When I was growing up in the Midwest, my father worked for Elliott Construction Co. as the Superintendent of their construction gang. From the age of eight on we moved from town to town carrying everything we owned in a homemade carrier that fit snuggly to the roof of our Ford. We always lived in a rented house that was furnished. I received only one toy (which was given to both my sister and me) and one book in all those growing up childhood years. I never had a birthday party until my children gave me a surprise party for my 35th birthday. My mom always said that my birthday, December 11th was too close to Christmas and so they couldn’t afford to buy me anything. The majority of my clothes were hand-me-downs from cousins, neighbors or my older brothers. My mom made leftovers out of our leftovers; no second helpings were allowed and no in-between snacks. Looking like a victim from a concentration camp, (something I heard us described as from childhood friends after I grew up) I was always hungry. Knowing the punishment for stealing food, I frequently stole carrots from our garden, hiding them in my back seat jean pockets, and ran like hell for the nearest woods where I could climb trees, wade across creeks and nibble on my carrots, after which I sang Broadway tunes to the nearby cows in their pasture.
I never thought of us as poor; I just knew we didn’t have much. Now that so many years have passed I look around our large home, see all the possessions Tom and I own and shake my head. Neither one of us can bear to part with anything. As a result I still have my size five clothes (thinking someday I’ll be that thin again) as well as sexy negligees I know I’ll never wear again. We have over 8000 books. I can’t bear to part with any. You never know. I might become interested in Archaeology again; surely Stephen King never goes out of style. Tom says our kids are not going to thank us when it comes to the estate sale. He recommends we throw a match on it all as we drop our bodies.
This obsession with possessions (is that a poem) kept me awake last night from 1:30 am until, realizing I wasn’t going to fall back asleep, I dragged myself out of bed at 6:00 am. Why can I not bear to part with anything? Is it my childhood, so barren of belongings, that keeps me somewhat neurotic about hanging on to things, this being fearful of letting go of anything?
It’s not just possessions I can’t bear to let go of. I wish it were. I have all my memories categorized and filed away in my over-active brain. I remember my mother rocking me when I was very tiny; the day my dad came home from the war when I was only two years old, playing trucks in the dirt with my two beloved, older brothers when I was four, my first day at school, my first shot, my grandmother’s funeral when I was six and so on. I keep everything. Every pleasurable memory I ever had fits tightly into my filled to capacity brain. I take them all out periodically and relive them in my mind, remembering with an incredible intensity all parts to each one, as if I were in a time machine and had traveled back. I have a room in my mind that’s the memory room. I enter that room on a daily basis. That might be a good thing.
On the other hand I keep all the dark memories as well. I forgive easily but I never forget. I remember every hurt ever done to me, every wrong, every pain. They all wait their turn to file out of the memory room. That is not a good thing. Is that due to my childhood? Yes, but not the part where we never had any furniture and I almost never had new clothes (Sears and Roebuck catalogue bought me my Solemn Communion dress when I graduated from eighth grade). It was that part that started when I was thirteen and my father entered my bedroom in the middle of the night where I lay sleeping with my rosary under my pillow. That shadowy night filled with horror became the first thing I put into my “dark side” memory room. I didn’t open that memory for many decades. I shoved other dark and shadowy memories into that room as well, painful beatings at the hand of my father, my mother’s screams of “hit her again, hit her again,” running away after the last one almost killed me, my father finding out where I was and dragging me out to his car, slamming the door after he shoved me in, the almost savage terror at the thought of what he would do once he got me home, the shameful rapes in the coming years, humiliating taunts and intimidations from ex-husbands, drunken beatings at the hands of the second one, years of being single with no way to set sexual boundaries, being shoved against a patrol car while being handcuffed – the result of speeding down Anaheim Blvd while three police cars tried to catch me, the resultant night in jail as I lay on the floor sobbing with humiliation, five years with a sadistic ex-husband who kept me prisoner with his consistent rapes, his tight controls that made me grovel and beg. There were more. They overcrowded that room in my memory. What to do; what to do?
Half way through recovery I got it. It is easier to look ahead than to look behind. I wrote of my insight:
Letting Go
I thought perhaps, moments felt,
Would make my spirits lift,
That shackled chains no longer there,
Were such a precious gift,
But as I cowered in my womb,
Reeling from the blow,
I realized I had no choice,
I needed to let go,
And feel the force fully there,
Of grief and loss and pain,
For only then would I emerge,
Whole and strong again,
Driven to my knees,
By an endless well of tears,
All the pain of all my life,
Mingled with my fears,
The darkest place of darkest night,
Visited me there,
I felt as if no human being,
For me could have a care.
All survivors of childhood sexual abuse have that room in their mind. We all hold our body tight against the door we think is locked. We replace the inclination to open it with positive thoughts, happy memories and prayers. In the end, as Twelve Steppers so eloquently phrase it, we
LET GO AND LET GOD.
