No Shoes

I decided to start a blog because the need to tell someone what happened to me is huge. Having survived the following incident by splitting and becoming "unaware" I find my brain returning back to the chaos of what this incident did to me. I have younger alters, but until this happened at three, I don't think the DID was cemented into place as my automatic coping skill. Today I struggle to allow my head to process what it couldn't when I was three. I honestly don't know if I will survive this process with my sanity, but I know I still have to do it. I have to learn how to incorporate the knowledge of all the stuff that happened to me into my identity. Cognitive knowledge must meet and join emotional experience. Who am I? What does knowing all this make me?

This week I am still contemplating the image of being knocked out of my shoes. I'm not sure it really happens, but I've heard that when someone is hit by a train or other fast moving vehicle, they are literally knocked out of their shoes. I can relate to this emotionally. Somewhere in the woods behind the First Baptist Church in Bladenboro NC there must be a small pair of tennis shoes. Proverbial or not, I still see them.

 

 

 I am only three and as I sit on the ground with my feet dangling in a hole, my mind is exploding, reconfiguring and exploding again.  The change may not have been instant, but it is life changing. All color seems to drain out of the sky. The sun no longer shines the same joyful way it used to. Everything I see becomes the color of sepia. Not black and white or gray, but the reddish brown color of faded dried blood.

My father dug this hole to bury a dead lady and a still living child. I am a candidate for that yawning gaping hole in the ground too. My grasp of life is churning in my head like a pot of stew. My relationship to, and my perspective of the world are forever altered. I step back into the shadows of my mind and begin to watch it float by. There are no more questions at this point. I don’t quiz him about why the lady was hanging in a tree and I don’t wonder anymore what dead means.

I understand that I killed this lady. Not because I wanted to, but because he made me.

 I know she was sleeping when he cut her down from the tree. It doesn’t matter that I couldn’t wake her up. When he dropped me into that hole on top of her she made a noise. It was so hard to keep my balance. I didn’t mean to fall on her. It was different then when I play with daddy or momma on the floor and sit on their tummies. I don’t fall off so easy. The lady felt squishy and reminded me of stepping on little rocks that roll under my feet and make me fall.

I didn’t mean to hurt her, but she cried out. It sounded like when I surprise daddy and jump on his tummy. So I know she was just sleeping and I just surprised her. She didn’t get up though. I woulda gotten up quick if it had been me! Daddy laughed at her noise. Daddy made me open her mouth and put dirt inside. I cried because I wasn’t brave. I did not want to kill that lady. I know that when you get dirt in your mouth and nose and eyes that you can’t breath good and it hurts. I begged daddy not to make me do it, and to wake her up. But now it is done, and I don’t ask anymore. Daddy put dirt in the hole on top of the lady and me. I’m so worried that Momma will be mad at me when I get home cuz I’m so dirty now.

Daddy told me the lady was bad cuz she told someone something she wasn’t s’posed to tell. Daddy says that secrets are important to keep and that I better not ever tell anybody stuff about me and daddy. He says that the little girl is naughty, cuz she told stuff she wasn’t s’posed to tell, too...........