This is what I said out loud for the first time ever this past Friday. This is what I have always know but have had to believe was not real. This is what I told myself a thousand times was from a very terrible nightmare that I had a very long time ago.
This was not a nightmare (A dream arousing feelings of intense fear, horror, and distress.).
This is a real part of the story of my past.
On Friday I was talking to my doctor about the first time I became pregnant by my father. The first time I was 14 and it happened once again when I was 17. When I was 14 I had a miscarriage at home, in the middle of the night. Scared and confused I woke my mom up and she took me to the emergency room. I have talked about this before- with my doctor, with Stefano, with friends. But on Friday I told the story without a second of pause and not as though it were some far off dream but this memory that I have been needing to say for the past 16 years. I described in detail the night of the miscarriage. And about waking my mom up. And about going to the hospital. It was so familiar- thoughts I have had a thousand times but it was the first time I had ever used words to describe the pictures in my head.
There is a way that all of these memories are at first too large. Too large to grasp in one moment and I have found that what I do is take some little part of the memory (because the whole of it is much too big and much too painful) and repeat it over and over.
This is what I am repeating in my head since Friday morning: When my mother took me to the hospital I went into a regular emergency room exam room. Then I was taken into another room. I was WHEELED on a bed into a SURGICAL room. And what I keep going over and over, what I keep trying to understand how I could have the knowledge and memory of this feeling without the horrible explanation that I wish were not the truth is: When I was taken into the second room, the surgical room- it is hard to type now with all the water pouring from my face- I remember being lifted. I remember being lifted from the bed that I had been wheeled into the room on, onto another surface. Not a bed. A table. But the part I am obsessing over is the moment of the lifting. I remember being like a small (14 year old) mummy wrapped in white hospital sheets. And there were three other people there. Someone lifted me by the sheet up behind my head and somebody lifted the sheet at/around my feet. But what is troubling me the most (it is not even what HAPPENED NEXT- BECAUSE I CAN NOT EVEN GO THAT FAR IN MY HEAD YET)- what is troubling me is that there was another person. There was a third person. The third person was on the other side of the (my brain feels like it is being torn and knotted, torn and knotted) metal (torn and knotted, torn and knotted) table. And when the two (tearing and knotting) people put me down (tearing and knotting)- me at 14- my fourteen year old body- my 14 year old body that had just miscarried the child of my own father- when the two people put me down in the sheet on the table the third person was there to help push me back and center my body on the table.
And this is what is really nagging in my head: I remember EXACTLY the EXACT feel of that other person (the third person) I remember feeling that person's hands through the hospital sheets as they pushed me back and directed my body toward the center of the table.
That is what is trouble me. Not what came next, not the vacuuming, not the pain, not the sound, not even the feeling that my whole insides were going to be sucked right out from my body- that is not what is torturing me right now anyway- not YET now anyway.
What is torturing me right now is that feeling, that memory of those hands; pushing me at my hips back towards the center of the table.
If all of the rest was a dream that I have thought of hundreds of times how would I KNOW the feeling of being lifted up in that sheet and the feeling of HANDS PUSHING ME AT MY HIPS BACK TOWARDS THE CENTER OF THE TABLE.
THOSE HANDS PUSHING ME AT MY HIPS TOWARDS THE CENTER OF THAT TABLE.
7 comments:
I cannot even imagine how difficult that must have been to write. I hope that the more you can get out by writing, then the less it will stay inside to hurt you. Purrs to you.
I've read your entire blog and I think you are incredibly strong and beautiful. Stay strong.
No words really, other than
to applaud your bravery in
this therapeutic work you
are doing. Bravo!!
Hugs to you in your healing process. You are healing! :-)
I must have been the way you remember, there is usually three people. Even if the third one doesn't need to stay long.
You are in my prayers. What a powerful and poignant story. I am sorry.
I am happy (in a sick, making-me-feel-guilty-for-even-being-happy-to-read-this kind of way) that you wrote this because I thought I was the only one who remembers abuse that way. Thank you so much for writing your story for us Ungratefuls to read! You are so strong and beautiful and I hope and pray that that you will heal in every way imaginable because you deserve everything good in life!
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