There's a theory out there when it comes to children and illness. It goes something like: when they're young let them get sick and eat mud and scrape their knees. All that time they'll spend being sick as children, they'll get over and have fabulous immune systems as adults. Children have a way of bouncing back. Thanks mom, for making me hug the chicken pox-ed LilBro. It's probably the same for pain in general: broken bones heal so much quicker when we're kids. Broken feelings too. We go from "I hate you" in morning recess to "you're my best friend" by afternoon. So much harder to forgive as adults. Is it because the sins are so much greater? Or are we just that much more brittle?
I have come to three conclusions in the last 72 hours.
1) I have the physical memory of a sieve but the emotional memory of an elephant. I don't remember, really, having both my wrists snap on my virgin skateboard experience but I distinctly remember a June playground where my faith in humanity first shattered. So it comes as no surprise that, even after the passage of time and conversation, I still feel slightly hurt and vengeful whenever I'm around certain people (but have no compunction about skydiving). Could I forgive him? I think I have. But I don't think I can forget.
2) There are only four people who would really miss me if I got hit by a Mack truck tomorrow. I don't mean that I would have one full pew at my funeral - I think I'd have at least two. I mean that, after time passed, there would probably be only four people who think of me randomly (standing in a movie line or drinking a hot apple cider) and actually miss me. Weirdly enough, I don't feel sad about this. I feel, strangely content. Four whole people. That's more than a lot of people. I feel lucky.
3) Stats are far crueller than the month of April. We know that the chances of winning the lottery are 1 in 28 million but people buy tickets anyway. There are those other stats too; the worse ones. The 1 in 7 and, being female, the emotionally eviscerating 1 in 4. Why does it even surprise me any more to hear about someone else? Basic math skills tell me that either my circle of friends have been fortunate or (more likely) that we're better at keeping secrets than we let on. Here's my theory: it matters when stuff like this happens to you. If it happens as a kid, we're so used to the idea that the memory of it doesn't phase us anymore. I'm not saying it isn't hurtful or raw or heart-breaking - it's all of those things - but the pain isn't a sharp as if it happens to you as a grown woman. If it happens as a kid, you learn to function like a normal human being despite this secret you carry with you, like a disfiguring scar you’ve learned to over up with makeup. So it's not that.
What constricts the chest and blurs the vision is the knowledge that it's happening right now. Not theoretically - because, statistically, we know it happens once every 8.1 seconds. Seconds. It's the knowledge that, as I'm turning off my bedroom lamp, someone, in a place I've been, is crying because of the pain and humiliation of it all.
5 comments:
Perhaps I am a little obtuse but the third point seems lost on me. What are those stats after the lottery referring to?
In the US alone:
http://www.rainn.org/statistics?gclid=COK64bOK_pYCFRPyDAodNAXbYA
It's amazing what 20 minutes on a UN database can pull up.
I completely and utterly understand what you mean about the first point - how the memories linger. To this day I hate the game of hide and seek - there was one time where I truly did not want to be found. And I still remember one sunny summer day where the only thing that kept my mind intact was focusing on the watching the dust dancing in the sunlight - I still love seeing that because it strangely brings me peace.
As for the third point, I think it has more to do with the fact that we hide it so well because we fear that if others knew the truth, they may treat us as if we are contaminated - because secretly that is how we/I feel.
What I find the worse of it is shame and denial that surrounds it. I fear I will never find peace since my mother refuses to acknowledge the truth even though she knows. In many ways that is what breaks my heart the most that she ignored my pleas for help and worse, years later, told me to 'get over it already'. It is in those moments that I think that it must be true - it is me that is flawed, not them.
And it's those moments that leave me stunned and crippled. Thankfully, the moments are fewer and further between - but it's almost as if, then, when they do come, it's with a forceful vengeance. Doesn't it still amaze you the amount fully functioning women you know that have this secret with them always; I know I still say "no way" in my head every time. Every time. My game wasn't Hide and Seek - it was called Apocalypse and it wasn't until years later that I could appreciate the bitter irony.
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