That’s from a college biology class. Enzymes lower the energy necessary for activation of cell processes. There is nothing to lower the energy of activation necessary for an entire body to act, to create, to do something besides sit.
Do I bat away the unwanted memories and feelings? All from childhood and all caused by parents who hated me. Is there ever a time when the memories stay quiet?
I have no happy memories of childhood. Just times with my mother snarled at me, times when I was expected to know what adults know without the benefit of anyone telling me what it was I was supposed to know.
The memories have been coming in waves the last couple days. All unbidden. All unwanted as I was unwanted.
The memory of begging my mother to come to my college graduation. She didn’t allow me to take science or math classes in high school. I graduated from college with a degree in biology and another degree in journalism. She refused to come to my graduation.
I want to make the memories go away and never come back. While the abuse was happening, I stuffed the trauma into brain rooms I kept closed. Once I no longer lived with my hateful parents, the memories insisted on being heard and seen. Removing my toxic, drunken, violent, narcissistic mother from my life at age 37 didn’t make the memories stay quiet.
The horror of complex PTSD is the memories that refuse to stay quiet.
Let it go they said. How do I do that, I asked. There was no answer. Forgive they said. I don’t know how I said. There was no answer, no advice, no roadmap to inner peace.
I wrote out my anger and frustration. I painted out my childhood misery. I quilted out what I felt. The pain never leaves.
I can’t remember how many times I’ve been suicidal. Five or six is my best estimate. Times when I stood on the edge of death and turned around to walk away.
Will I always be able to walk away?
Or will my life end with a bullet?
I’m never going to have real parents who love me. Would it have spoiled some vast, eternal plan if I were to have had real parents? When I die, will God explain to me why I was singled out for such horrendous treatment?
I never deserved the abuse, but I got abused anyway. What purpose did that serve?
Make friends. How? What do I do with a friend? I grew up hiding in my room so I wouldn’t have to hear the hate and flinch from the blows. Blows that eventually caused the retina in my right eye to detach in places. Places where my retina was glued back down via laser.
Memory: I got dragged into church every Sunday. My mother once told me I didn’t have to sit with the family. But where else could I sit? Every seat was filled with loneliness and ever present sadness.
I tried other churches, but I never fit in.
When I started taking adult education classes at a temple, I suddenly fit in. I met other women who had demanding, professional careers. They could talk about something other than toilet training.
I learned to survive. I didn’t learn to live.
I’m always going to struggle to figure out what to do in social situations. At least I taught myself which fork to use. Hint: Start from the outside of the knives and forks and work your way into the mass of cutlery implement by implement until you reach your plate.
Every year, I got the flu the second day of Christmas vacation. Being sick meant I could mentally be somewhere else in my brain on Christmas. I remember being dragged to Christmas dinner clad in pajamas because I had the flu. Being sick never got me out of mandatory misery.
Each year, I get older. Each year, I read more about how social interactions (what the hell are those?) are necessary to stave off depression and dementia. I am terrified that I will be alone, unable to drive, and be miserable. More miserable than I am now.
I used to have people I chatted with after services. But then there was a pandemic. And then there was a rabbi I wasn’t fond of. I will force myself to go to a “women’s night out” at Chabad. I’m not sure why I’m reluctant to go.
I love taking classes at the local university. I don’t interact with my classmates. I am older than their grandmothers. What would we talk about?
One day, classmates talked about video games they played as they grew up. I couldn’t stand it. I told them that I grew up watching dead bodies being dragged out of Vietnam on the evening news. I didn’t tell them the first question when meeting a man was to ask what his draft number was. That number told me how involved I should get. No sense loving someone who would be shipped off to die.
I want to go to Hanukkah on the plaza. A giant menorah, city Christmas tree, lighted Christmas decorations. I want to stay home. I want to go and take photographs. I want to photograph the lights at night. I still want to stay home.
If I stay home, I won’t be disappointed. If I go, I will still be lonely and alone.
Something inside of me never learned how to navigate life.
Deb's Art 