I saw my therapist last night.
The session started inoccuously enough. He asked about my day, I mentioned that it was long. He asked about where I worked and how I got around. I told him how fed up I was of the métro. And the negativity of the métro. He asked for an example. And I told him about the incident of last week.
And then he asked: Was this the first time that you've ever been a victim of violence?
And lo', the floodgates opened and thus began a session that left me trembling throughout. Was I cold? Was it emotions? I know not.
The session was hard for me because my memories of that part of my life have been shut down. I cannot see them clearly anymore. They are behind a fog of inconsistency so thick that everytime I try to look there, it's like trying to find my way through the myriad of webs in a spider's lair.
So I couldn't tell him how old I was when my younger brother, four years my junior, started hitting me.
I do not have "clear" memories of more than one or two specific incidents. I could not tell him how many times exactly that I had been backed into a corner, crouching, with my knees protecting my middle and my arms protecting my head.
The incidents I do remember, I don't remember when they happened exactly. I don't remember how old I was when my brother and I were home alone one evening and he turned on me because I wouldn't make him dinner. I remember him leaping towards me and of me running away upstairs. I remember the house was relatively dark. I remember snatching at phones, dialing or partly dialing and then dropping the receiver because he was too close. I can't remember if I spoke to anyone. I don't remember who I tried to call at all.
I don't remember when he picked up the baseball bat.
But I do remember that his eyes told me that he wasn't even fucking kidding. That if he could, he would kill me.
I remember running back downstairs to my room (which was in the basement). I remember running in and locking the door. I remember seeing that the dog had already found refuge there.
When my brother started using the baseball bat on the door, I realised that I had trapped myself. In my room. In my sanctuary. A place that was no longer safe.
The only way out was the window. In our house, the basement window was set high and was small and narrow. I got up on my bed and unlatched it. I remember the dog at this point. Terrified. It was jumping on the bed up against the wall the window was in, scratching the posters above the headboard, desperate to be let out of the room too.
I failed that dog. I left him to his fate. Shoeless, I scrambled out the window, nearly petrified that I would get stuck and that my brother would catch me. The bat continued to hit my bedroom door. Over and over.
Over and over. I could hear the wood splintering.
When I finally squiggled through. I remember wondering where in the hell I would go. I remember how dark it was. I remember that the streets were shiny. As though it had just rained but in that I have no idea if I'm recalling things correctly, or merely adding context to the memory.
I do remember running across the street. I remember huddling in a neighbor's yard. Hidden. I remember how close my head was to her house based on my peripheral vision... as I carefully watched what happened over at my house.
I seem to remember my boyfriend running up the street and across it to the house. I don't remember calling him.
I remember the neighbor found me in her yard and asked me in. She did this kindly. As though I was a feral cat.
I remember seeing my door for the first time after. It was straight out of The Shining. It was hanging off it's hinges with a gaping hole in the middle. I remember thinking that that could have been my body.
What happened then? I was asked.
What was the aftermath of this evening of terror? As far as I know, nothing became of this evening. Nothing changed. It was as though this evening didn't even exist in terms of how it changed my life as a teenager.
I still went to school.
And I still came home with the same dread. Every day. That I remember vividly. The dread of not knowing how the evening would end. If I would be a target for my little brother. An entertainment for him if he was bored and at loose ends.
What did your parents do?
Again.... as far as I can remember. They did nothing. At least... nothing that did any good. I remember family therapy sessions that were built around my younger brother's mental stability but I felt like I was there as a witness, rather than as someone who was in these therapy sessions to be helped. I cannot remember if these sessions were before or after the baseball bat incident.
I don't even remember if my Dad was still living with us at this time or not either. I couldn't [or wouldn't] talk about it to anybody. I'm not sure who forbade the subject... perhaps it was myself because I implicitly understood that my parents were powerless and couldn't [or wouldn't] protect me... did they prefer to live in a world of denial? I do not know because I cannot remember.
The other incident I remember was just after I had started art school. I was taking a foundation class in jewellery and I had a big red metal case for the jewellery tools that had been lent to me for the class.
My brother decided that I shouldn't be allowed to do my homework.
I remember crying in frustration after the yelling and scrambling to get back what was mine. I remember sitting on my bed, looking at myself in the mirror. Someone may have been sitting beside me. Consoling me. Again a blank.
A few days later, I was sitting in the art college's guidance counsellor's office. I don't know if I went of my own accord or if I had been encouraged by someone else. What I do know is that guidance counsellor was the only one capable of helping me. He got me out of the house and into a student dorm.
It took a stranger. To get me out. To get me away.
To save me.
A victim. I was a victim. Just as much by my brother's violence as my parents' complete and utter powerlessness to control the situation. When I think of how this fighting and violence was dealt with; the silence after the storm, the head in the sand attitude that I perceived, the nothing, and the fact that I've blocked out most of it, I feel rage. Even recently, when my mother was my host when I was in Canada and I expressed incredulousness and was not OK with her letting my brother drive her car when he was likely under the influence of pot, potentially putting us all in danger, I was "doing it again." I was making her uncomfortable and putting her in the middle.
As though I was asking her to love one of us more than the other.
She could not understand that it was her "choices" that showed the old powerlessness and ambivilence to me, my life and my concerns. When she shrugged her shoulders when my brother took the wheel, how different was that to the whole situation when I was young? When nothing happened to change the situation that I was living every. fucking. day.
I see now why you stand up for yourself in your marriage and even your everyday life... Look at how you reacted when the fellow in the metro ripped the book out of your hands. You didn't give in, you said something that stopped him short and then you opened your book and kept on reading. Talking is existing. Somewhere along the line, you decided not to be powerless like your parents. Now, when something bothers you, you react. At the very least, you say something.
Indeed... because saying nothing implies acceptance.
And I'm not prepared to do that anymore.
For anyone.
