Tell me your relation to pain, and I will tell you who you are!

Ernst Jünger, On Pain

Content note: discussion of neglect and abuse

Sit with me in the hollow of meaning. Don’t look at me. Eyes forward. I’m sorry. Does it hurt when I ask for freedom? Why do you want beauty from my words? Why do you want suffering to become poetry? Isn’t it enough? Must I rebuild what was unmade? Are you listening to what I’m saying or do you just like how it sounds? All language is flesh torn away from the body. 

Heaven help me, I don’t know which of my memories are the minotaur. No one is impressed by your rationality. When you hurt is it for a reason? Would it matter if it was? My mom used to say I’m aloof. I’m not. Am I? Please, tell me what’s going on. A therapist asked me to share a time my parents showed care. I couldn’t think of any. They’d say that’s not true. Years ago I would have just assumed I’m wrong. Now I know the minotaur is there. And I know you did nothing to stop it.

I have few memories of my childhood. The ones that appear are by myself or with others who did show care. I miss you, Nana. I miss you, Pappy. Sometimes I wish I knew what happened. I know I don’t want to remember. Why was that room full of broken glass? Why couldn’t I get to the doorway? Why did I not have a bed? You had an extra bedroom. Why wasn’t I allowed to sleep? Why do you think I deserved it? Why won’t you answer me? Answer me.

I used to draw on my walls. I wrote “Braille Teeth Bite” above the entrance. I wrote a poem that spiraled across the wood of the closet door. I drew spirits behind the cabinet. I kept my meaning hidden. You didn’t ask anyway. Those signifiers don’t exist anymore. Does a sign remain significant when it only appears in memory? It was significant to me. I tried my best. God was bored one evening I guess. 

I keep saying things I didn’t realize were traumas. My baby was concerned for me when we lost AC for half a day in the summer and I was home alone. I reassured her, we used to go without AC all the time. This is the norm many places, but not back home. You learn to adapt to a hundred degree house, sweating in the marshy air. If we had ice, which was rare, I could always chew it or rub it on my skin. If we had electricity, I could lay naked on the bed and point a fan at me. Most of the time it’s just endurance. You get used to it. 

Trauma forces adaptation. You learn to adapt to not knowing where food is coming from, to scrounging for ingredients that can be smashed together for calories. You learn to subsist on instant mashed potatoes and nothing else. You learn to adapt to the dark, to empty rooms, to rooms full of shit and piss. You learn to adapt to the screaming. You learn to adapt to sores and blisters and bruises and dirt and no running water. You learn to adapt to dangerous men. You learn to adapt to take the brunt of it. You learn to adapt because you have to. 

You learn to hike piles of trash to get to bed. You learn to crawl on the floor when you hurt so bad you can’t stand up. You learn to lift yourself up three feet off the ground in excruciating pain. You learn your body isn’t yours and you’re selfish for believing you owned it. You learn to fight back. You learn to surrender. You learn food is a privilege. You learn that sleep is a privilege. You learn that a shower is a privilege. You learn that clean clothes and a clean body and a clean home is a privilege. You learn that love is a privilege. You learn that it’s a privilege they didn’t kill you. You learn that no one’s coming
to help. You learn that you’re aloof.

Then, decades later, you learn it doesn’t have to be this way. You learn that love is a gift. You learn that your body is yours and it’s holy  and worthwhile. You learn that starving isn’t normal. You learn that dehydration isn’t normal. You learn that overheating isn’t normal. You learn that filth isn’t normal. You learn that being deprived of sleep isn’t normal. You learn that being assaulted isn’t normal. You learn that no one is supposed to touch you without your consent. You learn that showing care isn’t something that only happens to other people. You learn that everything that happened wasn’t your fault. You learn it’s okay to cry. 

And then you do. And you learn that none of it had to happen. That they had a choice and they chose to hurt you. And that it will never happen
again. 

If everyone could feel everyone else’s pain, who would torture?

Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower

Image: Untitled by Taro Yamamoto (1974)