On Shutting Down

After a half day of sewing, I relaxed on my bed trying to pick up the thread of the mystery I began reading several days ago. My TV was on; I halfway paid attention when a storm warning interrupted the local program. Part of me, who definitely was listening, went, "oh yay, a storm!" Several minutes later a gust of wind shook my window pane, followed by hail, and such a rousing, deafening clap of thunder that I jumped off my bed, every nerve tingling, adrenaline flowing.

I love a good storm, they don't normally faze me. This one, for some reason, did. When it was spent and it was safe to put my potted tomato plant back on the porch where it belongs, I wandered back to my room. A great weariness overtook me, a weariness I suspect is the product of self-loathing. Why must I be so weird, I wondered, jumping off the bed at the first clap of thunder? I never did that back when I was a little girl!

I thought of how often I blank out lately, just suddenly feel my neck tingling and everything tilts and then it seems as if I, the me in the here and now, is erased. Coming across that photo of the vintage Barbie (which I posted recently on my blog) hasn't helped matters any. It was quite a jolt to see that, to feel myself shrink back in time to the proportions of my childhood self. I felt the teeny Barbie necklace in my small hands as I fastened it expertly around her neck. The feel of the plastic brush with which I brushed and brushed her lovely blonde ponytail. Yes, blanking out a lot, and jumpier than ever these days. When I watch TV it looks jerky at times like one of those old timey black and white movies.

After returning to my room , I heard a character on a dramatic movie begging for the safe return of her daughter. "Mommy's here, baby girl," she said, before sobbing hysterically. "I love you baby girl." This was another emotional jolt, having never been called baby girl in my entire childhood. When I've heard others use the expression (oh how loving it sounds!), I've winced, and I bet, I just bet that if I'd ever allowed my natural feelings to surface at such times (instead of shutting down), there'd be plenty of anger to go with that wince. ("I'll have a wince with a side order of anger," just went through my mind.)

To dig deeper (though why should I when everything hurts so?) it goes beyond the mere fact of never being called by this endearment. Baby girl. Spoken so gently, yes. But evoking for me images of the shameful discovery that it is for (or because of) my female parts that I am being harmed in tunneled places deep inside my body which I'd never known before existed.

Baby girl . . . panties . . . keep your legs together . . . . the dirtiness inherent in these words brings a flush of shame to my face and neck. A memory surfaces: at my grandpa and grandma's farm when I was about 5, standing in the kitchen hurriedly dressing as my grandma announced that the men were walking back towards the house. (But why was I dressing in the kitchen anyhow? Maybe it was the warmest room in the house. Oh hurry hurry!) Her good natured, lazy grin never wavering, just the slightest urgency in her tone as she admonishes me, "Put your pants on first. It's the bottom part you don't want them to see." Why? Because I'm built different from these men with their strong bodies and self-assured voices. I know this much from bathing with my brother when I was younger. How crestfallen I was when he taunted me for lacking a certain body part. Mine must have fallen off, we decided, or perhaps I was simply born without one, deformed. The bitterness of being other than--different-- stung me. And I felt the recurring sting in my grandma's kitchen shoving my matchstick legs into shorts, my breath coming in gasps. A threat hangs in the air: cover up your shame ( . . . or what?) Oh my grandma has the men in her scope, she knows exactly how close they are to turning the knob.

Why do these thoughts and memories plague me now, when all I was doing today was sewing and straightening my home? The fact of my femaleness--well hasn't it been the bane of my existence? And isn't the fact of my DID just another shameful thing to hide away (hurry, cover it up before they see!) from the threat of curious eyes?

The danger isn't physical now; at most the discovery of my multiplicity would elicit nothing more than guffaws, scoffings, idiotic questions. But I can't seem to separate the hurry hurry of my female shame from the instinct to hide, cover, bury, hoard my DID from those who may mean me no harm, but would surely inflict it all the same.

The truth is, I've never comprehended the fact of my femaleness. It boggles me. Pondering all the ways in which being female has affected my entire life (for one thing, I would've been allowed to live with my dad, as my brothers did, if I'd not had a vagina), makes me feel anxious. And then: the shutting down begins.

Comments

[tricia]

This is one of those posts that is so powerful it is painful to read. The pain of living with it must be almost unbearable at times. I can say or do nothing to make it better, but I so wish that I could.

[Marcy]

Even in the midst of your self-loathing, may the tender voice of Jesus reach you, with a love strong and clean.

[beautifuldreamer]

Thank you, Tricia. It's always nice just to be heard.

[beautifuldreamer]

Ah Marcy, I needed that!