TRIGGER WARNING

Looking back on that Sunday, June 1st, I don’t remember much, but I know the overwhelm took me. I didn’t give in to it – I know what giving in feels like. Giving in is when you come home with drive-thru nachos and microwavable kettle corn, turn on Netflix and binge watch for eight hours. Giving in is my mother with red wine swirling in her morning orange juice. Giving in to overwhelm is a conscious decision to put the world on hold and self-medicate for awhile. It’s a miracle that I prefer salt over alcohol in my worst state. I tell myself that whenever I take my blood pressure medicine. It could be worse.

No, on that particular Sunday the overwhelm took me, without my permission.

My girls say it seemed as though I had the flu pretty bad that day. My walk was unsteady whenever I got up for the bathroom or water, I had no appetite, I was alternating freezing cold and sweating hot, and I mostly slept.

I remember there were nightmares. I think I cycled through just about every recurring nightmare I’ve ever had and then some. My first husband’s fingers around my throat. My sisters screaming. Running and running but not able to get anywhere.

My waking moments were all memories:

Me, falling out of bed and getting my lip split on the corner of the nightstand. Getting stitches. I was 3.

Mom, sitting dejectedly on the end of the couch, cigarette smoke making rings around her tousled hair, her make-up-smeared eyes red and bleary. I had stayed home from school to make sure she didn’t carry out her threat to kill herself that day. I was 16.

Walking stiffly for a drink at the water fountain in the police station, my uniformed escort asking me why I was so formal, and me telling him I was not going to cry. I was 25.

Being slammed into the bathroom wall of the Pink Garter, a stranger’s lips forcibly taking mine. She had followed me in and had me pinned, her whole big, muscular body crushing me against the wall. I struggled and fought and was thankfully released to run when someone else walked in. I never thought a woman would ever do such a thing. I was 18.

Mom, kicking me as I lay curled up in a sleeping bag on the floor in my room. Kicking me again and again, screaming horrible insults at me. I was 15.

A door being slammed in my face. More stitches. I was 7.

Carrying a ringed pillow from class to class in junior high, telling everyone I had chipped my tailbone from a fall off my roller skates. I was 13.

Daddy #3’s finger in my face, threatening me literally into a corner, and Mom behind him telling me to just say yes, daddy. I was 17.

The videographer who offered to drive me home from an evening SCA event, pulling into the back of a grocery store and telling me he was in pain and only I could help him. He unzipped his pants. I convinced him that I was on my period. He said that’s okay, I could still help him and I wasn’t going home until I did. It was him or face a metal cooking spoon for missing my curfew. I was 14.

Walking six miles in the middle of the night, jumping into shadows any time a car came by, not knowing if my parents were after me. I carried a small bag of clothes and was headed to an older friend’s apartment. I didn’t know where I would go from there, but I was never, ever, going home again, not until I had made enough money to rescue my sisters. I was 17.

My sisters and I, all neatly dressed and sitting on the couch facing the CPS investigator. We told her we were fine, happy, that there was nothing wrong. No way were we going to let this stranger separate us girls from each other. I was 15.

Being slammed into the coat closet door and then rocked onto the living room carpet. Being straddled with his hips on my thighs and his knees on my hands and his hands around my throat, squeezing and squeezing until the black cloud came and I knew I was dying, knew I would never see my little girl or my sisters again. I was 25.

That’s but a handful of the memories I cycled through that day. And now I had four new memories:

1. Me in the pool, looking up at my naked, nine-year-old sister on the diving board.

2. Me, ten, running from the pool, tripping, hearing men’s laughter.

3. Mom, sitting in a pale pink wrap in the patio set by the pool, smoking and saying “just say yes daddy” over and over.

4. A man standing by the pool, between the diving board and the patio set. But that’s for tomorrow’s post.

One night, when I was 15, I knelt before my bedroom window, looking up at a full moon. The house was quiet. My youngest sister, Beth, silent in the next room. They had beat her hard that night. Her screams and sobs still rang in my ears today, but all was quiet and the house was dark at that moment in my memory. I remember kneeling there with my hands folded in prayer, appealing to the distant, peaceful orb that hung in the night as if that were God’s face, blurred by my powerless tears, and not the man in the moon.

Please, God. Please don’t let me wake up tomorrow. Please, take me to heaven tonight. Please. I can’t do this anymore.

That’s how I felt on June 1st, 2014. But in my despair that overwhelming Sunday, I knew then what I didn’t know for sure at 15. The morning was coming, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was going to wake up.