I woke up yesterday morning, made breakfast for me and the kids and turned on Mickey Mouse in the kitchen. I took my coffee and toast into the living room and turned on the news. Christine Blasey Ford was giving her opening statement. I didn’t know it was going to be on live TV. Her words hit me like a sledge hammer in the gut. Almost eighteen hours later I am still raw. I’m trying not to cry. I can’t describe exactly how I’m feeling. I’m just flooded with memories and emotions about what happened to me at 15 and how I never told anyone. I can feel that shaken feeling you get after an attack. The soreness on your arms, I imagined what the bruises looked like, as I sat in the bath yesterday. I remember crying softly so my mom couldn’t hear me. I had the door locked. My mom was right outside, I could have told her what happened to me, the trauma I just endured. I never did. Yesterday Christine Blassey Ford gave me permission to acknowledge that what happened to me was wrong and not my fault. And I feel pain in that. What happened to me, when I was fifteen altered me. When I talk to parents now about their teenagers, I always preface that, I was a bad teenage, I was always in trouble, I did bad things. In our Being Human Residency, we had already been talking about the stages of development in our kids and ourselves as kids. My stinky, bloody, dark, teenage box had already been pried open. My years of sexual trauma is intertwined with myself as a child. Being taken advantage of. I want to run from it. I get scared, I might get in trouble for being depressed about this stuff. For being triggered like this. One night, when I was sixteen, my mom told another mom, “It wasn’t your daughters’ fault, my daughter’s the ring leader here, she’s a bad seed”. I think my mom may have even been grabbing my hair and shoving me in the car. I have been taught it’s my fault I was sexually assaulted. I thought it wasn’t important because it happened when I was a kid. That anything in High School didn’t count. Never talk about it. I don’t really know what steps to take to work my way out of this, I don’t know how much I should try to bury it again, pretend it didn’t happen, or write about it, or talk about it, or cry about it. I still feel ashamed by it. I feel uncomfortable.
Category: be kind to yourself
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The little cracks that open into hurricanes, inequality, smokey skies, and loss. The children continue to grow. Part of their being swells space between the walls of my home, their essence, the questions they ask, the answers they have.
I become more me- each day, each hour, I become truer to myself. My children and I pull apart and grow closer with equal tension.
We learn to see each other, both sides going through moments of, “who are you?”. We want to know. My children can’t understand that there was a moment when they were no where. They ask if they were in my moms stomach before mine. They ask, “who took care of us?”
I don’t know how to explain. I say, “another time, I’ll explain. I’m too tired right now”
It’s always almost time to get up or almost time to go to sleep.
I found some time to stop time. I came to my studio today. Painted and worked in my notebooks.
I needed to be in my studio this afternoon.
I am overwhelmed by how many things I have in my mind to think about worry about at anyone time.
From the basic-food, clothes, sleep, exercise, to the cerebral-learning sign language, teaching my children right from wrong, my new book project I’m behind schedule writing, worrying about the government and the world and thinking I’ve given way too much of my time reading about the president. He’s a life sucker. I worry about the biggest hurricanes, the largest wildfires in history.
That’s when I can only work in my studio or write.
I am distracted lately. Not sleeping well.
But I still put paint to paper.
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Corrosion of chalk, ink on paper, words on paper, chapters, parenthood. Everything gets corroded. You learn everything dies. You learn the air will be filled with smoke from wildfires for the rest of your life. I hear the birds chirping. I sit in my house with my living room door and windows open, not sure if I should have them closed or open, its hot and muggy and Smokey and foggy and cold at the same time. I love my life, I love my family and my dog and my career, and my sign language. All the special moments that make each day so special. I still cry though. I still feel like I’m constantly afraid. I’m first afraid of fires, I feel like my neighborhood could definitely burn, my favorite places, my favorite trees I walk under could be taken away. I can still see burn marks on some of the old redwood trees from a fire. I don’t know how long ago it was, but definitely before any of these 1000’s of houses were built. We had a mudslide on one of the roads almost two years ago that still hasn’t been fixed. The road is impassible. The hillside is owned by two guys who paid a lot but can’t make a dime on the property. When I moved in this house the fire inspector told me, “It’s not if, it’s when” that hillside will burn.
I worry about the pollution and the fish and the Hothouse Effect. I think, if this is really the last century of humans living on earth my kids will see the end. I feel sad for the animals, for the land we sold from them. The forests, the ocean, we took all away and ruined it, we thought that was O.K. Why didn’t we leave more for the other natural inhabitants on the earth? I grapple with this stuff as I listen to the birds and love my life, but my life and my mind feel polluted.
My mind feels polluted by this past year. My chest tightens up when I say that and when I think of all the things I’ve had to endure from just Trump getting elected president. I worry about the sick, corrupt leaders in our world, the bombs they build, the games they play with each other. The pissing contest of some fucked up leaders who need to be gone. I feel traumatized by what’s unfolded since Trump has been elected president.
I’ve been sleeping shitty and drinking too much coffee.
I go back to listening to the birds. I retreat in my special moments, teaching my children about kindness and sharing. About nature and how we need to conserve, recycle, care about people. I retreat to the park or on a hike or at the beach playing with sand or looking at driftwood.
I retreat to my studio. I paint and work and let things go for a while. I listen to the chimes and try not to worry about all the firemen and if its windy today where the fires are. I try to focus on the paper and the paint and the chalk line and just let go. For a moment.
Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes 