Erase and Start Over

The resurfacing memories of a woman with PTSD.

Daily Archives: October 12, 2014


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1975

Saturday, May 31, 2014 5:00 p.m.

I could hear one of the girls in the shower across the hall from my room. The rhythm of the running water pattered me into a slightly wakeful state. I was aware of my bedroom, aware that I had been sleeping soundly, aware of the weight of my body on my stiff twin bed.

Someone was laughing. A few someones. Male. My mind was drifting back to 1975, and I was scrambling out of the pool. I tripped and fell, splat, on the concrete. They were laughing. Don’t look back, I thought. Run. I clambered up and ran, bare feet making wet splats toward the side of the house.

I opened my eyes. My bookshelf swam into view. It was dusty. I need to dust my bookshelf, I thought, shivering with cold as if I had just gotten out of a pool and walked into air conditioning. I didn’t move from my side, tightly curled and shivering, staring at that bookshelf.

I was there. I couldn’t deny it anymore. My sister, nine-year-old Meg, was naked on the diving board. It was night. I was in the pool. I’ve been remembering being in the pool. And now …there’s more: I climbed out of the pool. I was running. I was afraid. I tripped. Men were laughing.

I squeezed my eyes shut, blocking out the sound of the running shower, trying to return to that lucid state, to 1975. I could remember the pool. Liver-shaped. Small. It was night. I could see the pool light from under the water. I pushed up from the bottom, enjoying the buoyant feel as I broke the surface, blinking back the chlorine and taking a deep breath of fresh, cool night air.

Who was there?

Meg was on the diving board at the far end of the pool. I was on the right, by the house. I tried to turn the eyes in my memory to the left, but like a scratched DVD, the scene skipped to me tripping on the concrete. I remember picking myself up. Run. But I did turn at the sound of the laughter. My back was to the pool, and I turned slightly right. Not far enough to view all around that side of the pool and to the diving board, but just a little. My wet bangs hung in my eyes, but I could see her. Sitting in one of the black wrought-iron chairs, a wine bottle sitting on the matching round, black patio table.

It was Mom.

There was a knock on my door. No, I thought. I’m almost there.

The door opened and my firstborn peeked in. “Mom? You okay?”

Mom. My mom was wearing her faded pink terrycloth robe. I remember it had a pattern in the fabric, little raised square bumps. It was knee-length. She sat there with her legs crossed, bare legs under a short, pink wrap. She was smoking. She was saying something. I strained to hear it.

“Mom?”

My daughter’s voice pulled me reluctantly into the present. I nodded, accepting that the memory was gone, and started to sit up. My mouth was so dry, and my eyes were burning from the chlorine. No, wait – what was real? I shook my head as if to clear it. My daughter sat on the end of my bed, looking concerned. I tried to speak, but could only clear my throat.

“It’s okay,” I finally managed. “I think the road trip just took a lot out of me. I am so beat.”

She offered to drive her sister to her friend’s house. I had forgotten. That’s why she was in the shower. I accepted and we talked about dinner for the girls and how she had done her sister’s laundry so I could sleep. I assured her I’d be back to normal tomorrow, and smiled as she left, shutting the door behind her.

I sat looking ruefully at the door. The whole day was wasted. I failed my girls today. My stomach tightened. Then my throat. My eyes grew hot and misty. The room blurred, and I was back in 1975.

I was there. Meg was naked on the diving board. It was night. I was in the pool. I climbed out of the pool. I was running. I was afraid. I tripped. Men were laughing. And Mom was smoking a cigarette. She was saying, “Just say yes, daddy.” Whispering it, over and over.

Faintly, I heard the front door shut. I think the girls called out goodbyes and feel betters before the door shut. But the blood was pounding in my ears. I was there. Meg was there. Men were there. Mom was there. I was afraid.

The room was dark and I felt stiff and cold, sitting still so long. I reached tiredly for my phone. 11:02 p.m. I had just lost six hours.


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White Walls

Saturday, May 31, 2014  11:30 a.m.

“Mom?”

I snapped out of my reverie and looked up to see my youngest standing in my bedroom door.

“Hm? You need something? What time is it? You must be hungry.”

“No, I had cereal – I just wanted to know if you’re doing laundry today. I need jeans.”

I reached for my cell and was surprised to see the morning had flown by. My Kindle was in sleep mode. I must have spaced off after the show. I rubbed a hand tiredly over my face.

“Yes, of course. Give me a minute. Can you put your laundry by the front door and I’ll take it down? I just need another minute.”

She left the door standing open, and I could see my firstborn peeking in from down the hall. I smiled and called out a good morning, and she good-morninged me back and disappeared, apparently satisfied that I was fine.

Of course I was fine. Just tired. It was a long, cramped drive home yesterday. Anyone would be bone-weary tired after that. I sighed and looked around the room absently, running over the checklist in my head. I had forgotten to take my blood pressure medicine, so I washed it down with the cold dregs of my coffee, and got up to change into old clothes, my housecleaning day wear.

The girls had done a great job in the kitchen. I was afraid I’d come home to a sink full of dishes and piles of trash bags waiting to be taken out, but all was neat enough. There was leftover pizza in the fridge. A few days of junk food was to be expected. I added grocery-shopping to my list for the day, and then just froze, one hand on the closed door of the fridge, staring at the shopping list held up by a magnet, but not seeing it.

I couldn’t do it. I just knew, I could not leave the house that day. I couldn’t picture myself able to get into the car, much less drive it. I gripped the refrigerator door handle tighter, my nails digging into my skin. My heart starting pounding. My breath was shorter and quicker. I felt suddenly cold all over. I couldn’t do it. I almost wanted to whimper out loud, please don’t make me do it, but felt ridiculous in this unreasonable fear. What was wrong with me? It’s just grocery shopping.

I scolded myself into letting go of the door handle, but as I walked out of the kitchen, I turned back down the hall to my room instead of toward the laundry in the living room. I paused in my doorway, both hands on the frame, holding myself up. I called out to the girls that I was more tired than I thought, and would do laundry in a couple hours. I just need to nap a bit more.

I crawled into bed, shaking like a leaf, and eyes brimming over onto hot cheeks, pleading silently to the empty air – please don’t make me. Make me what? The walls slammed down on all sides, and I went limp, like a puppet with cut strings. My heart called for my sisters, and a welcome memory appeared of me and my sisters as adults all hugging each other and grieving together, one big huddle of sisters. Breathing easier, I fell asleep.


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First New Memory

Saturday, May 31, 2014  6:30 a.m.

I slowly became aware of birds chirping outside my bedroom window. I knew I was laying curled up on my left side, sheets wrapped tightly around me, but I wasn’t quite awake yet. My body was floating down from sleep and into the real world. I let my mind push back awareness of the birds and cotton sheets, just to drift a bit longer with the luxury of no alarm clock on a Saturday morning.

In that lucid state, an image of short, tumbled dark hair against faintly lit trees and a night sky drifted across my mind. A memory. I let my memory’s eye travel from hair to face. It was my sister, Meg, as I remembered her from our childhood in southern California in our Cass Avenue home. She was grinning at me.

The image pulled back, and I could see her on the diving board of our backyard pool. She was looking straight down at me, grinning, and poised as if ready to cannonball and splash water all over me. She was naked. The flood lights on the side of the house lit her up, making the floodlight in the water under the diving board almost unnecessary. I could see the trees behind her, and a bit of night sky, and the tops of the tall, wooden privacy fence.

From the angle of the memory, I knew I was in the water. I was on the side of the pool closest to the house, looking up at my sister on the diving board. It was night. I was there.

My eyes flew open. No, I wasn’t. I sat straight up in the grey dawn, burying my face in my hands. NO. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there.

My breathing stabilized and I dropped my hands. Of course I wasn’t there that night. My sisters and I skinny-dipped tons of times in that pool. The privacy fence, trees and shrubs made it impossible for anything but a helicopter to be able to see into that backyard, and no one lived there except four female children who swam like fish and one mother. We must have skinny-dipped tons of times. Didn’t we?

I pushed away the doubt and reached for my cell phone. 6:42. No reason for me to get up yet. I needed to unpack and do laundry, but I had all day. I decided to get some coffee and curl up with Netflix on my Kindle.


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Tumbling Downhill

At this point, I wasn’t stepping toward the hospital, I was tumbling uncontrollably downhill toward it.

TRIGGER WARNING

Saturday, May 31, 2014   2:00 a.m.

I woke up drenched in sweat, breathing heavily and my heart pounding as if I had been running a marathon. My jaw hurt, and I forced myself to stop clenching my teeth. My ears were ringing with screams, even though my small bedroom was dark and silent as the grave. I rolled onto my back, kicking off my sheets, and just lay there for a bit, letting the nightmare finish receding.

Another nightmare. Again. How many nightmares have I had? How many more will I have?

The ebbing fear was being replaced by rising anger. I pulled the spare pillow into my arms and squeezed it punishingly, my arms becoming boa constrictors, reveling in the pain of unaccustomed muscle strain. My throat was tightly holding back my voice, my limbs were consciously keeping me in my bed, but every other part of me wanted to stand up and scream into the blackness – she was raped! and Mom just watched!

But of course, I didn’t. It would wake my daughters. Thinking about them had a calming effect, and I could feel my anger relax into cynicism. Bad things happen to children all the time, and this news was forty years old. Can’t do anything about old news but set it aside and forget about it. Anger was a waste of time. Statute of limitations was long gone, and who would put a new widow in jail for something that happened so long ago? Certainly not Meg. If she were to press charges, she would have done it already. No, there was nothing that could be done. This was old news. Children were raped all the time, were probably raped today, even this very minute. There was absolutely nothing that I could do.

The pillow slid to the floor, and the tears came.

P.S.

In less than an hour, I cycled from fear to anger to helplessness to depression. Worse than that. I went from bone-crushing fear to violent anger to a puddle of helplessness to the bleakest depression. The difference? It was just as much in my body as it was in my mind and soul. Adrenaline, blood pressure, heart rate, muscle contraction, even sweat glands – dozens of physical responses to dozens of emotions were tumbling uncontrollably downhill together, and all I knew was that something wasn’t quite right with me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.