Once you are out you cannot wait to go back in. Exhausted, yet you cannot stop being hyper vigilant. Distorted reactions, overreacting in some while minimizing others. "Can it just stop." You chase calming activities, you need some quiet in your body, in your mind. Desperately wishing for a stop button. Needless to mention the need for you to be in control. Everything has to be done perfectly, at the right time. Well thought out and replayed repeatedly in your head complete with the likely responses from others. In which case every response scenario has a planned reaction and response. You are on toes, your brain ever ready and as such your speech has transformed into a rap. You are the only one in on the secret. It ideally is slow.
"Do you need something?" You constantly inquire of acquaintances that is if you are not lost in your thoughts. You look to lend a hand in a bid to blend in. Standing out is not an option to you. You are averse to it. You go an extra mile to look and hopefully sound like the girl next door. "There is nothing special here, move along people." Intimacy is a luxury you cannot afford. Vulnerable is the last thing you want to be. Being touched is petrifying. You also are not looking to impose on anyone or let anyone in. You'd rather leave on a parallel universe. The calm, peaceful kind.
Your sought actualization; invisibility goes way back. Home was well a war zone. The physically strong got their way through battery and intimidation. Shouting was the mode of communication.
You always ended up being the casualty of war. Being pushed around, beaten or being dragged into serving as a mediator which left you emotionally drained. If that was not enough you felt trapped, yes emotionally trapped. They played with your sensitivity and empathy. You therefore thought that every intimate relationship would be an emotional trap; no wiggle room. It would feel awful, the same kind of feeling you felt growing up.
"Get off that chair, wash my clothes, go get me food, cook for me, don't touch that, get out of the living room I'd like to watch a movie, yes in the middle of what you are watching. Need I say that my wants and needs trump yours?" My tyrant brother barked. The house always seemed smaller whenever he was around. I was terrified of and disliked him all in the same breath. Pleas to my mother did not give me immunity. She somehow enjoyed my desperate need for her to save me. She however, played her pity me card, my boys are out of control. There I was, literally serving time in the family. Crimes; being sensitive and being a girl!
The screams and yelling. The beat you up in a pulp threats. I am short of walking on my tippy toes so that I am not in anyone's way. I withdraw. If I am invisible then they will forget I exist. "Well, not so fast." My tyrants increased to two, both being my brothers while my mother worked on me emotionally so that I don't even think of leaving. Playing the I am a mother of warring children card. What am I supposed to do, I am also a victim.
I take up studying and keep my wants and needs to myself not to impose on her, the victim. I am of the opinion that studying and withdrawing will keep my brothers at bay while not imposing will save me from my mother's emotional shackles. How she twisted everything and became the victim left me dumbfounded. "Who is the child here and who is the parent?" I thought. Unfortunately that meant that I was on my own.
Busying myself with books doesn't keep my youngest tyrant away from looking for a confrontation, a fight. He turns to me "I need to teach you a lesson." Taken aback, "What?" "What lesson?" He goes on and on like a crazy person that he needs to teach me a lesson. I continue with studying and then he strikes me across the face with his bare hand.
There is ringing in my ear, I cannot hear. Still shocked, pain courses through my body. He pulls me off the chair and into the bedroom and slaps me around some more then he leaves me in a pile and takes off. I look at him, he looks justified in what he is doing, entitled even. The neighbors look the other way,all this is going on in plain daylight, the afternoon.
I think to go to the hospital and I need money. I go tell on him to mother dearest and ask to be taken to the hospital. I am given a card and told to sort myself out. "What do you want me to do? He is my son." I was in such a bad state; crying my eyeballs out. "What if I go to the police then, I ask her?" She just says that he is also her son. She makes herself the victim of my ordeal. Pity me; I am only the mother of warring children. I decide that the only way out of this is to run, leave. Just go and never come back.
I get treated but I unfortunately have to return to the same home. Days go by and then I am taught yet another lesson. This time he gets a cane from the tree outside and closes the bedroom door. His hands well, leave marks. He canes me senseless. I think I am no physical match for him. I cannot fight him even in my good day. I take the beating and think of the day I get to leave them. Go far away. This time I do not tell on him. I am tired of listening to my mother going through her pity me theatrics. I take up studying a notch higher and resolve on acing my tests and joining a medicine program. It is the only program I knew to keep students away from home the longest.
I was helpless, stuck in a house of savages where parents don't protect their children. They let them run wild, yeah a jungle for a house. They further keep them from leaving by guilt tripping them and instilling fear of other people. I fell further and further into my world. My need to be invisible grows bigger. I just want to be left alone. I don't want to talk.
No comments:
Post a Comment