The flashes of memories have been less flash and more streaming lately. For months now, I close my eyes and I smell and I taste and I sense.
But still no feeling.
It's always the no feeling that sits beside me in the passenger seat; it sits and watches me pretend to drive but truth be told I am a passenger, too. I'm stuck like a piece of lost luggage, travelling around and around on the baggage claim track, the one that nobody claims.
It was my father. He is the one. He tasted and took and claimed and ruined. I'm disappointed, mostly, but I know that my disappointment will crack and splinter and when it does...When it does, it will not be pretty. I'm really afraid of how angry I am, and honestly, I have no idea how to even begin to describe what that feels like. I'm terrified of what that will feel like.
I think I have always known, somewhere far in the furthest hiding spots in my mind, that he was my abuser. It is difficult to explain or provide an analogy to describe the moment that I remembered. The memory arrived. It was delivered gently to me, an envelope on a silver platter rather than with a sledge hammer. I slipped my finger under the seal, untucked the card, and there it was.
And just as I have always known who hurt me, I am pretty certain that I have always had feelings. They must be there. My body aches constantly, I have a truly bizarre amount of ulcers; my migraine headaches are crippling. I was sharing some of my story with a friend last week and was overcome with a raging fever, sweating, clammy skin, and chills; I spent the next 24 hours vomiting. I had been fine minutes before the conversation, and even now as I sit here and type, my temples are throbbing and my stomach is churning. My body wants to be rid of more than thirty years of not-yet-experienced emotion.
I am chipping away at me, and I wonder what I will find.
