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For my Daddy

“I called and talked to them before your cousin’s wedding. The forbid me from talking to you. Said I couldn’t have anything to do with you. They didn’t want me near you.”

I have never been so angry in my life as when I read those words. I spent two and a half hours talking to my daddy on the computer, and two hours into it, he tells me this. I wasn’t angry before, I didn’t have much feeling about it, I didn’t want to talk about the wedding, and seeing him, and crying. He brought it up. He told me he had seen me, and I said, “I saw you, too.” I sang at my cousin’s wedding, my daddy was sitting four pews behind my mother and stepfather, and I couldn’t look at him because it made me cry.

So, for him to tell me that the reason he didn’t talk to me was because of them, and because of a decision they made, I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t handle that they still held that much control over me, even when they didn’t, but they pretended.

I spent all of Courteney’s wedding worrying about my daddy talking to me, figuring out what to say, how to act, whether or not to hug him. What do you say to the man who gave you half your genes, and you didn’t see again? I thought he was dead until I was ten years old. I knew his family, visited his brother and their family, who became my surrogate parents when I was kicked out of the house. I get a card every year for Christmas from his parents, my grandparents.

I tried talking once, about him, to my aunt. She didn’t ignore me, but she didn’t answer my questions very well. I understand she was trying to do what was best. She didn’t say a lot in those day, mostly because she was afraid my mom would take me away, and I couldn’t have contact with them. Everyone in my family knows that would have killed me.

I wonder what my life would have been like, had I stayed in Michigan with my daddy, my mom and I not getting on a bus and coming to Minnesota when I was six months old. I wouldn’t know many of the people that I know now, wouldn’t have the connections I do. Maybe I would have eventually found these people, my mothers and other friends who I know and love. Maybe I would have found them in another incarnation.

I think we spend many of our lives with the same people, the same spirits, just in different forms. Would it not be feasible to believe that the people you know in this life that you have known before? A woman you meet the street, think you have met before, and you know each other so well; the nuance of a gesture, the end of a thought, and yet, you only just met. It would make sense, then, that the people we are around we have been around forever. When the primordial soup of human spirits was created, and each one breathed into a body, those who were created together stay together.

If that is the case, then I wonder what role my daddy has played in my life before. What role should he play now? Each time I talk to him, I learn something new about myself. I see pieces of him in my actions, in my attitudes, in my response to the world. I think that the way I move in the world is similar to the way my daddy moves through the world. I haven’t even really met him yet, but something tells me it is true. For now, I just wait, talk to him, learn. Even though I don’t really know him, I still love him.

He is my daddy, after all.

Good night, Daddy. Sleep well. I love you.

One Way to Cope

Sometimes, when you least expect it, life sneaks up on you. Living takes hold of your breath, forcing you to be conscious, aware of the oxygen coursing across platelets and cells, the carbon dioxide leaving through your nostrils, whistling past your teeth and gums, through parted lips to the waiting atmosphere. It is in these moments that I feel most alive. Possibility floods through me, and I feel invincible. Life, with its vigor and ceaseless enthusiasm, carries me through dark moments and awe-filled experiences. If only I could capture these moments, carry them with me, pull one out when I need that inspiration or friendly reminder, and hold tightly to it.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I love the feel of the wind through my hair, past my earrings, across my skin. I have a love affair with the morning breeze. Early-rising birds, squirrels just waking up for the day, and even the rabbits, all keep me company as I travel past sleeping houses and waiting coffee mugs. Even on the days when my breath hangs still in front of me, I carry on, push forward, living in the process, the experience; not running toward a destination, not running from somewhere. Just running.

Running reminds me of how I feel. When I run, I think I should be able to go farther, move faster, run longer. It is hard to turn off those mental tapes and just be in the moment, the movement of running. I rely on the breeze, the rustle of leaves and dead grass, the groan of ice pulling from lakeshores after months of deep cold. The sounds and silence of a day beginning pulls my focus from distance, from time, and clarifies for me the reason that I enjoy being awake in these moments, the solitude I find when the human world is quiet, and the Earth is still alive.

Running wakes up every muscle, every joint in my body. When I run, I feel each intake of breath pass through my circulatory system, catching on to blood cells and traveling to limbs, organs, tissue. I feel the tiny capillaries, criss-crossing my body like dirt roads on a map, come alive, pulsing with each pound of my feet on the pavement. The rhythm matches the thump of my heart, and I am at once connected to the entire universe.

It is in these moments that I feel most alive. I am aware of my body, the physical skeleton and skin casing that holds my spirit from escaping, floating freely in the air and ether that we exist in. I feel the sweat bead on my forehead, pool between my toes, and well up from beneath my arms. I enter into this forgotten world, surreal as the mist rolls back onto the lake with the morning steam rising. I leave behind the mechanics of a warm bed and an even warmer shower, escape the chaos and responsibility that awaits and, if only for an hour, enter into the calm serenity of solitude.

I could knit instead of run. I could easily sit down with my needles and yarn, glance at a pattern infrequently, and be content to stare into space as I twist string around itself, creating some masterpiece or mundane item. Knitting fills up the space between life and living. I knit whenever I have a free moment, even stealing time as if it were rationed, putting my hands to work on some new project.

I dislike knitting in front of others. For me, it is a solitary practice, a time for reflection and meditation. Unless the people around me are knitting, I am too often bombarded with questions and requests, people ignoring that I am doing something, and other unavailable. Knitting does not mean idle hands.

I found that, when I run during the day, I get very self-conscious about others watching me, seeing me have to stop and walk a bit, seeing my form (which may or may not be perfect), and it makes me nervous. I enjoy running in the mornings much better. Less people to stare, less eyes waiting for you to walk, to fall, to make some mistake. It is quiet in the mornings. People don’t think you are not occupied. They understand you are moving, acting, doing something. Unlike knitting, you are in motion, more than just your hands.

I have also realized that I would rather run over time, not over distance. I think, to begin, I need to just focus on running for a certain amount of time. Granted, the distance running might get me further, but that isn't what it is about. Running, like knitting, is about the process. It is about the feel of movement within your limbs, knowing that you are doing something, making something, going somewhere, and it doesn't matter the ending. So often in life we are goal-oriented, and that seems so foreign to me. I can fake it when I need to, be a part of a process that has an end-point, a goal. Most days, I just wonder deeply about the process, and I feel bad for those people who are so disconnected from the processes of life that they don't understand them, and when one breaks down, falls apart, malfunctions, they are lost, unable to determine the next step, because they forgot about the process, and now it is too late.

I knit for the process, too. I start a project, not really worrying about how or when it will be completed, but enjoying each moment I spend working on it, each challenge it presents, each new skill I must learn. I started a scarf with twists the pattern called “cables.” I needed to learn the technique, wanted to challenge myself. I have yet to finish it, though it is a gift. I can’t focus on cables when I want to learn lace. Lace is my newest fascination. I can’t get enough of the patterns, the stitches. I want make shawls for my friends, my lovers, my mothers. I want to make shawls to warm the hearts of each person in my life.

Instead, I run. I take the time I could be sitting “idly” by and I move my body, carrying my entire existence through time and space into a new reality. Running, like knitting, is a spiritual practice. It is a meditation, a reflection, a prayer. When I run, I seek answers, knowing that I will never find them.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Birds sing of dew-laden fields, and squirrels barely creep from their homes. Rabbits and cats stare each other down for the last bit of darkness in a world of growing sunlight. The air is crisp, breath hangs heavy on branches and limbs. I close the door gently, locking it before turning toward the road. My sneakers hit the pavement, my feet inside them, and I am carried away on the breeze.
This time, I am not running away.

I am running ... toward my self.

Watershed Essay #3 (of 5)

I am a dyke.

I do not take sexuality lightly. I find that, though sexuality is fluid and consistently changing, my sexuality, and my sexual orientation, remain an unchanged fact. I am a dyke. I always have been a dyke, and I will remain a dyke until I die. I think my spirit will continue to be a dyke in other forms and incarnations.

Some people would try to attribute my “lesbianism” to the fact that I was abused as a child. Others would look at the lack of a strong female presence, citing a distant and unavailable mother, as the reason I seek out relationships with other women. Still others see it as a biological issue, unable to be explained by anything other than the deal of the cards.

I don’t worry about what caused me to be a dyke. I don’t think about how much contempt I hold for men because of the actions of one person. I seek out women who are willing to mother me, but I am not attracted to them as a dyke, I am attracted to them as a daughter, lost in the universe, seeking a mother she will never find. And I am terrible at understanding biology, genetics, and most other sciences. So, that explanation is out.

I had my first lesbian experience at age seven. I was on the playground, and a girl in my class wanted to show me something she found that she knew I would want to see. We went to the far end of the playground, where the fence on the street met the fence to the high school, and we sat down, facing each other. She was wearing shorts, and she pulled one leg of cloth from her skin, and then pulled over the crotch of her panties. She said to me, “Look! There is a hole down there. I think it is supposed to make you feel good. Do you have one, too?” I pulled open the leg of my shorts, moved aside my underwear, and said, “I know I have a hole there. It is for people to put things into. When you’re a grownup, I think it should feel good. But it hurts when you’re a little kid.” At that moment, a boy in my first-grade class walked up and asked what we were doing. When he saw we had pieces of our bodies exposed, he ran and told the playground supervisor. My parents were called, and a meeting was held between them and my teacher and me. I was told that what I did was wrong. “Good girls don’t play like that,” my teacher said. The other girl didn’t speak to me for three months. I beat up the boy who told on us after he chased me into the bathroom, trying to kiss me. I refused to talk about what happened on the playground, but something inside me knew that, when she pulled aside her shorts, I wanted to see how she looked like me.

“Vagina” comes from a Latin word meaning “sheath for a sword.” It was introduced into most languages by proselytizing christians who were determined to take away female sexual power and to create a male-dominated sexuality in all people. Before “vagina” was introduced, some variation of the word “cunt” was used to identify the female sexual organs. The most common etymology comes from the Sub-Continent Indian word “khunta,” which means “homeland” or “country.” A woman’s cunt is her country. It is where all life begins, and it is the homeland of every human being.

I ignored all my feelings about and toward women as I grew up, knowing that I was not supposed to be a sexual being at nine, or ten, or eleven. And yet, I was still being sexually abused, so I was a sexual being. I began menstruating at age eight, and was pregnant at both nine and thirteen. My body knew all the correct sexual responses, though I was tired of being objectified and used. I learned early that a woman is only as good as her sexual worth, or at least to the average heterosexual male.

I hate that.

I hate that women are seen as objects, regardless of how they wish to be seen, and that we as women can’t get beyond seeing ourselves as objects. We are bred, raised from the beginning in a society that devalues us, to be sexual beings, disconnecting our minds from our bodies, our sex from our reproduction. It is impossible to maintain a healthy connection between body and soul when we are continually fragmented and sold for parts to a market of drooling men.

My first year in high school, I went to a concert at the local music school. I saw a woman who had recently returned from living in Africa for two years. She played the drums and sang for us, a captive audience. I was instantly drawn to her, the energy and vitality with which she performed sucking me in to her spinning vortex. I knew only her name. I asked a friend to find out if she was queer. I didn’t know what it meant to love, but I knew that I needed to meet this woman, and forge some connection to her. To my luck, she wasn’t gay. I had suddenly identified those feelings from years earlier and, though I could not act on them, I found an attraction more powerful than any I had ever felt before.

I went through a long string of crushes, infatuations, and single moments of lesbian attraction. I kissed many girls, and I had sex with even more. It seemed. I wanted to be attractive; I wanted desperately to be desired. I needed someone to see me as a sexual being. I fell into the trap of desire, of sexual worth, of being seen only as an object, and thinking that objectification was the only way to be a sexual person.

I won’t talk about it, but I was engaged once. I spent thirteen months connected to a man through a white gold ring with fake diamonds in it. I ended it, because my heart was dying, shriveling in my chest as the skin of an old maid in the bath.

Now I’m single again. I’ve sport-fucked, and fooled around, but nothing really holds that spark of illicit emotion and raw desire that I know is possible during sex. It’s that one moment, life spontaneous combustion, when all the atoms and all the molecules spin and whirl, and suddenly, in a instant, there is a spark. You need heat for fire, though. There isn’t any heat right now.

I’m in love. I’m in love with a woman who is more than twice my age. I’m in a love with a woman who is smart, and funny, and successful, and stable, and beautiful. I think she’s the most amazing creature on the planet. She makes me laugh, makes me remember to smile every day. I want to take care of her, want to spend my nights sleeping next to her, and make her coffee every morning.

She doesn’t love me back.

I think it’s the age thing. Maybe it’s the stability thing; I’m young, life isn’t stable, and she has everything worked out. It could be that she doesn’t want to ruin our friendship. Or, that she doesn’t want to be seen in a “cradle-robbing” sort-of way. The lesbian community is quiet in my town. This would really shake things up. She reminds me that I am a dyke, that I love women, and I always will.

I think about my dyke-ness every day. Each moment, I wonder if I will be attacked, if I will be judged. I walk down the street looking over my shoulder. Most places I know I am safe. Enough people know me in this town to defend or help me if I needed it. When I was in high school, adults in the gay community thought I was reckless, putting myself in unnecessary danger. I just got tired of hiding. I wasn’t afraid to be myself. I wasn’t afraid to show my true rainbow colors to the world.

If you look at the feathers of a male peacock, you can see every color imaginable, and even some you can’t imagine. People are like that. One glance isn’t enough to see all the nuances of a creature. I am a dyke. But, just like that peacock, that isn’t all there is to me.

Look closer -- you might even see some of yourself.

Watershed Essay #2 (of 5)

Dear Anger~

I don’t want to write you this letter. I feel like I am wasting my time.

You see, I don’t remember what you look like. I can’t remember how you feel, and I don’t know how to get you back into my life. I spent so many years hiding you, shying away from your brilliance, that I’m not sure I can visit you again.

I imagine you to be red and orange, looking like lava directly from a volcano, before it cools to the touch. I once watched a presentation by a couple who biked around the world, and they loved to watch volcanoes erupt. They took many pictures, and they had a slideshow in the wrestling gym of the Middle School. I remember watching these photographs with utter fascination. I knew that those pictures held the clue to what anger must look like. Every time a volcano erupts, the earth is screaming out in anger.

Sometimes I wish I could erupt, magma flowing deep from my core, leaving my center and flowing, flowing from every orifice, every pore. The heat, blazing white and blue among the fiery red and orange, starts in my stomach and rises through my torso, setting my heart ablaze as the lava runs through my veins.

I could be wrong.

Maybe you are ice; glacial mountains towering in fields and ravines, holding water hostage in your ridges. You cover the land in your clear whiteness, stopping time for everything you touch. When your slick, wet skin comes into contact with my own, we stick together. My flesh pulls from its home, clinging desperately to you, wanting to learn from you, wanting to be like you: calm, collected, powerful and overbearing. Your frigid and stoic self makes me want to scream, to beat you with my fists, until you melt, covering me, sharing your strength.

Perhaps that isn’t you, though.

Sometimes I wonder if you are grass, growing green each spring and summer, and fading brown into the autumn. You survive the winter, barely, losing all your color and nutrients, and never complaining. Grass reminds me of Fifties housewives. They never complained, no matter what happened to them or their families. It is this anomaly of history. Yet that is our “ideal” family and our “dream” lifestyle. I don’t agree.

Anger, I think you are bitter. I think you let people walk on you only so far, and then you reach up and grab their ankles, causing them to fall. Who knew you could be so malicious? I just don’t think that you care about other people. I think you are arrogant, and selfish, and mean.

I don’t know what you look like, I don’t know how you act, and I don’t know how you would respond in my situation. I have been without you for so long, I can’t recognize you in other people, let alone myself.

Is that a bad thing?

Or can I live without you?

====================================================

Dear Pity~

I hate you.

You make me want to vomit.

People always trying to understand my life, understand how I feel, get my ideas, and they have never been there.

Some wise sage said, "You can never truly understand until you walk a mile in another’s shoes."

I think, in this situation, it would be more appropriate to say, "You can never truly understand until you have been fucked in every way possible for years, against your will, by the man who is supposed to be taking care of you."

I think it’s a little harsh, but it gets the points across just the same.

I have no pity for you. I have no pity for the man, and I have no pity for that little girl still lying in her bed, crying every night. I have no pity. I have no shame. Maybe it’s because I know I had no choice in the matter except to tell someone, and I never told. I think I blame myself for letting it go on so long. I am not saying it is my fault. I just think I could have stopped it sooner.

I’m not really sure how or why it ended. I think he was afraid that I might say something. Although, I had been silent for ten years. Whom would I tell that would believe me, or understand?

And besides, the man always said:
"You can’t outrun a .22 bullet."

Caught, a deer in the headlights, I’ll never forget it. I used to know exactly how many boxes of ammunition were in the house at any given moment, and how many bullets each box held. I knew where each gun was, if it was kept loaded or not, and how easily he could reach them.

I couldn’t ever reach one first.

Pity, I think you are green, with envy, and with disgust. You want me to like you, so you can rear your Medusa head in front of all those people who care about you.

I’m not going to let it happen. You don’t get to run this life.

Watershed Essay #1 (of 5)

I bought myself new sheets last night.

For the first time in fifteen years, I slept on sheets that no one has shared. There is no sex, no violence, no painful memories on these sheets. Blood and semen have not seeped into these threads.

My Earth-Mother told me that sheets were on sale over lunch, and I thought about it, but I really didn’t have the money to spend. Ten dollars is a lot of money to spend on sheets. Even nice sheets. I couldn’t rationalize spending the money. I came home, went for a ride on my bicycle, walked to the coffee shop downtown. I needed to be out of the house. When I finally came home, I started cleaning my room. I went through my clothing, sorting the “dirty” from the “clean,” the “give away” from the “keep.” I piled all the shirts and jeans that needed hanging on my bed. My blanket was down, so I couldn’t see the fitted sheet covering the mattress. I could feel it though. I needed to run and get the necessities, tissue and tampons and my favorite pens. I thought I might just take a peek at the sheets.

They were on sale at Target. Two-hundred-seventy-five thread count Egyptian cotton sheets made in China of imported fabric from Thailand. I know. I went all out. I think, after fifteen years, I can get something nice to sleep on. Something I can create new memories with, and I want to create them in comfort and in style.

I only bought the fitted sheet. It is all I ever use. I am afraid of having my feet trapped under a sheet and something terrible happening. Irrational fear. It could happen, though.

I came home from the store and continued to put away and hang my clothes. I hadn’t finished before I left, so I needed to get it done so I could go to sleep in my bed. I left the sheet in the Target bag, not able to look at it. I thought I might just return it the next day, not even opening it. I felt very silly, being so worried about a sheet. A nice sheet.

I finished putting my clothes away and moved to papers, homework, checking my email. I felt myself getting tired, and got ready for bed. The sheet remained in the plastic bag with the zipper, inside the plastic bag from Target. I stared at it as I put on my pajamas. I kicked it while brushing my teeth. I set it behind my door, and pretended it wasn’t there.

“Hey Sara, did you put on your sheet yet?”

“Yeah,” I lied. How could I tell my roommate that I couldn’t put on the sheet, I couldn’t handle the newness of it, that I was afraid to sleep on a sheet that held no memories? She wouldn’t understand. She has no idea what attachment occurs when you sleep on the same sheet for ten years, while so much happens around and on and inside you.

I turned on the stereo. Kate Wolf filled my ears. I lit two candles, one of which would burn all night, because I still can’t sleep in the total dark.

I turned off the overhead light and flipped on my bedside lamp. I pulled back the quilt and the two other blankets I have had on my bed for years. I couldn’t stop there, though. My animals followed the blankets, as did three of the pillows I sleep with. I grabbed for the sheet, clawing and tearing to get it off the mattress as though it were on fire. The edges tucked beneath the far corners wouldn’t come undone, and I crawled to them with astonishing speed and freed them, finally having the sheet in a pile at the center of my bed.

The whole thing only took a matter of seconds, yet I was sweating profusely from the task. I was holding a fire in my arms, and I couldn’t put it out. So I threw it to the floor and jumped on it, stomping out all traces of the life lived on those one-hundred-eighty thread count sheets.

Staring at a bare mattress scares me. I can see the moments of my childhood, see the terror in my bones. I didn’t want to see that on my new sheets. I spread lavender flowers and tobacco over my mattress, asking the Spirits to bless me as I sleep, and to bring me safe and healing dreams.

The sheets I bought are a size too big because they didn’t have them in twin. This leaves plenty of room to tuck under the mattress and prevents pulling. I fought, struggled to get the sheet evenly around the mattress, straightening and folding so that each side had equal amounts beneath the mattress.

I slowly replaced the fabric of a former life with a new, sage green fitted full-size sheet. My pillows followed, then the animals, and finally, two of the blankets I still cry into at night. I made the bed as beautiful as I knew how, tucking in corners and turning down the blankets. I wanted the first night of my new sheet to be special.

I slipped in under the covers. The sage sheet felt cool to the touch, and warmed instantly to create a cozy environment for my weary body. I rolled to one side, curled up, and swiftly drifted to sleep for the first time in years.

Thoughts About Worth...

My parents always thought I was worthless.

I couldn’t do anything right, couldn’t make them happy, couldn’t make them proud.

My mother was the worst. She didn’t see anything I did as having value. She used to tell me that I wouldn’t ever succeed at anything I tried because I am doomed to fail. Once, she told me that I would fall on my ass, and no one would be there to catch me or to help me back up. It wasn’t worth it to help. I was a waste of time.

My stepfather used me for sex. A vessel, an opening, a warm damp place to rest for a while after working so hard. I would lie there, quietly, wishing like mad that it was over, that it was done, that I could curl up into a ball and fall asleep.

When he left my room, I could feel that place ache, deep in my center. I remember the throb of my heart as the blood rushed in and left, rushed in and left, rushed in, left. Like the pulse into an open wound. There was heat and a sharp blinding familiarity each time it occurred. I couldn’t shake him from me.

I walked bow-legged for nearly a year.

My body adjusted to the change in shape it took as he molded me like clay into a worthless vase.

Sex, or unable to succeed.

That is all I am worth.

* * * * *

I’ve done some pretty crazy things in my life. From prostitution to almost getting married to a man, I made choices that I thought would lead me to human worth, to value, to being here for more than the enjoyment of others. I couldn’t see that the person who needed the most validation was the only person who could give it.

I had to find my own worth.

I struggle. Every morning, I look in the mirror and see all the people I have been in my life: the sexually active five-year-old, the menstruating eight-year-old, the pregnant nine/thirteen/fourteen/eighteen-year-old, the grungy lesbian, the chic het girl, the quiet studious college student, the rambunctious social butterfly. I have played them all, walked in each role as if it was my own skin, but each was never quite the right size. My cheeks would sag from excess tissue, or the flesh of my fingers would peel back to reveal bone because the skin was too small. My toes curled into my shoes because they didn’t fit.

This worthlessness was my security blanket, my pacifier, my lullaby. The hand that rocked me to sleep and the gentle kiss that woke me every morning. Without it, I am an orphan, wandering aimless in a sea of faces and names that mean nothing to me.

Something challenged this belief, though.

A woman I trust asked me for proof that I have no worth. She wanted me to conduct an experiment, or a study, or something to gather the evidence that I have no worth. Then I could just accept it, and move on with my life.

I didn’t know where to start. I have done studies and research projects in the past, but they were all assignments that had a grade attached. I struggled with the idea that I could find information out for myself, study and learn and do research that had no bearing on my GPA.

I started by asking people what they thought gave human beings worth. I posted the question online, seeking responses. I sent out e-mails, called friends and not-friends, and brought it up in every conversation. I wanted to know what people thought. I didn’t tell anyone why I was asking, I simply asked.

Most people said that worth is measured by how much someone gives to the world, how they treat others, and if they are a positive or negative force of energy. People said that if a person is kind, caring and considerate, they have more worth than someone who is mean, cruel, and dispassionate. Honesty, integrity, and humility were also mentioned.

Everyone I spoke with agreed that most people have a worth that is immutable except by the worst of deeds, such as cold-blooded murder, rape, and abuse.

By the definitions given to me, and the requirements outlined by others, it was impossible for me to not have worth. I tried to find a way around it, tried to make some exception to a non-existent rule.

In this struggle, I remember a fundamental principle put forth by my Unitarian Universalist fellowship: The inherent worth and dignity of every living thing. Any thing “living” has worth.

There are moments I feel dead. I can’t focus or concentrate, I’m not contributing anything to the world, I’m only taking up valuable oxygen.

I am alive, though. I can’t deny that when I am using oxygen I am living.

I may not always think that I have worth, or that I deserve worth, except it is always there. I can’t fight that I am worth something, that I have a reason for being, that I must have failed at each of my suicide attempts for something to come.

And even if I never am known throughout the world, even if I’m never known throughout the country, even if no one remembers my name, I have some reason for being. It could be as simple as writing this essay; as complex as keeping someone else from being abused.

When I wake in the morning, I shake off that kiss of worthlessness, and put on a skin of worth. I have worth, and that is true. It’s a mantra to help me act “as if” I believed it all the time.

I think if we act “as if” long enough, it becomes the truth.

Writing Assignment: Don't Remember

I remember the feel of the bed, the old beaten mattress with no box spring. The way some places dipped, and other places jutted outward at unnatural angles. I remember the stains on it, the sheets that were too small for the mattress. Child’s sheets on an adult bed.

I remember the hours I spent crying there. I remember the denial, the hopelessness, the desperation I felt as I tried so hard to be a good little girl. Nothing I did was correct. I deserved every minute of bad experience as punishment. I was inherently flawed. There was no escaping the harsh reality of my existence.

Sometimes the little girl inside my head, the five-year-old I failed to protect, screams so loudly that others hear her. It’s too much for her to stay bottled inside of my brain, and she can remember, much clearer than I can, all of the terrible things He did to us. Her five-year-old hands draw pictures of the ways He tortured us, the things He made us do, and the ways He did them.

Her five-year-old senses are the senses that remember. The smell of the soap He put in our mouth, the feel of a pillowcase wrenched around a neck so fragile He could have snapped it in two. The tear of skin as it is ripped apart by other flesh. The sound He makes when He is in charge.

I don't remember the pain. I don't remember how it happened, but I often woke up in blood. I knew it was my own. No one was in the room but He and I.

I never fought back.

I remember not screaming. I remember the sock He shoved into my mouth. I remember the pillowcase He pulled over my head. How He twisted it close to my neck, creating a limited supply of oxygen for however long He decided to use me. There wasn't enough for me to scream, and keep breathing.

I don't remember the things He did to me. I don't remember the torture, the angry violent sex, the flesh ripping from its self. I don't remember the sound of it, muffled cries and guttural moans. I don't remember the end of it. One final buck of hips, I'm sure.

It was always the same. The five-year-old wonders if it happened that way, or if one memory bleeds into two, or ten, or a hundred. She can’t remember the last time she slept through the night. Then again, neither can I.

It is the same perpetrators, only a different abuse. Now, they don’t want me to get financial aid for college; don’t want my dreams to come true. They hold the key, dangling it in front of me like a carrot to a donkey.

I played a donkey in the second grade play. It was my first real acting opportunity, and I had to sing. I needed this gray sweatshirt and a pair of gray pants. I had a brown tail, and a brown mane that my mother pinned to the hood of the sweatshirt. One night, the five-year-old (who is now eight) went to bed wearing the sweatshirt. It still had the mane on it. He came in, and while trying to put the pillowcase over her head, He got stabbed by a pin. He yelled at her, and He hit her across the face. The next day was the performance for all the parents. Her music teacher asked her what happened to her face. She said she walked into a door. They put lots of makeup on her to hide the hand.

I don’t remember these things. I pushed most of them out of my memory because, to think of them all, I would not be able to function. I can’t imagine examining each memory individually. I would need a safe space, and people to guide me, and womyn that I trust to hold my hand.

For now, I hold onto that five-year-old girl’s hand, and we walk through each day as if it were a new opportunity to begin life. Sometimes, I have to carry her in my arms, because the pain is so great. Other times, she pulls me along, when my feet drag and I can’t seem to find the motivation. And some times, we just stop, and sit down on the path, and she crawls into my lap and I wrap my arms around her, and we cry together. Neither of us has to be a big person all the time.

Right now, we’re both five years old.

Moments of Being ...

Something touched me inside today.

I didn’t want to get out of bed, didn’t want to start the day with a smile and a song. I didn’t want to see people, didn’t want to say “Oh, I’m doing well,” when I feel I’m dying inside. I didn’t want to lie and spend another day in a life which I despise. I just wanted to stay cloistered in my room, with my clothes and my books and my messes. I couldn’t take the pressure of being human.

From the window in the door at the back of my room, a light comes filtering through. I see a great flaming orb calling to the world, yelling for it to wake up. The sun is muted by my curtain and shade, so I pull them up and feel the frosty glass on my face as I peer outside.

Most humans are still asleep, curled up in beds and next to loved ones, unaware of the mystery that is surrounding them. The animals, they are awake, sniffing and crawling through the morning sludge that so often brings us back to our blankets, back to our pillows, back to hibernation.

In the middle of winter, the sun would not have found me. I would have rolled over, placed a pillow on my head, thrown a blanket over the window, anything to keep time creeping slowly by, not turning into a new day. It is not winter, though. I feel it is spring, and I am beckoned to this window by a force of light and energy.

I am called by this sun.

I hear a sparrow singing to her mate, calling for him to bring home something warm to eat. I hear a squirrel, finding his best friend’s nest, squabbling for another acorn or berry to take with him. There are dogs barking down the alley, a cat knocking over a garbage can, and the recycling truck is here to take away the week’s plastic and paper.

I am not certain if it is really morning; the day looks as though noon were only moments away. The clouds are playing hooky, leaving a pristine blue screen overhead. I cannot imagine what the temperature must be, other than it looks much warmer than the past week has been.

I move slowly from the door, taking care not to look away for a moment, savoring that last glimpse of serenity as I prepare for my day ahead. Ah, yes, it is Monday. A few hours of work followed by class and then an appointment at 5pm. Wait … isn’t Shakespeare cancelled today? Could it be that I have an entire day that I could spend enjoying life?

I realize that work is unimportant, and I send off the few emails that I would have in an overcrowded office. I take my time getting ready, relishing in each moment spent accomplishing some menial task. I have never taken forty-five minutes to get dressed before; each piece of clothing is a new experience as I place it against my skin.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to spend each day in this fashion. The fear of sloth that crowds my mind after I think I have wasted time is too forceful for regular occurrence to enjoy. I have not taken the time I need to become acquainted with the slow-moving world, and I revel in these moments of quiet contemplation.

Assignment: Write about a time or place you don't remember.

I don't remember the place I went to when You came to me.

I remember the feel of the bed, the old beaten mattress with no box spring. The way some places dipped, and other places jutted outward at unnatural angles.

I remember that I kept switching bedrooms with my sister. First, the one with the window facing North. The bed placed in an East-West fashion, so that the foot of the bed was nearest the door. Second, the room with the window facing West. The bed on the parallel wall, in the same position, for the same reason.

I want to see You when you walk in each night.

I remember leaving as soon as You entered.

I don't remember where I went.

I think it was black. I know it was cold.

I spent most of those next to the North-facing window. My room was the coldest in the house. When I would wake up in the morning, I could see my breath. Every morning. Even in the summer. I had frost on my window.

I don't remember the pain. I don't remember how it happened, but I often woke up in blood. I knew it was my own. No one was in the room but You and I.

I never fought back.

I remember not screaming. I remember the sock You shoved into my mouth. I remember the pillowcase You pulled over my head. How You twisted it close to my neck, creating a limited supply of oxygen for however long You decided to use me. There wasn't enough for me to scream, and keep breathing.

I don't remember the things You did to me. I don't remember the torture, the angry violent sex, the flesh ripping from itself. I don't remember the sound of it, muffled cries and guttural moans. I don't remember the end of it. One final buck of Your hips, I'm sure.

I remember what it did to me.

I don't remember Your reason why.

Musings in Class ...

You're thinking about sex.

You're remembering his hands on your waist. The way he looks with his face buried in your breasts.

His moan.

The way sex smells when your love and his meet inthe height of passion.

Sheets soaked by sweat. Mirrors and windows steamed by lust.

***

I'm thinking about sex too.

I'm thinking about his hands on my waist, pinning my body to the mattress. The way he looks at my breasts, the buds of childhood hidden under a flannel nightgown.

His grunt as he pushed my flesh apart with his own.

The wasy sex smells when his semen spills onto my sheets.

Ariel and Sebastian the Crab, covered in milky fluid. Windows and mirrors steamed by sex and unrequited lust.

Bare like a twelve year old

she said
straining against clammy denim
soaked from puddle play

she cannot focus
to remove her clothes

my assistance is sought

she leaves freshly clothed
and

I am left to reminisce

five years old
my favorite nightgown
Teddy near by
He enters the room
soap into mouth
pillowcase over head
He comes in
He walks away

Her after-bar eyes
mirror those sheets the next morning
kindergarten hands scrubbed raw
attempt to erase

no stain remover
could bleach out the desperation

Happiness Is ...

Happiness is knitting for the process, not the product. The feel of yarn running through fingers, fibers from animals not killed for their fur. The steady clicking of wooden needles, the swish of wool or silk sliding across and off the point. Happiness is the creation of a pattern that is all your own, and knowing that the pattern will create beautiful things. Heading to the local yarn store just to smell and stare at the fibers for the picking. The feel of fresh merino roving, and the dreams of spinning it into a thick, chunky fiber to knit a heavy and warm shawl for winter. It is a replacement for a winter jacket. It keeps you cozy and safe. Like that baby blanket you never had because your mother packed them all away, simply because your real father's mother had made them. You didn't even know they existed until you could feel no attachment to them. You were almost nineteen. She still won't let you have them. Happiness is fondly remembering the love that once was put into those blankets, and putting that same love, one you never felt, into each item you knit. The love that surpasses all understanding. Except, you don't really know what it even feels like. You catch glimpses of it, but you don't recognize it towards you, only toward other people. And you wonder if it is sent your way and you miss it. There are all of those little common-sense things that you just don't get. Like how to thank someone for a gift so rare and precious, because you had a hard enough time accepting the gift. And when you can accept it graciously, you cannot understand the reason for the gift. It eludes you in your quest. The journey you tread is hidden by branches. You have someone holding your hand, guiding you as if you are blind. And perhaps you are blind to the journey, and to it's outcome.

The biggest struggle is: trusting the one who holds your hand.

The Rape Poem

The snow reminds her
of his dandruff.
The way he shook his head
as his body
wracked.

She knows that he could find her
seven-thirty-five to New York.
This dog can’t run fast enough
to get her away.

Lights on the road
seem like
Christmas----
she escapes from
pain.

gifts from men.

She
can’t
get
over
the
feeling
of
hollow.

Something

My sheets have never fit the mattress.

They always come up on the sides, pulling toward some unseen center point. The top left and bottom right corners are the worst. I think that I lay on the bed and pull these edges to me. To hide, to cower, to run away.

My parents’ cats all ran away. At least the ones that were able. The last cat, the oldest, he died all alone in the closet of my old bedroom. He was waiting for me to come home, I think.

I remember that the cats used to hide under my bed. The mattress was never the right size, always too small for the frame, and so the cats used to climb up onto the frame and then down under the mattress. There are three drawers on the frame, and once I remember hearing a distinct meow (it was my black cat) coming from the drawer nearest my head. Sure enough, when I opened it, she came flying out and clung to my chest for her life. Which it might have been, had I not gone to bed.

I used to make lists of all the people I have slept with on this bed. See, there is a mark on the frame for each new person with whom I had sex. At first, it was going to be a tally of how many times I have sex, but after three years of sexual abuse every night, I gave up on that. I rotated the marking board 180 degrees, and started over. Now there are lists of how many people I have sex with, how many times I try to kill myself, and how many people have died in my life. Only the close friends and other important people are included in this last list.

The lists are not very long. I am only twenty, you know. I have not had the full and rich life to write about that so many others proclaim. One list has twelve, one list has six, and the third list has four. I had to add another tally to the first list after this summer. I didn’t want to, but I had no choice in the matter. When someone says he loves you and he will kill himself if he can’t have you, you have sex with him to stop the agony. I would rather add to the sex list than the list of dead friends.

I base my value as a human being on sex. If I can’t get what I need using anything, including sex, than I’m not worth much. Sex is all I have to offer. Now I’m learning that it isn’t acceptable to offer sex. I’m not sure what I’m going to do then.

I had a conversation with my therapist about this. She said that it is important for me to acknowledge that sex is my primary means of worth and esteem, but she told me that she thinks I had bad parents and that they didn’t properly instill in me the values of human worth and importance, and the ability to be a human being without running my life based solely on sex.

Once, I let a man fondle my breasts for twenty dollars so I could pay to register for a conference. It was for school, and I desperately wanted to attend. He told a friend about me and my “gorgeous tits,” so I gave head for fifty bucks in order to have spending money on the trip. Oh, and to pay for the one meal we had to supply ourselves with.

I have never had sex for money on my bed though. I try to keep my bed as my sacred space, my sanctuary, whatever it may be. It is still the same bed He raped me in, still the same bed that I spent years crying myself to sleep on. I still have the same five pillows, in the same pillowcases. Two are purple print, two have cats on them, and one is pink. I got a new pillow from His wife for Christmas, and so I put the old green pillowcase on it. It is a foam pillow; one of those ones that conforms to your body. I think she is playing a sick joke on me.

I ran away from that house, too. The cats and I, we have something in common.

The bear that I have had since birth is there. And two of my ostriches and my bunny rabbit that my Auntie Karen gave to me. She said it would keep me safe.

Three of the five blankets on my bed are from His wife. She made them for me in various states of growth. The big quilt, ten years old. The thin fleece, twelve. The big hand-dyed/batik print one, she made with others as part of my graduation gift. The other two I got in various ways. The purple chenille one came from Target, when I needed an extra blanket while sleeping an ex-lover. Then natural-tone one, that one came from my grandmother this year for Christmas. It is a static-holding, completely impractical, doesn’t match anything, dry clean only afghan from Marshall Fields.

The sheets are the same ones too. I got them ten years ago for Christmas, and they weathered through five years of sex and violence, and then five years of an attempt to recover. The latter is still going on. So are the sheets. I can’t seem to part with them.

The sheets are me. I am the five-year-old girl whose blood lines the old mattress. I am the child who scraped tally marks with her fingernails until she bled herself to near extinction. I am that bed, and all that is collected within that frame.

At night, I hear her breathing gently with me.

A Childhood Place

Your love is pressing upon my thighs like a heavy, ancient book. The scent of you, bearing down against my throat thick and heavy, a hangman’s noose. If it had not been for the times we have spent, I would not know how life could truly be lived. Bare flesh, fabric ripped to shreds, bloodstains scrubbed by bleach covered hands to hide from your wife. I spend hours agonizing over you, unable to tell anyone the truth, afraid of how you or they may respond. You told me I could never tell.

* * * * *

The sky is clear, with crisp December air filling my lungs with each intake of breath. It is warm, above zero degrees Fahrenheit, and I have gone for a walk to clear my head.

You called me yesterday. It took me completely off-guard, and I was a little frightened. I was the only person home, and I panicked. I couldn’t stand up to you, couldn’t tell you the truth, couldn’t say the words chasing my heart.

I do not want to play this game any more. I know the truth.

I agreed to spend the time with you and your wife. What is one more night when I have spent 5,470 with you already? I spend every night with you. No matter how near or far you may be from my body, you are always there. Your scent, your touch, the memories imprinted upon my skin; all are present when the lights turn dark.

* * * * *

I still sleep in the same bed.

It still smells of your sperm and my blood. It still dips in the middle, where you made me lay on my stomach and you sat on top of me.

It pervades the air in my new bedroom, shoving happiness aside. It is always cold here. No amount of blankets made by your wife for me could take away the chill in my bones, sleeping in this bed.

I don’t remember sex having this much of a stench. I always thought that sex smelled like roses, fresh cut flowers in your grandmother’s vase.

* * * * *

Sex smells like Lever 2000 soap and Downy dryer sheets on the inside of pillowcases. It smells like BO and coffee, stale from the morning, and Copenhagen.

Sex sounds like screaming. Muffled screaming, screaming through fabric meant to be under heads, not over them.

Sex tastes like death smells. It creeps into your throat, slowly, unassuming, the way your teeth feel when you realize you forgot to brush before bed, but you are too tired to get up and brush them. It travels downs your esophagus, like a too-big bite, and suddenly lands itself in the pit of your stomach. It is heavy, dense. It does not want to digest. It simply sits there, waiting for you to acknowledge it and decided to do something about it. The only real option is to throw it back up. However, you cannot get your body to cooperate, and the gag reflex chooses not to set in. So it sits there still, and you walk around feeling bloated, filled to the brim with too much of something you have no control over.

Sex looks black; there is no image. You can see shadowy figures in moonlight streaming through open windows. You watched them from outside yourself, from above or below, but never within. Watching, you can see red and bright white and sickly yellow lights floating around their bodies. The room is dark, but the Lady of Night keeps her eye on that bed, that girl. She protects her, takes her away when He comes to visit. She helps you escape Him. It never really seems to work, though.

Sex feels like muscle and tissue tearing from the bone. It feels like a dull knife cutting through veal. It feels like fingernails on an acrylic/polyester pillowcase. It feels like slamming your thumb into the trunk of your parent’s car at six years old, in the middle of winter, after sledding, and not having a key to open the trunk because the car is running and the Man behind the wheel does not want to turn it off.

Sex is worse than death. It is not the end, and it is not the beginning of something new.

* * * * *

I find myself walking to the Post Office. In my hand is a letter to you and your wife and your daughter, expressing my sorrow at not being able to join you all for Christmas Eve. I wish I could be there, honest.

So I could yell at you, tell you that I know the truth, tell you I remember. To tell you that you can’t spend any more nights in my bedroom. You are not allowed in here anymore. I don’t care if I have the same bed, the same body. These are my memories, and I choose not to let them rule my sleep any longer.

* * * * *

Sex is a place. It is a state of mind, a state of being. Sometimes, sex is associated with sleep, and with beds.

In my childhood, the only place I thought was mine was my bed.

One night, that all changed.

Sex was the place of my childhood.

I knew I was the only person there with me when I went there.

Why I created this ...

My name is Sara.

I am womyn.

I am a survivor of of sexual abuse for ten years.

These are my memories, my stories, my life.