"I will say 'I promise that my legs just need another season, and then I will be who you fell in love with again.' And then probably just 'I'm sorry that there was once a tremendous blue sky and then a decade of hard incessant rain.'"
~Hanif Abdurraquib
10-24-17
I have always been sick. For as long as my memory allows me to reach. So there was never a specific moment when it all came crumbling down. I was never 'normal.' Some of my earliest childhood memories are hallucinations. My closest friends were cars and refrigerators. My heart would break if one stopped working and had to be replaced. Like the fridge at my grandparents' house. It poured cold water and crushed the ice exactly how I liked it crushed. I sobbed and hugged it right before it was hauled away. I probably couldn't forget that fridge if I wanted to.
My hallucinations were mostly benign. Seeing my future self walking across the street, with friends, after school.
Some were bizarre. My mom leaving me in my hot carseat to run inside. The car left the driveway. I can remember the exact route. I can remember what the little girl on the big trampoline, in front of her house, was wearing. I can remember telling the car to go back. before we got caught. And we did. Right before my mother came back outside. In hindsight that may have been heatstroke.
Some were frightening. Like the big blue van that parked across the street, and the three armed, big scary men in the Bee suits that got out. I hid under the dining room table. They banged on the front door for a long time. I knew they were there to kill us. I was never sure why my mom didn't answer the door.
Sometimes they were downright terrifying. Laying in my bed at night. Watching the dark hand appear from behind my open door. The dark figure with the long claws and glowy eyes. Trying to scream. Or run. Or both, and being completely paralyzed.
By age five I had my first existential crisis. Playing with dolls I suddenly wondered if I was a doll in a house, being manipulated and controlled. I made furniture for the dolls, made sure they looked comfy, and let them be.
I was never. Let me repeat Never unguarded. Everything and everyone was a threat and I was afraid. Every man wanted to kidnap and or molest me. Never be left alone with a man! Thanks mom. Maybe that's why the first person to molest me was a teen girl. Whom, I might add, my mother caught in the act. But because she was friends with the girls' mom, and was being paid to watch her, she did nothing. The abuse continued.
My body was never mine. My hair was never cut the way I wanted. My hobbies more like a full time job than hobbies. My school work, homework, I should say, was drilled into me like a soldier. Name, Rank, Number. And by God my number better be 100% plus the extra credit, or I had failed.
The only escapes from the madness were swimming (I could only hear my own thoughts. Not her criticism.) and reading. Where I would be totally transported to an entirely new place. Heroes and Heroines were my friends. But none of them saved me from reality.
In fifth grade dad up and left. Poof! Gone! So I checked out too. Completely. From straight A's to D- in a matter of days. D's turned to F's. F's turned into missing entire semesters of school.
I tried running away at thirteen. Failed attempt. Went home. Tried again at fourteen. Stayed mostly homeless until Seventeen. From thirteen to seventeen I drank almost every day. And I took any drug handed to me. By my teens I was almost constantly in a manic state. Known as "Crackie" (you know her as Jacklyn Hyde) I was a party girl who took no shit from anyone. Ever. There was a lot of D.I.D. at that time. And a rape, or a few. I digress, see? Nothing about me was ever "stable" or "healthy" or "typical." If my feelings got hurt I stuffed it down. Cut myself. Got drunk and got over it. Now, looking back, I never stood a chance. It's sad.
This new stable feeling is strange, foreign. I, as an adult, now have to figure out who I am without the constant swinging Bi-Polar Disorder and D.I.D.
I fear... That's it. I fear. I never really did before. Now the whole world is new and it's a scary place!
I'm stable for the first time ever. But my brain will still be sick, forever. I take my brain medicine. I do the brain repairing work. But if I stop either of those things I'll go right back where I was before. Sicker, Lower, until I die early.
My body is mine, but I do not recognize it.
My hobbies are gone.
My past behind me.
My parents gone. (Alive, but gone to me)
My thoughts and actions, from here on out are my own.
I'm still too afraid to step out into the world.
So what do I do now?
Who am I?
What am I?
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