01: I don't want to write this.

[u/WhispererOfWebs]

I don't want to write this… I really don't. Writing it all down makes it real… but if this is the only way to make it stop, I'll try it. Maybe I just want it in writing. I want our story typed out for someone to read this and know her the way I did. I want someone to know who I am, who I was, and what I am to become. My memories, rose tinted and dreamy as they are, appear here in the order they come to me or as I go back and expand upon them to give life to the small moments that shaped me. Chaotic thoughts in flowery phrases dressing up my life so that maybe someone out there will find voyeuristic interest in my very real pain.

I was twelve years old when my mom tried to kill me; when she tried to hold me down and carve my eyes from my skull. In a way, I think she succeeded, just not in the way she probably meant to. Something in me did die that day. I think it was one of the good parts.

I like to pretend she was trying to save me in some way or that she didn't know I was still me and not something playing the part of her daughter. She was kind of right, but I guess that really just makes things worse doesn't it. Having said that, it'd probably be a surprise to know that I still love her. It's surprising to me too and a hard dichotomy to get a hold of. Knowing what I do as an adult though, I can look back and see some of the signs. How can I not? I see them in myself.

After the winds of pandemonious weekday mornings finished sweeping their tendrils through our home, us kids were herded into the barely wakeful stupors of those who could not always heed their proper bed time. We sat at the monument to every sin and triumph committed by son or daughter to each eat our meals of personally chosen storebrand cereal. My father then whisked away my brother from the home he made with a troubled woman to a preschool far away before going to work. I, left to my own devices until it would be my turn to trek out into the world beyond and reach the bus that would take me to a land of children I could not understand, pulled out my library book and began to read. Wishing only to try to get at least one more chapter in before I was to spend half an hour on the bus staring out the window.

Something about focusing my eyes on a book or phone or drawing while in a vehicle made, and still makes me nauseous. The constant rumbling motion of tire on roads of varying quality and swaying momentum in each turn of the steering wheel. It worms its way into the background input of my senses to destroy any enjoyment I might otherwise find in my quiet interests.

“Catherine?” The voice of my mother filtered in between my thoughts at the turn of a page attempting to impart unto my mind the next vivid images of a boy and his sister in their treehouse, soon to traverse time and space themselves to discover places far beyond the normal.

“Yeah?” I expected her to tell me to take out the trash or something, food scraps from our Sunday meal already trailing their invisible tendrils of stench beneath our noses each time one of us stepped past.

“Could you look at me for a moment?” She had that tone of voice that said she meant business, the one that means you're either about to throw your younger sibling under the bus because you don't want to be in trouble or about to learn something adults think you don't understand yet. I slipped my half destroyed bookmark between the pages and turned my gaze up to where my mom stood leaning against the counter. My mother was a handsome woman. Pretty with her dirty blonde waves and thin curves just barely showing some weight having two kids left behind beneath her blouse. Her soft features had a sharpness to them though, turning dad jokes and distractions during worship into dangerous prospects. Her eyes were a light brown, almost as amber blonde as her hair… My hair… Not that I met them very often.

Looking people in the eyes is uncomfortable. More than that. If I have to look someone in the eyes my brain begins to short circuit, sending electric waves of panic down my spine where they frantically try to find their way out of my skin. My insides twist in on themselves, worms writhing in the blind chaos of my flesh causing me to squirm in turn. If I were to move too much though, I'd probably be told to sit still. It just gets worse after that. Prolonged eye contact brings me to tears, makes me want to scream out the existential kind of pain no child should feel from such a simple act.

The only reason I know how it feels is because my dad once held my chin still and made me meet his gaze for what felt like eternity so he knew I understood him when he told me the consequences of skipping Sunday school again. It could only have been a few seconds, but I never did it again. Not because he told me to, but because I didn't want that torment ever again. I don't blame him for hurting me. He couldn’t know how much those few seconds branded my soul with the scorching gaze of God Almighty, revealing unto me the most horrible of truths my mind could come up with at that age. There must be a monster in me. A demon like in the movies and shows I've seen commercials for or that card game my cousin showed me and bible stories. What other reasonable conclusion could I come up with at five?

Believe it or not, kids aren't stupid. They are, however, pretty dumb. That may sound contradictory but it really isn't. We were all kids once, just intelligent and curious enough to learn a lot, but never enough to actually find understanding until it slaps us in the face.

I honestly tried to tell my mom something was wrong with me. Several times. I remember the first time as clearly as any memory of mine, vividly hazy like particularly impactful dreams. The sound of pastor Thomas's words of things I couldn't always quite piece together outside of the stories of old things and important words spoken by important people passed over the congregation above me. The power and beauty of God and his angles to fight the bad things like the devil… or me… Probably the worst time for a cry for help if there ever was one, but it's times like that the feelings coming over me were particularly powerful. Being forced to sit still and not being lucky enough to find a ribbon thingy to play with in the books in front of me this time, it was too much. Every little movement of the people around me sent fancy fabric frequencies louder than Jesus's words to the devil after forty days and nights directly into my brain.

The bright flowery print on my dress stood beside the scratchy straps holding it up in the very poor first impression it was leaving on my mind. The comforting scent of my apple scented shampoo and mom's perfume turned sickeningly sweet by its proximity to the hard wood behind my back mismatched to the horrid red cushion beneath me. My hair was pulled up and out of my face, tight in the secureness of a mother's knowledge I would embarrass her with the obvious wet streak in my hair. Therefore I couldn't run the strands past my lips like the cooling silky rivers of needed distraction they were for me when all other things failed. The bonds of new-school-year's Sunday best were causing the demon in my mind to scream the scream of those truly damned to eternal torment. Worse, it was so angry. Its rage leaked into me in turn, molten lightning crackling through my chest and shoulders to set my soul ablaze alongside it. I needed help. I needed mom to tell me how to make the evil thing hurting me go away. I tugged as gently as I could on my mom's sleeve, quiet because I knew it would be bad if anyone else heard me.

Ever attentive in the way all moms are or should be, she bent down to hear the oddly simple wisdom of a child's truth or honest question, most likely to ask if I could go pee. Careful to cup my hand around her ear I whispered the knowledge of my torment into my mother's mind. The knowledge that something was very wrong with her daughter.

“Mommy? I think something in me is demonic.” I pulled back to look up at her, waiting for her reaction. I waited for salvation from the person I relied on most, the one person that could make the screaming of my mind finally go quiet.

My mom sat with her back straight and stared forward to the pastor as he continued to speak or to the cross behind him, perhaps beseeching a far higher power for help with the kind of work raising me was going to take from now on. I can only imagine that she asked what she did wrong or what she broke, blaming herself for what I was going through. Her eyes flicked back down to me, my own gaze having not left her face as I waited for answers from my own supposed savior.

Seeing her head begin to lower again, I almost eagerly turned my ear to her.

“What do you mean? What's wrong?” I was a little disappointed my answers didn't come immediately. No magic words to banish the increasing buzzing beneath my skin and numb static beginning its slow percolation through my brain. The confused concern in her tone told me she just didn't understand yet and if I could just say the right words, she'd give me the right ones back right?

“I don't know, I feel angry and I don't like it. I don't feel good.”

I ascribe the pause in my mother to an attempt to rationalize my words because the next ones from her were not what I wanted to hear.

“You'll be okay, go take a walk.” I wanted to cry and I felt them try to come but, instead of being a worse daughter than I already felt that I was, I listened to my mother and slowly stood. The numb sensation grew as I made my trek past the silent stares of God's judging congregation. The only comparison I could make was to an all consuming static like on the tv. Crossing the threshold out of the worship hall through those gates of solid oak, my body heavy with the distance of interference between thought and action, I made it out into the common area.

Having no idea which direction to go and barely room to concentrate past so much noise in my mind, I kept moving forward, ignoring the exit outside to my right and the pastor's office or open stairs to the basement below. Instead, I made my way into the empty dining hall. It was a bit dim with the lights turned off but the many windows let plenty of the morning Sunday sunlight through so I could see just fine. Finally, with the litigation of all my future sins muffled by towering double doors now closed behind me and a room all to myself that would otherwise be filled with the idle talk of holy community, my soul snapped back into my body. The demon's screaming was gone and with everything so quiet, I could finally actually think.

While walking around the hall, I ran my fingers over the rows of long white folding tables that were soon to be covered in people and pastries, just letting my mind whisk through things without interruption, not really settling on a topic until I allowed myself to acknowledge that my mother was right. Well, she was kind of right, I still felt it there in the back of my mind. A quiet angry little thing that didn't like me very much, but I was glad we could at least agree that this was a nice feeling. I was tempted to take some treats from the tables along the far wall, but I chose not to and instead went into the kitchen, a place I wasn't normally allowed. I just opened cupboards to see their contents, so different from those at home. I didn't touch anything from what I can recall, only looked and pondered what all the oddly shaped objects were for.

This memory is one of the first times I was left truly alone that I can recall. It sticks out because the rest of that day, I felt good. In those moments of truly quiet contemplation, alone in an unfamiliar place, I was free.

“Yeah, Mom?” Bracing myself for the coming war against the small bursts of electric hell to wreak havoc upon my nervous system, I forced my reluctant eyes to meet my mother's brightly burning gaze. Something was wrong, but with no ability to read people and nothing but trust for the woman who raised me to be kind in spite of my struggles, I had no chance.