chronic anachronism

i wrote this while working in a program for new writers. on wednesdays, two of the teachers would be contractually obligated to read our writing aloud to the group of 300+ teens. i had never read my work in public before. i had something like 6k poems and was panicking about it. none of them are good enough. sometimes the train is howling. it is hard, actually, sometimes, even as an adult.

and then i thought - what is one thing i wish i could tell all of them. each of these 300 kids. what did i need to hear, at 16?

i wanted to tell them about the day you wake up, and the sun feels warm finally. i wanted to tell them about carving a life out of soapstone, your hands turning bloody. i wanted to tell them that sometimes yes - it actually does feel easy. i wanted to tell them about weddings and cookie dough and long road trips. about albums of new music and old friends laughing and the sound of snow falling.

you will learn the pattern of the train. you will learn to close your eyes when you hear the engine rumbling. you will learn to let yourself have the grey days in their lily-soft numbness. sometimes it will feel like life is wet paint, and god has smeared your canvas across a sewer grate. sometimes it will be so boring it isn’t even pronounceable - the tenacious, soundless blankness. survival isn’t just ugly nights and wild mornings. it is also the steady, unimportant moments. it is just driving with your seatbelt on. it is calling a friend on the way home. it is burying your face into the fur of your dog.

when i had finished reading this poem aloud, the auditorium was silent for a solid minute. someone stood up to take a picture of where it had been projected onto a screen, and then three more people followed the action, and then - like a bad internet story, people remembered they were supposed to be clapping. kids came up to me after it - thank you for writing that. i think i hear a train coming.

i would write this differently now, i think, but it has been 7 years. i still live by the tracks. i also haven’t picked up a blade in over 10 years. the scars are still there, but these days i only pick up scissors to cut my hair. i know why you can’t tell your mom about it. i know how the numbness slips over everything, a restless horrible cotton. i know how when you dropped the dish, you weren’t crying about the broken glass. i know about feeling like all the roads have closed their exits, that you aren’t supposed to still-be-here - and yet.

i am still here, and still yours, and i haven’t forgotten. what i’m saying is if any hope is calling to you - i know it’s hard, but you have to listen. i’m saying keep driving, but slow down the car. sit down in the shower, i’m not judging you. we can stay in the dark with the good hot water and do nothing but stare. notice the stab wound. make it through another tuesday.

i know what it is like to miss yourself. do what you need to. come home to me. i am writing to you, my past self, from the future. i’ll be waiting for you.

Sexual abuse in childhood fucks you up in quite subtle ways that you sometimes don't realise are abnormal until much later.

When I was 7, my mother made me go to Irish Dancing classes. The teacher groped all the kids, including me (and parents weren't allowed to stay for the lessons). After the first lesson, I told my mother what had happened and said I didn't want to go back. She said I was going to keep going whether I liked it or not. I cried before every lesson and she told me to stop being a baby. After a few months, the teacher was arrested and news spread around town that he was a paedophile. My mother said the accusations were probably made up. The teacher went to jail.

When I was 10 my mother decided that there was something wrong the way I walked (there wasn't) and took me to a paediatric podiatrist. He made me strip down to just my underwear, which were loose-fitting boxer shorts (even if I was already wearing shorts with the same inseam as the boxers), and lie down on the bed. He would put his hands on my inner thighs to "massage" them, and he would lift my legs high in the air and look down my boxer shorts. I was made to go back every month, and I remember each time trying to find the perfect combination of clothes that would make him not make me strip, but it never worked. I didn't even bother telling my mother I didn't want to go, I knew I would get shouted at.

When I was 11, we had builders in the house doing construction work. They didn't like the fact that our bathroom had no lock, so they installed one without permission. I took a shower one day, and seeing this new lock on the door, I decided to use it. My mother always used to come into the bathroom when I was showering to rummage through the pile of towels for no apparent reason. This time she couldn't get in, she hammered on the door and shouted at me to let her in. I did so. She berated me heavily for using the lock, and made the builders remove it the next day.

When I was 13, there was one night when I couldn't sleep. After a few hours of failing to sleep, I heard my mother walk into the room (I was never allowed to close my bedroom door). I pretended to be asleep. She walked over to my bed, put her hand under the duvet, and assaulted me. I didn't move, I was just frozen the whole time.

My mother died when I was 17. Everyone in my family told me that I must be so sad because she was such a wonderful and kind person. I just nodded along and didn't say much. One time I tried to confide in a family member about what she had really been like, and I was told that I must be wrong because she was so wonderful and kind. I've never brought it up again.

I don't mention all these things for sympathy, but rather because they demonstrate a pattern of me consistently being put in situations that I *hated*, but that I had no choice other than to just go along with. Any time I expressed a desire that diverted from my mother's wishes, I was told "too bad". So I quickly learned to not have desires at all, just to let life happen to me. Even beyond the CSA, I was never asked "What would you like to do today?" or "Would you like to do X?" I was just told what I would be doing every day of my life, right up until my mother's death.

Even now, many many years later, I struggle to remember that I have an inner life as rich, complex and valuable as other people. I frequently forget that the things I do or say can influence others. If I tell someone something, even something like my name, and the next time I meet them they remember it, that feels shocking to me, because my mind expects my words to have no impact.

I struggle a lot to say no to things. If someone invites me to something, it feels to me as equivalent to my mother telling me I'm going to do it. I just go on autopilot, and sometimes it's only after the event that I realise I could've said no. I forget that I have control over my body and my actions, I forget that I can demand things that other people may not be happy about.

Recently I was talking about some activity I did, and I was asked if I had found it fun. I started to say "yes", but then realised that I hadn't actually found it fun, I actually didn't enjoy it at all. But it never occurred to me that I could have an opinion on the activities I did, that I could say "actually I don't like this" and my words would be respected. If my mother asked me if I was having fun, any answer other than "yes" would result in severe consequences.