Broken Doll

My cat is asleep in the laundry basket on my clean socks. He’s snoring fiercely, and my feelings are complicated.

It’s been a complicated month.

There’s been a lot of raw. After a really intense weekend with David I was left almost entirely adrift for the remainder of the month, and I came down hard. I haven’t been entirely in control of the mess that clouds up my brain. Like an electrical storm in my head.

Last night I read a story called Magdalene and old rawness comes crashing back. You think such things such memories such feelings would remain in the past where they can no longer touch you, but they don’t always. I don’t just remember I relive the pain that comes from putting the words around the things from the distant past that continue to damage the present. All the things I can’t do because of what was done to me. The shame that comes back against my fiercest will. The fear that comes and lives in me but has absolutely no object. What am I afraid of? I don’t know — I’m just afraid.

And his kindness, yes, his gentleness. And my relief, and my doubt. He says he can handle this and he’s willing. And I’m thinking do you really have any idea what you’re in for?

My brain has fogged and blurred the old events but not the feelings, I mostly can’t remember what exactly happened but I remember all the tellings about them. I have to tell you that… You may find me more timid than you’re used to… I can’t do that, I’m sorry…

So sorry. Always sorry. All things from my childhood pushing me, pulling me, shaping me into the thing that could fall into the black pit at 18 and take six months to figure out how the hell to get out. I can’t even describe the manipulation. “You’d do it if you loved me” but far, far more insidious.

Little girl, little girl, the things I can’t remember. He’d push just a little too far and I’d lose it, I’d fall out of time, and all I can remember is a curtain of fire between my eyes and my brain, the fear, and the crying. Then I’d look at a clock and the 20 minutes that ticked away in my head turns out to really be four hours. And all I know is what he told me: I cried and begged and whimpered like I was five years old.

It’s a big puzzle, and I can’t make out the picture. I can only see that there are pieces missing.

And all this strange, cold timing. All this comes to roost less than four weeks from this intensely beautiful weekend, which brought a flashback of a different sort.

When I was down under your hands, love, it felt like it did when we were still together. And goddess — I can’t say a word.