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Its Going to Be Okay
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Its Going to Be Okay Are you familiar with those shag type carpets? They are kind of soft, fluffy and welcoming to a certain point. It gave a comfortable illusion of something to cuddle when I didn't have a stuffed animal. At that age I always slept with a stuffed crocodile that was named Mr. Croc. The only time I didn't is if I stayed over at a friends house. I made that mistake once and got called baby and other variants of it for the trouble I went through to be able to sleep more decently. It was October and it was 1990 and it was a few weeks short of my 10th birthday. I was going to be staying the night at the house of a friend. Two friends actually as they were brothers. One was the same age as myself, and his brother was 4 or so years older than us. For some reason this older liked having me around so that made me feel like one of the "cool " which is something I would come to struggle with more down the line. I was always a bit awkward and off center. A bit slower in some ways. I had big ears, longer rat tail/mullet, I couldn't tie my shoes until well after other people, I picked my nose, I swore a TON, and I had silly clown wall paper that I loved and felt bad for because everybody hated it and made fun of it. I still remember the clowns now, and the ring tricks they were doing on those walls... So for an older, cooler to kind of take me under his wing made me feel pretty good and acceptable. I had stayed on the floor of these brothers before numerous times. It was always really cold and drafty, but there was this patch of shag carpeting that did not cover the whole floor for whatever reason, so at least I was not laying on the even colder, even harder wood floor. It was like any other time, we stayed up playing video games, playing with toys (because that is what you did when we were young) such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers, and our wrestling action figures. The room was set up where when you came in the door, the older brothers bed was along the wall directly to the right. You would be looking straight across and up the bed of the younger brother. It was a rather large room actually and even with the two beds and brothers there was still ample space, though a lot of it was covered over with clothing, socks, and a beanbag chair which inevitably, would get involved in a pillow fight or 'rasslin match......that is until somebody got smashed in the face with the "heavy" pillow....it was usually me or the younger brother and we would break down in to tears. It happens. I am sure it happened that night. It was all in good fun and deep down inside, through the pain we knew that. Or thought we did anyway. I thought I did. The night wore down until the eyelids grew heavy. I cleared away my usual space on the shag carpet, pushing aside socks, pants, tee shirts with crazy patterns from the late 80's. It was a colorful pile that is for certain. I then put my sleeping bag on the carpet, put my pillow down, and after all of us agreeing to get up for Saturday morning cartoons, we turned off the light. Darkness. I was afraid of the dark still at this age. And I didn't have Mr. Croc. This is why I didn't sleep too good at other people's<b> houses </font></b>most of the time. Another thing that happens to me, even back then, is that I will have a wave of heat just wash over my body. Now that I am older I would just sleep naked, or near naked to mitigate this but even then, I will poke my feet, or entire leg, or entire half of torso, or everything except my genitals because I will get so warm that I am pretty sure I am pregnant, or have some oven DNA in me. Back then I did not sleep naked. I had pajamas. Full pants and shirt, then I was in this burrito of a sleeping bag. It would get excruciatingly hot, so I would bring my arms outside of the sleeping bag, and would usually unzip it at least half way, sometimes more. Darkness Darkness had come to a brain shut behind heavy lids of eyes. That's when the fire started. Not an actual fire, like, the house was burning down. No, that would have been worlds better but I would have to wait another 9 or so years for that catastrophe. This is the fire that comes with being stabbed or cut. I would become no stranger to the sensation of my flesh being opened by blades both surgically sharp or rusted dull and I will tell you that none of those wounds, no matter how scary, how deep, burned or hurt like this wound did. Have you ever been woken up and you are unsure of what is happening to you? It takes a minute or five for the alarms in your head to shut off, for you to pull focus and realize that you are not dead? It was a similar effect as this pain woke me up. Pure uncertainty and confusion. I had never before felt precisely, or so intimately how a shag rug carpet feels against your cheek. Wait...why was my face in the golden brown shag carpet and not on my pillow? I was almost ten years old and already felt the weight of the world pressing down on me. Wait...that is a body and it is crushing me against the floor, putting pressure so that my chest cannot expand to take in oxygen. Suddenly the shag carpet is not so soft and I feel so thoroughly the hard wood that lies just beneath it.....funny how this would become a metaphor I would see over and over in my life....the appearance of something soft and comforting but really it is just cold and hard and offers no solace or forgiveness. My brain finally was pinpointing, as much as it could when you are being stabbed, laying on a hard floor. It is in this moment I felt wet in two places. The first was in my eyes as tears welled up. I do not know if these tears would ever reach the ground because a hand quickly came to my face, mainly my mouth to silence the gasps. I heard a phrase that would also become a mantra spoken to me later on by many different voices: "It's okay." The second point of moistness can be summed up by me saying I understand to a degree how a girl feels the first time she has her period and is in NO WAY prepared for it. Blood from a place you didn't know it would come from. Except I do not have a vagina and I was not experiencing my first period. My anus was being torn by the erect penis of a much larger boy. I felt the blood trickle down. This is the first time I notice the cold air hitting me. My sleeping bag was open, I was completely exposed. The sensation of warm meets cold is something later in life I would find fascinating and it is only as I write this that I might have an idea why. The feeling of warm blood draining over naked skin which was being washed in the crisp, dark air of this old bedroom. There was nowhere to run. There was nowhere to hide. There was only the pain of being stabbed. and then stabbed again. and again. The stabbings finished after a steady progression of intensity, the weight of the world hitting down harder, the breath being restricted my a stronger hand. I could feel the muscles of the older brother convulse and tense up. Then I felt even more warmth and wetness coming from my wound as it sought to close around the knife-like instrument that created it. I felt his breath come over my face and eventually the hand moved from my mouth. Shock had come over me and I began to shut down. This is something that will still happen to me sometimes when I am doing really bad. It is a response to extreme trauma. The last thing I remember is hearing the words again "It's okay. It's going to be okay" I would have a hard time sleeping for a long time. I could not process what had happened. I don't remember watching Saturday morning cartoons the next morning. I don't know if anybody noticed if I was off, if they did I didn't say anything beyond just saying I was sick. I didn't tell ANYBODY about what happened until I was about 23 years old. In those years so much more happened, but the waves that cast out in my person still make my waters choppy. I don't know if any of those tears I cried that not hit the floor. I damn sure hope though that if any of them got on the skin of the older brother, I hope they burned him, and I hope they haunt them now. A type of stigmata. I have never forgotten, I never will. It IS my experience though that people who commit heinous things or cause immense pain or damage, the do forget, at least sometimes. They often go on to live fairly "normally." I will see this with other people from my life who committed horrible atrocities against me, cross my path and act like nothing ever happened. Just like victims, they compartmentalize the violence. They lock it away. History is written by the victors and violence too often does not haunt the perpetrator as it does the recipient. We get the ghosts and we get the voices of support and do you know what they say? "It's going to be okay......" |
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