A Try

Here is what I know:

I am a writer.

You must be achingly raw, or at least open to vulnerability if you want to write.

You must share things about your life and your thoughts in such a way that people feel drawn to you. A secret is shared, a fear is revealed and a bond is established because you've named something they feel. Through your stories, they see their own without outwardly admitting it. If they end up doing so, it's because you made them feel safe. That kind of connection is warm company for the rejected things about ourselves that we've left cold in a corner.

I am hiding.

It's still overwhelmingly more comfortable to perceive myself as either less than or greater than all the people in the world than it is for me to see the truth that we are equal. More than equal, even. We're all the same thing.

I know that both ends keep me isolated. That's the point: Hiding.

I am fragile.

I am so fragile that I am hiding from my own heart.

My deepest secret, the one I'm most terrified of people finding out, isn't about an awful trauma that I suffered at the hands of an abuser, like a real victim. I mean it is, but I don't consider what I lived through, what happened to me over and over again every day for five years, actual suffering. Worthy suffering. There wasn't an emergency, a crime, or any blood and screaming. I wasn't injured or physically hurt. My body is fine. Intact. So, trying to figure out what happened and why it messed me up so much and for so long doesn't feel deserved or legitimate. It feels like whining. I told myself I was squinting to see something invisible. Someone cooler would have gotten over it faster. Someone better wouldn't have let it happen at all. But I did. So I fail.

I'm the kind of person who fails. That's one prong of the Narrative Belief Fork. Another is pretending it doesn't bother you. I'm the kind of person who can handle it! The third is ignoring it completely. I've done all three and it just...fucking sucks. Hating yourself is miserable. And hopeless. Fully investing in a negative belief or fully denying a negative experience is exhausting. It's so much work because you're fighting to feel something other than what you actually do. What's worse is keeping it to yourself. You lie and lie and deny. You jump at invitations to places you don't want to go, you're friends with people you don't like, you chase and beg for the affection of people who don't like you...I've lived there for longer than I haven't and I'm tired. I'm so tired I can't lie to myself anymore but I still don't even know what I feel. If I tried to tell the truth right now I'm not sure it would even resonate with ME. I've embarked on self-help journeys into the dark night of my soul so many times without allowing what comes next to be different or difficult that I don't trust what I'll find.

My relationship with the truth is neurotic.

I poke and prod at the scabs left by denied injuries, turning them into active wounds with my digging. Instead of tending each wound so it can heal, I tend to the secret, layering it with bandage after bandage in the form of maladaptive behaviors. They end up as warped growths that are just as much a part of me as any other appendage. The difference is that the bigger they get, the less room there is for the rest of me. I've lost track of where they end and I begin. So at this point, the only thing that's left for me to do is the thing I'm the most afraid of doing: Amputation. Swift and clean, once and for all. Telling my secrets will cut off their blood supply and let the truth breathe. But in telling, I permanently link myself with rejected experiences while simultaneously stripping myself of the advantage provided by controlling what others know about me.

They'll be gone but so will the advantages provided by...

-Rectal prolapse surgery

-Eating disorder...?

I had an abortion. In the South. There were protesters with posters. A woman playing the violin walked behind me in the parking lot and followed me all the way to the clinic door. I wore a deep pink sweater. They gave me one pill. Valium or Vicodin, I can't remember which... I think Valium. I was awake for the whole procedure. The sucking of the tube sounded like the suction straw at the dentist-the difference between when it gasps at air and when it catches saliva. Afterward, I fell asleep in a recovery room with several other women. There weren't curtains to separate us. We were each lying on our own recliner, totally visible to each other. Some cheerfully chatted about how far they had traveled to have this procedure. Chatted.

I am afraid that my fourteen-year-old cat is sick. He meows incessantly, paces in the hallway, and has lost a pretty significant amount of weight. His eyes are cloudy. Sometimes I think he forgets where his food is, or just loses his way inside our small apartment. He has been my crisis companion since I was 22. His fur smells cold and sweet like ice cream. I will break when he dies.

I am engaged to a man who often feels like a stranger. I'm sure I feel like one to him, too. When he proposed he told me that he wouldn't find anyone better. He meant it as a compliment and I mostly took it as one, but the nagging question in the back of my head four months later is, "but do we love each other better than anyone else would?"

We share an eleven-month-old son. Sometimes I worry I said yes because I want that sharing to stay in one house.

I quit drinking almost three months ago. For real this time. I go to AA and have a sponsor. Both make me cringe, as does calling myself an alcoholic. I prefer to say that I have a problem living and need help choosing something besides alcohol to tolerate being alive (I know). Someone in a meeting I went to said that not everyone who is predisposed to alcoholism becomes an alcoholic. You also need the training. I like that. I chose to train for one thing, and now I choose to train for another.

And yet, I look forward to the two times in the day I get to take Adderall. I have a prescription because eight years ago I knew how to answer a psychologist's questions in order to earn one. I don't need it-I want it- and occasionally I want-and take- more than I'm allowed.

I have treated my parents with disrespect and impatience. Sometimes their kindness and concern alone were the sources of my frustration and anger. Three nights ago I cried myself to sleep because, at 36, my life is what I feared as a child: I live far, far away from my mom and dad. Not just geographically, but emotionally. Twenty-something years of untruths and secrets and pleasantries have cost me intimacy and our once authentic relationship.

I can almost pinpoint the day I hardened myself to them. My dad was crying by the kitchen sink. I was irritated and apathetic. I hugged him and forced myself to feel nothing. I think I convinced myself I didn't need them as much as I do because I couldn't bear the thought of growing up and (eventually) living without them.

I was terrified to leave home. And once I did, I made a big mess. Instead of saying, "I'm scared, don't leave me" and "I don't know how to do this, can you help me?" I said, "Fuck you. Heroes don't have parents so neither do I." It was a lie. A lie. A lie. A lie.

This is a new revelation. When I cried for my parents the other night it was because I felt like I had fallen asleep, petrified, in the middle of running away from a monster only to wake up and realize that not only had I been caught, I was used to being in a cage. Did I think trying to trick myself into becoming an adult would make me one? Did I think I could bypass the whole process by covering my eyes? As if that would make it any less frightening?

The passage of time alone doesn't guarantee growth like I thought it would. I didn't skip over growing up. I just delayed it. Now I'm responsible for the life I accumulated when I was unconscious.

I rock my baby son in the dark of his nursery when he wakes in the middle of the night. I stroke his forehead with a few fingertips and whisper, "you're safe, you're safe" into the soft, brand new hair on his head. It surprised me when I wondered if I might be talking to myself more than to him.

In sixth grade a kid new to my school, Ryan Stanhope, invented "Stan Land" one afternoon during dismissal. He drew a rudimentary picture of a town on a piece of paper and everyone who hadn't gone home on the bus yet was given an identity. Ryan said I looked like a mouse and so, I became Caitlin Mousey. At first, I really didn't mind. Honestly. I thought mice were cute. In the days and weeks that followed, pictures of mice were taped to my locker and my desk. In our elementary school's music room, a poster hung on the wall of the three blind mice, who were all suddenly called "Caitlin." It was especially perfect because I wore glasses. During an indoor recess, one of my best friends, Katie, drew my name on the blackboard, transforming the "y" in my last name into a rat's tail. If I raised my hand to answer or ask a question, Ryan (and later others) squeaked.

These details sound innocent. Silly. Stupid things for me to let hurt my feelings. And in the beginning, they were. People at school called me a mouse...So what. They squeaked when I spoke...Big deal. Millions of kids are physically hurt or called way worse names and for much crueler reasons.

Here's the thing. If the teasing had stopped there without mutating into something malicious, maybe I would have continued to think it was cute. But it burned hot for years, following me to middle school and high school. Each transition to a larger building within our school system provided an opportunity for new kids to learn about my name. They added their logs to the fire until after a while, the flame was so high it didn't matter why I was made fun of or the depth of creativity people used to do it. After a while, mouse-themed jokes weren't even necessary. The kind of pen I had was enough of a reason. Sitting in social studies was enough of a reason. I once left that class with so many spitballs in my hair that I was late for the next period because it took so long to pick all of them out. Katie, the girl who drew my name with a rat tail two years before, went to the bathroom with me and removed the ones in the back that I couldn't see. By then, middle school, what mattered was that I had become a chosen one.

In every school, there are a couple of handfuls of kids, give or take depending on the size, who end up being social dumpsters. Maybe you have a big nose. Maybe you're pigeon-toed. Maybe your last name is Gross. Or Deldo, or Seamen. Maybe you're fat. Maybe you have an issue controlling your bladder and you still pee on yourself in class once in a while. Maybe you're really short and too skinny and have glasses, like I did. Maybe you're absolutely beautiful. Whatever IT is that people decide they can't stand about you, you're in trouble when it becomes the only thing anyone can see.

If this happens and your perceived weakness develops into the strongest thing about you, you're silently categorized as an untouchable-someone unworthy of acceptance and belonging and unable to cultivate an identity outside of the one now attached to you. People know who you are not because you're popular but because they fear the humiliation and embarrassment associated with being you. Even though all you want is to disappear, it is too late to angle for anonymity. Blending into the crowd isn't an option for you anymore because you cannot be unseen. Always visible and always vulnerable, your presence is a large, wet, contagious wound oozing with a shame that repels people.

Congratulations. You're a Loser.

When did you become not scared. Something needs to come rushing back--that's why the part about becoming a mother is so important.

Being Caitlin Mousey is my most precious secret. I've cared for it and protected it for 25 years. I'm starting to understand that in doing so, I've not only kept shame and rejection alive inside of myself, I've kept them healthy. The massive emotional effort that it took to actively hide her from the world detracted from the energy I might have had to discover who else I am.

YOU NEED SOMETHING HERE Something about Jonathan. Maybe about how your life isn't the only one there is anymore. a zoom in on a moment. Go in really close before coming back out. The energy came from Jonathan. New life.

Telling one truth and then another is realigning my life with honesty.

It took becoming a mother to wake me up. Part of me always knew that would be the case. That I would only matter to myself once the misty, beckoning finger of unconditional love made it urgent. When I was pregnant, the voltage of his life force inside of my body at once calmed and energized me. Even though there was a global pandemic and I was unexpectedly pregnant with my first child, my mind was eerily still and peaceful/serene. I knew, and did, exactly what I needed to do. It was like a current of certainty pulsed confidence through my veins; electric sparks of sureness, newness, and hope instructing me how to care for him by caring for myself. Finally finish Siddhartha. Turn off the news. Reread The Power of Now. Go for a walk-as slowly and only as far as you want to. Eat that entire plate of pasta. Smile at that person but keep walking-talking to her will make you feel upset. Reread The Alchemist. No to that chicken, yes to those Goldfish.

I heard, I listened, I executed. My usual process is: hear, overthink, doubt, avoid, guilt trip. Once Jonathan was born, the majority of my process returned but some of the simplicity and clarity of his lingered. Being influenced by the energy of my son is the easiest way I can conceptualize what my state of mind felt like when I was pregnant. It was me, but it wasn't...just me. I was less myself and more myself. I felt ancient and wise and powerful. I felt joy. I want to think that what I felt was his spirit, and that I know a diluted version of what being alive feels like for Jonathan. I want that with my whole heart because if it's true, my son feels good in his body and he was born knowing peace.

_____

To you, whoever you are and whoever you're keeping yourself from being, I was Caitlin Mousey. I refused to acknowledge her pain and pretended not to hear her screams. Feeling what she felt and confessing that her cries escaped from my throat meant absorbing her as part of me. Forever. That was unbearable. I'd survived what she went through because I told myself it was happening to someone else.

In denying her, I lost my gentle sweetness and the sensitivity that makes me special, that makes all of us human. Denial put me to sleep, silenced my voice, estranged me from my family, and twisted my life into one I'm straining to recognize.

To her, I apologize. I am so sorry, sweet girl. I acted just as cowardly as the people we both tried to escape. I'm sorry you had to hurt me over and over again in order to get my attention; you have it now. I see you, I believe you, and I trust you. I promise I'm not scared of you anymore and that means you don't have to be scared of me, either.

The truth is, I think I kept myself afraid of living with you on purpose because I knew that without you, I wouldn't-couldn't- fully live.

To myself, all of my selves, I open my fragile heart.

I want to try, now, to become what the world needs me to be.

I'm going to try.

Now.

Here is a fragment. Here is another fragment. How do they connect? What story am I telling? And what is the message? I need a point. The writing will get you there. You just have to keep going. The cloud clears as you enter it.

My voice. What is it? Who am I talking to? Who makes me feel safe? I have so many different voices. Humor is one. Probing analysis is another. Gentle reflection.

How do I begin to feel that my thoughts are valid enough to put down? What