Secret Soldier

Please understand, these events come from my memories. They live in the recesses of my mind, and play on at will. There is an unforgivable, torturous cruelty intimately associated with their drive - their eagerness to play on - and try as I may, I cannot shut them down. I have been a brave and secret solder, determined to destroy my memories, determined for decades to put an end to their repetitive play, but for decades, they play on.

Imagine if you will, a reel of film built into a projector, the screen pulled down, and the action begins. The room is silent and dark except for the motion on the screen. Imagine if you will, a girl violently shaking her head, storming out of the theatre - she's dodged it once again. One more time, she has survived the assault of the memory playback. But seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks later - no rhyme or reason to it - she finds herself back in that room. The screen is once again pulled down, the film begins to play right from the beginning, and she is again left alone to face the memories. The only sound is the ticking of the reel as it plays for her, the traumatic memories of her past. She is once again forced to watch these events in realtime. She sometimes plants her feet firmly into the floor and stares at the screen head on. Sometimes she braves every second of the film hoping that this will somehow bring closure, answer the unanswerable, and end the repetitive assault on her person. But it doesn't. The recesses of her mind are fully aware of what she is trying to do in these moments, and with a sinister glee, they continue to block her memory of key parts, exposing her to specific instances only. Whatever is controlling this, takes perverse pleasure in this cruelty. Realizing she has once again lost the battle, she violently shakes her head, runs out of the theatre, and breathes a sigh of relief, if only for another moment in time. She knows she will have to brave these scenes for the rest of her life.

These flashbacks, these haunting memories of events were so traumatic that the brain, the body, the 'soul' went into a frozen state of consciousness - present but not present - for sheer survival, or so I've been told. This is why I have blackouts at distinct moments and why, try as I may, I cannot for the life of me, fill in the gaps of lost time. The playbacks are a person's most primal response to unconscionable trauma and assault - a psyche's attempt to comprehend the incomprehensible, or so I've been told. I don't profess to understand one inkling of why my 'being' cannot permanently shake the memories of these assaults on my person. I don't profess to understand one iota about why the recesses of my mind cannot permanently sever ties with this past, and I will never understand why they so cruelly and forcibly inject playbacks again, and again, and again. All I can do is offer the young girl in my memories, momentary sighs of relief. I can offer her my adult strength and wisdom, my compassion and my desire for her to heal. I can offer her temporary comfort until she finds herself against her will, alone again, in that dark theatre.

I speak of the past 30 years of my life and how I have fought to keep the secrets at bay. I have fought like hell to pretend I was that happy-go-lucky person everyone wished me to be. I fought like hell. And I fell. Often. For, despite my bravery, despite my willingness to be the secret soldier for all of these years, I found myself in a new hell 30 years later. A hell which no mother or child should ever have to face. I knew the time had come to speak up. It had finally come full circle. It was now just a matter of time and the clock was ticking so fast. In the eleventh hour, I found myself backed into a corner - and that was it. The Secret Soldier finally put down her sword that blocked the entrance way to that theatre. She opened up the doors for all to see, and she herself started the reel. And just as she had suspected all those years ago, one by one, people buried their heads in the sand, threw out unspeakable insults, and outwardly - no cowardly - denied her, her truths.

Please understand, these events come from my memories. They live in the recesses of my mind, and play on at will. For now, I will continue in the only way I know how. I will violently shake my head, storm out of the theatre, and breathe a momentary sigh of relief, bracing myself for the next showing of my life's most traumatic events.

Carreen

November 11, 2017

6:38 a.m.