REMEMBERING

The time between the ages of 18 to 24 were my crisis years.  I was suffering from severe depression and post traumatic stress disorder, but my family was telling me there was no reason for my suffering and it was my own fault.  I was in conflict.  I wanted to trust myself but had been taught not to.  I had also been taught to daven.  I davened for truth.  I begged Hashem not to let me remember something that wasn't true.  I never wanted to remember these terrible things about my father, who I love and who I needed.  I was teaching pre-school around the time that I wrote the following poems.  I was a lead teacher in the afternoon pre-1-A.  I told my director at the time that I was leaving because I needed to be hospitalized.  She was shocked.  She asked me to reconsider.  She told me I seemed so together and so balanced.  I explained to her that I am a product of a family that specializes at seeming together and balanced.  I could have kept this a secret and lived a seemingly normal balanced life.  But I took a different path.  A more difficult path.  A path of taking responsibility for my feelings and memories.  A path I wish my father would have taken.

Exposing the Secret

Our house is so clean

its rooms echo purity

wandering through

open doors and

empty spaces

I wonder how my hands became stained

amidst such perfect cleanliness

the attic and basement leave no clue

the closets speak generations of praise

in confused disbelief

I begin the insane task of

digging under the basement floor

insane

muscles bruised and aching

years of frustration

and then

buried under layers

of pure innocent earth

I come upon a well of filth

that perfectly matches the stains

on my soul

Nothing to Hold On To

I thought I knew some things about myself

then the quake began

a faint tremor that rose to

this mind-cracking crescendo

shaking me to the core

reality split me down the middle

tearing the facts from my white-knuckled grasp

hurling me into a black abyss of

nothing to hold on to

here I crouch in my corner of cold illusion

fatigued fingers stirring painful circles

in a sizzling boiling cauldron

of tears

Warning:  The following can be triggering to survivors of child sexual abuse!

  I am very little. I'm lying in bed in a room that I share with my sisters in our little white house on Paul street. I am experiencing familiar feelings of terror and shame.  I am trapped.

My father comes into my room and lies on my bed.  I stare at the red and white checkered curtains.  A familiar numbness creeps into my mind.  The numbness will dull the terror.  It will dull the pain and shame just enough so that I can get through this one more time.

I am not real. I can't be.

He rolls partially on top of me. I can't breathe. I can't move. Something is poking at me. I can't see what it is.  It's cutting me. He's too heavy. I am going to die. I want to die. I have to die.  Tatty, no! Don't hurt me!

Something is in my mouth cutting off my breath. Tatty, No! I'm going to die.

Tatty, I need you!