Holy Shell Shock, Batman
I try not to dwell much on the past. I try not to hold onto hate. There a few things I can't let go of - resentments I nurture in the black little parts of my heart, but for the most part I consider myself a survivor, stronger for what I've lived through. An optimist, ever marching towards a better future.
Sometimes, though, there are rabbit holes. You have to watch out for those. They can trip you up, take you places you didn't intend to go.
This morning I was thinking how ironic it is that my brother's kids are so well-behaved, considering the household they're growing up in. Sure, the older one is on meds and looks in every photograph like he's smiling to hide how terrified he is, and the younger one draws pictures of death and destruction and sings to himself with the glee of a psychopath, but they are remarkably, for boys, WELL-BEHAVED. Meanwhile, *my* son is a holy terror at school. Which only supports the theory I developed when I was a kid, studying other, normal families: trauma builds character, and privileged people are shallow. (Generally. Always, generally.)
Anyway, I was thinking this on the drive to school, which led to thoughts about the Kinglet and his daily behavior problems and the challenges of parent-teacher communication, which led to a mental comparison of the Kinglet's current teacher (the one we like) versus his original one (the heartless hag), which brought up memories of that time I got switched from one classroom to another at the beginning of second grade for no reason they ever told me, which led to a rundown of all my teachers, ever, and the realization that the only ones whose names I can't remember were the ones from fifth and sixth grade. And when wondering why this should be, that I should forget just those people, I found myself facing a parade of memories reminding me that grades 5, 6, and 7 were the most horrific years of my life. It started out as just a mental list, me explaining it to myself (as I am wont to do), and then I started to react to it as if I really was a third party, hearing it for the first time, and jesus.
I try not to dwell too much on what I came through. I keep telling my dear friend, who nurtures every bad memory of her childhood like an ember for a firestorm she plans to let loose someday, chica, you can't live like that. You have to let it go. I try to celebrate the fact that I came through it, and I like who I am now, in spite of all of that. Or maybe because of it.
But by accident I fell down the rabbit hole today, and just like that it took me out of my routine and brought me back to being ten, eleven, twelve years old, when life was so bad I knew what suicide meant and it sounded good.
Grief is like that.
But. Thank goddess, I'm a grownup now. I can write about it, brush myself off, and move on.
Sometimes, though, there are rabbit holes. You have to watch out for those. They can trip you up, take you places you didn't intend to go.
This morning I was thinking how ironic it is that my brother's kids are so well-behaved, considering the household they're growing up in. Sure, the older one is on meds and looks in every photograph like he's smiling to hide how terrified he is, and the younger one draws pictures of death and destruction and sings to himself with the glee of a psychopath, but they are remarkably, for boys, WELL-BEHAVED. Meanwhile, *my* son is a holy terror at school. Which only supports the theory I developed when I was a kid, studying other, normal families: trauma builds character, and privileged people are shallow. (Generally. Always, generally.)
Anyway, I was thinking this on the drive to school, which led to thoughts about the Kinglet and his daily behavior problems and the challenges of parent-teacher communication, which led to a mental comparison of the Kinglet's current teacher (the one we like) versus his original one (the heartless hag), which brought up memories of that time I got switched from one classroom to another at the beginning of second grade for no reason they ever told me, which led to a rundown of all my teachers, ever, and the realization that the only ones whose names I can't remember were the ones from fifth and sixth grade. And when wondering why this should be, that I should forget just those people, I found myself facing a parade of memories reminding me that grades 5, 6, and 7 were the most horrific years of my life. It started out as just a mental list, me explaining it to myself (as I am wont to do), and then I started to react to it as if I really was a third party, hearing it for the first time, and jesus.
I try not to dwell too much on what I came through. I keep telling my dear friend, who nurtures every bad memory of her childhood like an ember for a firestorm she plans to let loose someday, chica, you can't live like that. You have to let it go. I try to celebrate the fact that I came through it, and I like who I am now, in spite of all of that. Or maybe because of it.
But by accident I fell down the rabbit hole today, and just like that it took me out of my routine and brought me back to being ten, eleven, twelve years old, when life was so bad I knew what suicide meant and it sounded good.
Grief is like that.
But. Thank goddess, I'm a grownup now. I can write about it, brush myself off, and move on.