or reason to the rules that I follow, other than knowing that when I don’t follow them I feel unsafe. My heart pounds, my hands shake...I feel like someone is asking me if i want to be a horrible and disgusting person and if I just accept it, it would be choosing to be unlovable. Food is neutral to me in that it doesn’t sound appealing and revolting to me in that it bares its mark on me as evidence of my weakness. It is like having sex with someone you are afraid of or don’t want to be with at all...or for me it is sleeping with anyone ever.  After it’s over the act itself has happened, but the feelings it leaves you with are just beginning. In the moment, before it happens, you might say to yourself this is normal, this might feels good, this might be ok. And inevitably there is this moment when everything shifts and it, this demon inside of you, feels like it is choking the air from your lungs and it’s not ok and it feels anything but normal… but it’s too late. Saying no is futile. The chance to politely refuse has long since passed. The demon has awakened and the evidence of your choice is palpable. It is there is the sweat of his body. Its there in the sickness that screams in the pit of your stomach. It’s there in the inability to stop shaking. It’s evidence lingers as proof of everything you want to hide. So you try to slow it down, pretend to fall asleep or just be a body to be used. Or maybe you speed it up, trying to get it over with as soon as possible. But in the end it really doesn’t matter...in the end you will just be left with the demon that haunts you until he returns again.

Food may seem normal in the moment. It may taste good and may seem to be okay. But then it goes into my mouth, into my body, and that same demon awakens. But this one I thought I had mastered. I learned to stay away from it, to control it, to not be enticed and everything went still. Everything went numb. But, that was until I found that once again, the trick was on me. I needed it to survive. But going back to it felt like embracing, welcoming, even becoming one with the demon. The feelings of disgust, of sickness, of guilt and shame all came roaring back to life as the evidence remained far after the food was consumed. My hands would smell of it. My mouth would taste of it. My stomach would feel it, as though impregnated by the devil himself. I was sure people could smell it on me, know that it was my choice and know that it was my fault. But the worst part wasn’t the evidence people could see or smell. The worst part is the unbearable weight that lingers inside me. The shame of knowing it was my choice. The inability to unfeel it, unthink it, or unsee it. The decision to do and feel what you detest the most, knowing it the only thing that will save your life, feels not only unbearable, but also incriminating of becoming everything you never wanted to be. So to rip things into pieces makes it feel smaller, makes me feel in charge of the amount i put into my mouth, almost as if to demolish it and slowly allow it will make me feel like there is always a chance to stop, to say no. For food to get on my hands, grease, oil, anything really, is to be unable to rid myself of tangible evidence. I can see the condemnation on my hands and the demon gets louder faster. It is worse if it is white. To pick the lowest calorie option is to choose the least bad, to be the least bad...out of all the evil, you pick the smallest demon, the one that does the least amount of harm. Sometimes you eat as slow as possible to try and indirectly stop it from getting as far. Sometimes, you just eat what you know you will fast to get it over with. More often than not you go lifeless, trying desperately to disappear, to make your body just a body and keep your soul from being a part of it. So I let it sit in front of me and I occasionally take bites, I do what is asked and go through the motions, because I have resigned to what is needed of me, and still try to do enough to get by without fully giving over my soul completely. That way I can at least try to tell myself that I didn’t want for this to happen. I can pretend I fought against it so that I don’t feel like I have become the perpetrator. If I go through all the motions maybe I can trick myself and others into thinking I am not the evil that I have become. I am not the darkness that constantly tries to consume me… the darkness I fear will then consume others through me.

Are there times it becomes about my body and my weight and my appearance? For sure. Are there aspects of things that are just flat out eating disordered? Of course. But I guess I feel like it is easier for me to tell someone I just want to be thin, than it is for me to tell them I want to disappear. It is easier to explain food scares me because it will make me fat, than it is for me to tell them it leaves me feeling used and violated. It is easier for people to think it is about a certain number, than it is to explain to them that I am desperate to say no. No  to the evil. No to the one who is bigger and stronger than me. No to the evidence it leaves behind, covering my body, leaving its fingerprints,claiming me as it prize. I am desperate to say no to the hell without my no killing me.  I am trying to say no so that I can one day, maybe, just maybe,  be clean enough to be loved...to be wanted...to be good.        

So yes, I chew gum after I eat to get rid of the taste in my mouth, but really it’s to get rid of the evidence inside my head that I gave in. I spray body spray on me after I eat a meal in hopes that no one will smell it on me when they get too close. Most of the time I always refuse a little bit so I can convince myself I still tried to not give in. I wash my hands so they don’t carry any reminders of the choices I made. I walk to try and run from the noise inside my head...the feelings of being a disgusting whore that chooses to be used, that will never do anything but take up space. I walk or run from the darkness that tells to just let go and give in to death. I try to escape from the little girl inside me that is incessantly screaming to be held and protected and who I have no capacity to do either of those things for. I’m doing the best i can with what I have but what I have is not enough. Trust me, I know that. I am empty and scared and I want someone to save me from the memories that consume me. I want someone to flip the switch in my brain that would make food just food. I want eating to stop feeling like I am being violated by choice. I want the memories to fade away. I want life to grow from ashes. I want to find a way to somehow, someway, to say no the evil, and say yes to my voice and my body being my own. I want to someday be free.

Crumbs

Outside of the walls is a battlefield. The sound of gun shots fill the air as people scream, pleading for their lives to be spared. Women and children are raped, pinned to the ground, crying for their release.Blood coats the streets and predators lurk, waiting for weaknesses to be exposed. When it is time she crawls through the brick wall disguised as a fireplace in an abandoned building outside the city walls. She is covered from head to toe in a black cloak, her cloak of invisibility. There are rules to stay invisible, to stay safe and unseen as she indulges in her nightly routine. She follows them meticulously, as if her life, and the lives of those she loves depend on it...because they do. It is midnight, and she has an hour to accomplish all that she must do. She walks the abandoned streets, gathering crumbs as she goes, only to return to her cage within the hidden walls, return to her only known source of safety. In the midnight hour she gathers small pieces of the glow of the moon, the only light she has available to her, crumbs to place in the basket she carries. Her first stops are the houses of the ones she loves, getting close enough to feel their presence, but never chancing them really seeing her in return. There are nights where she indulges, peering into the windows and watching them sleep and she feels comfort in their safety. She takes those crumbs and places them in her basket. The next stop is the marketplace. During the day vendors line the streets, selling fresh fruits and vegetables, meat, and baked goods. She knows there are others like herself so she picks up only her share of the scraps,never taking more than she deems fair. Perhaps an apple that has fallen to the ground or pieces of bread that have been left behind. On a special night she might find a full loaf someone intentionally left behind. She breaks off a small portion, leaving the rest for those in need. She takes those crumbs and adds them to her collection. The next stop is where the stray animals gather, or perhaps the small orphans with no other place to call home. Even they, as mammals, find comfort on the unity of their fellow unwanted or abandoned group. She takes pieces off the break or the fruit she has brought and offers them food. She nourishes and holds each one, even returning to the marketplace if she runs out. She soaks in the comfort and touch the animals and children provide and places those crumbs inside her basket. The midnight hour is almost over and she has one last stop to make before returning to her cage. Quietly, silently, she makes her way to his house, to the darkness that has banished her from the city walls. She can hear the screams before she can even see the light from his windows and she remembers her own. When a young child’s voice pleads in the night air she falls to her knees, frozen in place. She listens there every night to remind herself of the reason she seeks refuge in her cold caged walls...to remind herself of the pain, the suffering, the cost of the light, and she takes those crumbs and adds them to her basket. Little does she know that the screams she hears are only those that live inside of her, the child locked inside her own heart. She realizes then that there are only minutes before the clock strikes 1, until she becomes visible to the world around her. She quickly stands and runs toward  the abandoned house outside the city gates. She sneaks into the hidden doorway, disguised as a brick fireplace. Then exhausted, she crawls back into her cage. As she begins to drift off to sleep her longings run wild. She longs and is desperate for someone to come to her cage, to hold her as she sleeps amidst the nightmares and the darkness. She longs to be able to lay in the sunlight and feel the warmth of its rays. She longs to go to the marketplace without fear and take the fresh fruits and vegetables, the warm baked goods, and to feed herself before feeding the unwanted. She longs to be connected at all times and to be surrounded by people but not be afraid. The longings begin to feel out of control. She starts to become too desperate, too willing to do whatever it takes to have those desires met. She takes a handful of her crumbs and swallows them, convincing herself they are enough to sustain her cravings because allowing others to know these desires places them in control, allowing them to control and manipulate her. Before she can convince herself that it is worth the risk she reaches over and presses play on the old tape deck beside her head. The screams and gunshots begin to fill the air again and she drifts to sleep as the longings and desires subside. No one wants to live in that world because the danger is unspeakable, that, she reminds herself, is the world of her childhood...His world where he runs free. She lives in a cage, safe and in control of her world. A world of rules and predictability, a world of crumbs that sustain her. It is there that she can live free, trapped only in the prison of her mind.   

Words

Words. All they are, all they ever will be, are words. Broken down into tiny pieces you find syllables and letters, substantiating nothing but small sounds. We have high expectations for these sounds, stringing them together to try and communicate our thoughts and beliefs in order to free the mind from the magnitude and complexity of the data that thrusts itself upon us all, every second of every day. To think of it all at once, the enormity of this world, is overwhelming and paralyzing. I used to think about eternity as a child, typical that I, as a child would be thinking of such things. In Sunday school they would teach us that we would live in heaven forever one day, time unending, and it would bring me to tears. Not the "yay for never being afraid again, playing with friends and eating ice cream all day long joyous sort of tears," but tears of terror. I can't think of anything in the entire world that I want to last forever, without end. To this day, the concept gives me far more anxiety than it should. Literally I am going to have to change the subject because I can feel my chest tightening and my heart rate increasing and now I can’t breathe. Dear Lord I hate being this crazy. All that to say It drives me insane when I stop to think about the fact that I am so incredibly overwhelmed and there is all this awful stuff that happened that I am supposed to talk about, and it all comes down to me having to depend on letters and sounds to articulate these feelings that I know will never have the capability to encapsulate the depth of what is going on. And in that realization it all makes me want to hide in my closet and never come out. Ever.

In my session today I was talking to Sam about this weird phenomenon that happens to me from time to time that drives me crazy...quite literally. I have always been very sensitive to the things that I watch. From a young age I couldn’t watch things with intense emotion or violence or anything of that nature without having nightmares. But in my teenage years it got worse. I have this memory of being away at college watching a movie with my boyfriend of two years or so over at his brother’s apartment. He was aware of my sensitivity and so we normally picked out movies together but we got to his brothers and found out we were watching legends of the fall. I was able to sit through the movie but all the while I was feeling like I wanted to die. That sounds dramatic, I know, but that is the weird feeling I am talking about. I smiled, I pretended to be normal, but the minute we reached his car I had a total meltdown. I was hysterically sobbing, engaged in a full panic attack, and I couldn’t explain why. I just kept saying, why did you let that happen? I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I didn’t really blame him. But I felt so emotionally overwhelmed that I literally wanted to die. This world is SO big and SO unpredictable and filled with SO much gut wrenching pain and I didn’t want to live in that constant fear of when the next bad thing was going to happen. But I felt trapped in it, unable to escape. So I avoided intense movies. I avoided awful sad stories. I avoided anything that brought about that feeling that someone was waiting behind the next corner and that they were going to pin me down and strangle me because I was walking too fast or too slow or talking too loud. Or maybe it would be because I was just too pretty or too nice. You see there was no rule book to follow, so I avoided it all. I was defective and crazy and hiding in closets is not how grownups behave, so I overcompensated in other areas to prove my self sufficiency, my independence. I was an actress of sorts, pretending to be a normal fearless adult, it was my leading role. So this weird want to die feeling, it happens all the time. But, when it happened again last night I was caught off guard. I sort of knew the story line of Phantom of the Opera, and didn’t remember it being particularly sad. I didn’t expect that sitting so close, with all the special effects (fireworks, bursts of flames, explosions, etc) would trigger my PTSD so strongly. I actually thought, by the end of the night, all things considered I had handled my stupid startle response quite well. But the moment I got into my car I wanted to die. Literally. I can’t handle this world. I can’t handle the anxiety of not knowing what is going to happen next. It is all too big and I feel so very small and everything feels so out of my control and all I am left with are words and they aren’t enough to articulate this feeling...it’s this feeling that is so familiar and so tangible and so palpable that I can literally taste it. Its incapacitating. As I drove home my whole body was trembling. I felt so sad for the Phantom and how alone he was. I was overwhelmed that I had to say goodbye to my mom before her vacation back east on Saturday. I again felt like this world is awful and horrible and then you die and there is eternity and I am trapped and stuck and I have this defect that I can’t tolerate it. Why am I so crazy? Why can other people tolerate it and I can't? So as I sat and thought about it last night it brought me back to something Lori said recently. She was talking about how people with eating disorders use their eating disorder as a voice and ultimately use it as a way to have people take care of them and meet the needs they can’t articulate...or at least that is what I heard, so something to that effect. (Which, I might add, I was annoyed with because it implied that I was just trying to get attention.) But then I had this realization of how that did in fact fit for me...or a version of it I guess. My eating disorder has been my parent for as long as I can remember. I was never too much for it. When I was afraid or overwhelmed it would help numb the intense feelings. Since I didn’t have the words to articulate the intensity of what was going on the eating disorder DIDN'T NEED WORDS, it just understood and took the pain away. It wouldn’t use my fears against me and it certainly wouldn’t die and abandon me. No, it held me. It protected me. It shielded me from the people who hurt me. It made me feel more attractive so that I felt more in control of men, instead of men controlling me. It took away the hell inside my head and made this big scary crazy world feel somewhat manageable...as long as I avoided strong emotions. It allowed me to function instead of curling up into a corner of a closet and become a puddle, a worthless and useless non functioning member of society. It enabled me to be a highly functioning, intelligent, compassionate human being. And I hate to admit it, but on days like yesterday, when my defect was in full swing, I didn’t want to let go of it. I didn’t want to recover. Anorexia has been the parent I never had and no one else can really ever be there for me...understand me without words. Protect me.  Because in my brain recovery is very lonely. I can’t call you or anyone at all hours of the night when the memories are raging. I can’t depend on people to protect me, because there is no such thing as protection. So I ended my night last night by praying to want to want freedom...because right now, in the midst of all the pain...some days I don’t want it. And i’m sure you are thinking, you are a grown ass woman, you can protect yourself. You don’t need anyone else to save you, save yourself. Don't act like a helpless victim. But the problem is that this is how I have been doing that. It’s not right, but neither is laying on that bed, knowing something bad was coming, but not having any idea of how long it would take for him to return or what kind of torture he would invent this time. And I got to choose to live with those. Instant memories, or be numb. So as I talked to Sam about my defect today and asked her what could possibly be wrong with me because I always feel so damn...and then I stopped as it hit me. I stopped talking and just looked at her. "It all just came together didn’t it," Sam asked. All I could do is nod my head. "Because you always feel so YOUNG" She questioned? Why do all roads lead back to that same stupid place. To that small little girl? The world felt so out of control and so mean and so scary and so awful and there weren’t words...there still aren’t words. I just wanted to die and intense emotions bring it all back. All of it. And who is safe when no one is safe? Damn it all...because saying what words I have doesn't help. I have said them and nothing has changed. Is there any hope?  All I know right now is that I am desperate for a life other than the one I have been living. But some days, I don’t know if I have enough courage to risk the world strangling me from behind one more time. I am not a helpless victim, the world being my abuser. No. Instead I feel like a 4 year old trying to be a grown up and she is in charge and I don't understand why. Some days I think I just might close my eyes and wake up to find out it was all just a horrible dream...and I have been given the miracle to do it all over again. This time i would do it right. I promise. Because I would choose a different path. But I'm scared it's too late. What is wrong with me? I just can't tolerate feeling this young, this out of control, and this needy any longer. Help me find a way to save myself or to medicate away this indescribable feeling...it's too much and I can't be left alone with only words to survive.

The Body Remembers

      It moves in quickly with an intensity that can't be mistaken. A heavy fog rolling in, darkening, misting, adding a weight to everything it touches, every single thing in its wake. Driving with my lights on my vision is impaired and I slow, knowing I can't see much past the hood of my car. A city, a place that on a clear and sunny day I know inside and out, has become a mystery. I am at it's mercy.
   Desolate grief has moved in on me today much like the fog outside my window. I go about my daily motions, my daily schedule, one that I know so well, and yet every move I make takes added effort...and I know it shouldn't surprise me. I know there is plenty going on in my life right now that warrants the heaviness, the pain. Its presence, nonetheless, is an unwelcome guest, one I have asked to go away, and stay away, more times than I can count. So when she opened my bedroom door this afternoon and crawled into bed with me, I said nothing. Fighting with her took more energy than I had to spare. Instead I simply prayed she would go away. With her touch came memories. She brought me back to a year ago, working with Sam at Monarch, beginning to talk, hesitantly try to accept, the reality... the hell that was endured by that small child. She reminded me of the hope that sparked as things started to improve and yet of the gut wrenching pain... of the nights that I was literally in a ball in the closet of my bedroom sobbing from the weight of the pain, the pain of remembering. Grief then changed directions and took me back to that dreaded day, sitting on the couch with my mom and sisters, time standing still as mom told us through broken sobs that daddy was in heaven with Jesus. The memories were coming faster now racing back and forth from recent months and years to that stupid little girl doing everything she was told. Grief took me to sitting alone with my grandma at her facility in January putting cool cloths on her head and helping to re position her failing body to help her breathing become less strained, talking to hospice about how many more days, more hours she thought she had left...calling my mom to ask her if she wanted to come sit with her, because they weren't sure she would make it through the night. No, my mom said, I can't stand seeing her this way. Grief then took me to the evening when I would be the replacement for pornography, helping my boyfriend at the time abstain from his addiction, I became the filth to ease his conscious. The day my mom sat me down to say she had cancer and then the rape at the music studio in pacific grove, the white sign out on the curb as advertisement to the community for lessons, for me as an advertisement that my no means nothing. That's enough I finally say to grief. Stop touching me, stop cuddling against me for comfort as if I can tolerate everything you bring. If you must stay go sit somewhere else...and for God's sake stop crying. As she moves herself to sit against the wall I can't help but wonder what I did to invite her presence. She normally doesn't show up unprovoked, especially when anorexia is close by. The ice cold drug of numbness that anorexia spreads keeps most parts away. So I  make a mental scan of my last 24 hours, trying to find a reason, and then it hits me. The book. That stupid book. Those stupid words.
    I had been working the night before with the fussy newborn and she was finally asleep. I logged into Amazon to shop and as it often does, it so kindly highlighted some suggestions of merchandise, things relating to past purchases that I had once indulged in. And, in the late hours of the night or the early hours of the morning, some would contend, I naively enrolled in something called Amazon student. A free 6 month trail enticed by free two day shipping sounded very appealing at 3 am. Books, it must have concluded. As a student, she must want suggestions of books. The last book I had purchased on that account had clearly been strongly encouraged by a therapist, some sort of PTSD workbook. Now, Amazon, displayed a book it thought i might like to try next. The title? The body remembers: The Psycho physiology of trauma and trauma treatment. The world stood still. The body remembers. Those three words spun through my mind and wrecked havoc on my heart. No. I screamed inside my mind. All sorts of my parts came to life. It might not be real I contended! It might not have happened. It might all be made up. None of it is true. And an almost audible voice would repeat the title once more. THE BODY REMEMBERS. All the memories- the smells that illicit a gag like reflex, the food on my hands that makes it hard to breath, the sound of running water, the taste and sight of blood ...And then the baby started crying. That newborn cry that cuts through your heart and makes every mother move into motion to sooth that pure innocence. I threw down my phone where I had been searching Amazon and scooped her up, placing her small head against my chest, hoping the sound of my beating heart would calm her until I could get her bottle made and her diaper changed. Shhhhhhhhhhh, I soothed her. It's ok and I seamlessly got her formula ready, diaper changed, and swaddled her it bitty body and fed her then quietly rocked her back to sleep. I forgot the book. I forgot that steady voice inside my head repeating those three dreaded words. With the baby in my arms it all went away.
  That I concluded is why grief was sitting in the corner of my room. That was why she appeared. I knew it took a lot for her to remain present with anorexia...so strangely I knew her message was important. It's true, was all she said. Other parts sent me and they want you to know, they remember. Our body... Your body... Even if you won't admit to it. The body remembers and it won't forget..

Fearless

        It was a hot and humid August day in 2009.  From far below I could hear them yelling to me. "Just jump! Stop thinking about it and just do it!" Friends and total strangers floated in rafts or were actively treading water, staring up at me from the cool blue Chatahoochi river. I would run to the edge of the small cliff and stop, just before my toes would leave the dirt beneath them and nervously laugh. Stop, and take a few steps backwards. Others offered to show me once again how safe the jump would be and they, mostly attractive twenty something year old men would, run full speed ahead and let out an obnoxious battle cry or sorts and jump into the water below. Frustrated groans would leave my lips and then I heard it. It wasn't intended to be an insult or an accusation. But, nonetheless, I heard those three dreaded words. "She's too scared." Something in the pit of my stomach spun itself into knots and the noise in my brain erupted. It was true. I was too scared. Cliff jumping into God knows how deep of water was terrifying and it was WATER...but what was more terrifying was the thought of those people knowing one of my weaknesses, one of my vulnerabilities. Pretend, I silently shouted to myself. Turn off your emotions and preserve the one thing no one can take away from you. Self control. Give nothing away. Reveal nothing unless it is for the purpose of manipulation of safety. Don't smile and for the love of all that is good don't cry. And in a quick flash she appeared.
      She was tiny when she learned that brilliant piece of information. Fear, weakness, and most of all vulnerabilities were used for one thing, and one thing alone. Bribery. He knew I was powerless when it came to wanting to protect my family. He knew I was putty in his large hands when he spoke of the evil that would seep out and destroy others if I refused. The things I hated the most seemed to make him come alive. The tears and the struggle enticed and provoked. So I learned that the only thing more destructive than the actions themselves was allowing him to read me like a book, handing him over the secret ways to destruct me in seconds. My weakness, my fears, my tears became my greatest vulnerability and as such became my greatest weapon. I found a way to hide behind my eyes, become small and become as lifeless as a doll, and while it didn't make it stop, it gave me power.
      Food, for whatever reason has been entangled with my fear of weakness. When I eat, when I choose to put food in my body I feel as though I am opening the book once more, giving those around me a step by step battle plan on how to find and devour my very heart and what is left of my mangled soul. With each bite of food I feel as though I am choosing for it to happen, going back when at first I felt special, loved enough to be destroyed. I begin to feel sick and it becomes hard to stay grounded. Those God given warning signs that are overridden so often, blare to a deafening roar and it is my fault. It is all my fault. And I melt. I am putty in the hands of  my internal perpetrator, the part that I often wonder if I have created out of the evil that lurks inside of me. So I keep her there. That blonde haired, blue eyed, filthy child. Locked in a cell, a prisoner of war. Shut up I scream to her. You need nothing. Pretend it never happened so that we can find a way to live. I myself sit outside the prison walls, weak and exhausted...dirty from laying on the cold cement outside, keeping guard. Though I hate her i protect her, knowing if she wound up in the wrong hands she would allow it to happen all over again. Please i whisper, please just go to sleep. Starvation sings her a calming lullaby as depression strokes her hair. I watch from afar and allow it...too tired to fight back. I so all of this for you, you know? And then i hear those words, those same words he had said to me back then and I shiver. But she is asleep now and my eyes get heavy as well. Perhaps sleep will bring peace?
        So on that hot august day I ran. I turned off my brain and my fear and all those warnings of impending danger that God gave us as a human race in order to prolong and preserve life, and I ran. I didn't scream and I didn't squeal. Instead I smiled, reminding myself this was how I held on to power, this is how I stay safe. As the cold water embraced me my heart pounded in my chest. I felt sick because I knew jumping once was simply not going to be convincing enough. So as I swam to the surface I made myself laugh. That was amazing, I cried out! I have to do it again. Tears began to build and I could hear her whimper. Not now, I screamed at her. Not. Now. I am too busy trying to keep you safe! So I swam to the edge of the rocks and pulled myself out to begin my climb back to the top. Self control I whispered to myself. Self control is safety.

The Secret Keeper

Its a task that feels unbearable, and yet when there is no choice but to do it, adaptation is not optional. To be the secret keeper, the one who holds life and death, light and darkness, not just for myself, but for those i cannot survive without...there is no option but silence. Silence became so important, so imperative that words disappeared, as if they didn’t exist at all. The memories remain so vivid, the smell of sweat, his breath tickling my nose, the taste of blood is so tangible and yet no words exist...as though it is a movie being played in another language with things that don’t quite translate, perhaps a superhuman survival skills that prevented me from speaking even if i became weak. It is a solitary confinement, torturing me unto insanity...if only i could be insane...maybe then i wouldn’t have the lucidity and functionality to care what others think, what others believe. If only I could be so crazy that I could lose all rational thinking and have the voices inside my head to talk to me, maybe they could understand, break the language barrier and provide the comfort that was taken with the eating disorder. The starvation pressed the mute button in my brain and I could close my eyes and an eerie silence would wrap me in a cold blanket. Shivering from the ice surrounding me i gladly traded the deafening screams in a foreign language for the intolerable chill that numbed me to my very core.

Now the volume has returned and I can see the pictures, smell the smells, hear the running water, feel the torture and you say to me, you are safe. But nothing about what I am experiencing is safe. Nothing I feel is safe. I look into a mirror and I see her small body and her tear stained face, the absolute terror in her eyes that is masked in emptiness, as if to give nothing away...as if she knew he had already taken her very soul...desperate for safe arms to provide respite from the hell she had walked through...but instead there is silence.

Why admit to needs that can’t be met. To long for something is to risk destruction. To have the  desperation of a 4 year old longing to be held and comforted, longing for the harsh reality of what is withheld because of the understanding of age induced innocence...to want that when you are a grown woman is impossible.

To say it isn’t fair is to subscribe to the belief system that equality can be achieved and in other words, it  would be meaningless. I don’t align with a victim mentality or expect the world to repay me for its undue harshness. I do, however, find it difficult to comprehend why I am expected to want to remain alive, continue to hold breath in my lungs when to live simply means continually re-experiencing everything I have lost. Some of those losses are common to every person that inhabits this fallen world. Anniversaries that bring to light the absence of my hero, my father who departed from my life and this world as we know it, when I was twelve. Painful breakups, friendship betrayals, death and jealousy. Those are things I can remember with sadness on occasion and still remain optimistic about a future containing potential  joy. But it’s the bathroom floor that shakes me. It’s the knife against my throat and the blood on my hands that spins a room so quickly that it rewinds time and there I am and there he is.  It is the dark closet where i sought refuge only to learn that to disobey is far worse than to submit, become one with evil and the pain isn't as palpable. It is there, in that submission, that I became sin, became silence, became darkness. While hope on occasion shines through a tiny crack of a cement prison cell where I am locked away from society like a wild animal, it is simply not enough. It is a crumb of food for a starving body. What good would it do for me to expect a feast, to long for ongoing sustenance when I know I cannot survive off of what I can be given. Wouldn’t my brain rather expect nothing, have nothing, than to barely hold on to life, be tortured with a failing body only to survive another day? Add in having no voice, no ability to communicate in any other way than to slowly fade from existence, becoming one with emaciation ...  chancing someone might see the disfigured animal I have become and read between the lines. Perhaps then I won’t break the rules, no one will have to die, and someone can see, physically see  the anguish and wrap me in a blanket and resuscitate life...love me unto ongoing hope. But when you restore the physical weight on to me, I have no voice. I become the fattened cow awaiting the slaughter. It is here that I truly disappear into the eternal hell of perpetual flashbacks, of a lifetime of molestation and rape, and no one will ever hear me or see me...because my real voice kills and destroys those I love. Instead my body will forever be a shoe to be put on, worn, and then discarded. I understand how to exchange what I am worth for love. That exchange has cost me everything.

To be a secret keeper is to sell your soul. So if you are, in fact,  a fellow secret keeper I would beg you to never leave the proverbial abduction spot with the kidnapper. Scream, yell, make a scene and chance being killed right then and there. That is heroic because, so they say, rarely do you survive being taken to a second location. Rarely do his promises come to fruition. Your only chance to be found alive is to be anything but silent.