STOP YOUR DAYDREAMING
Coming to a field with colorful sprites, they encourage me to move towards them. I run through the tall grass as we laugh and frolic in the bright rays of yellow light. They look like small people, no bigger than the largest of insects, but they are my friends, and I love visiting them.
My first memory shows me chasing my cousin down the hall. I was maybe two. At twenty-one, my parents found themselves forced into marriage, because of an unplanned pregnancy. My teenage self used to joke that I'd been to alter once already.
A pregnant woman does not live with her family. She marries and moves in with her husband. So, preschool saw us with my father's family. A group of people who toted the phrase, today will never come again. I'm told, these raging alcoholics gave their sixteen-year-old son a bottle of booze for Christmas.
At age three we became isolated in the French district of Hartford, a place that no longer exists. Two aunts, my parents, and grandparents rented the upper apartments, and a pair of elderly French ladies lived in the basement.
There was once a gemstone exhibit where my parents lost me at the display of my birthstone. They looked pretty, and I felt a connection to the shiny objects behind glass cases that they told me represented me. It made me feel special to know someone deemed such a beautiful thing worthy of my existence. When I got found, I was in big trouble.
My few memories of that time find me lying in my bed against the wall of my parent's bedroom while they slept. Laughing in my mother's arms when suddenly everyone starts yelling. I'm told to stand in the corner even though I don't understand what I did. Nonetheless, trying to ask gets me screamed at, and time added to my punishment. Crawling into a pretty lady's lap after getting up from a nap to discover my parents gone. Only to fall asleep again and wake up to the family coming home with groceries, and visiting my aunt at Dunkin Donuts where she worked.
Nana and Papa came to visit us. I felt so excited that I eagerly showed them around the place. After a few hours, in which I monopolized their time, they got ready to leave. The drive back would take them hours and the cows needed feeding. I became so upset that I couldn't go back with them, and they wouldn't stay, that I refused to talk to them. My father took me aside and said I made look like I didn't want to be here.
My parents bought me a swing set that they set up out back. However, I was never allowed to play with it. Not from any ailment or deformity, or because the neighborhood we lived in carried a risk, but at my grandmother's behest. She would lock my mother out of the apartment whenever we went out.
Dad's parents refused to give her a key since mom only ever stayed home with the baby and didn't need one. The lease in their names dictated they held all the power, even though my father paid the full amount of the rent. This left the two of us to wait in the heat, rain, cold, or any other harsh elements until the time he stood due to arrive home. Only then would his mother unlock the door and deny it ever happened, excusing mom of making up stories.
The day my father broke probation, which he landed on for a drunken brawl involving a knife, by shoplifting saw my father breaking the law as a blessing. My mother took him over the border to escape punishment and moved us back home to her family's farm where she received a job in the mill, seeing us freed from that nightmare.
As an only child, I spent most of my time with her parents. I contained everything I needed and getting into trouble no longer delivered capital punishment. Growing up on open fields provided few options for developing social skills where no children lived close by, but my spirited self absorbed everything I could.
Nana never bothered getting her license, so we hung around the farm when Papa went to work. She spent a lot of time in the kitchen baking and caning. My curiosity saw I joined her in making her recipes. When I couldn't she always made sure I had something to do to keep me out of her hair. A cassette playing country on the old boombox would get me singing and dancing while she washed the dishes, though often, I played quietly at the kitchen table.
Entertaining myself indoors brought her to ask why I never wanted to go outside. The fear in my eyes pushed her to insist. Nana became irate when I said she would lock me out until my mom got home. Crying, as I believed myself in trouble, I sent myself to my room.
After that, she took me to the barn for afternoon chores, showed me how to weed the garden, and brought me on walks with the large grey husky. I found I loved playing outside. Unburdened by fear with her continued acts of kindness, I felt optimistic about the future.
We lived with them until I entered the first grade. Mom saved enough money to buy a house, and after her brother came home to live, yet another alcoholic going through a divorce from his high school sweetheart, she stood ready to go out on her own.
A daughter, six months older than myself, saw my uncle treat me poorly as I was not her. The man called me names, broke my toys, and refused to allow me to play with them, and my once safe haven now turned into hell. My mom tried hard to get us out of there. However, a six-year-old can not stay home alone from three to eleven, so I remained in my grandparent's care during the week with Uncle Asshole.
My impressive command of language suited me well in carrying on conversations with them but meant my schoolmates found me odd. I came to hate school, my teachers, and my peers. No one there held much use for me either.
Drilled on how children should behave early in life, it became an obsession, and the thought of not telling the truth scared me into submission. I wholeheartedly believed by telling when my classmates did something wrong it saved them from further punishment. In trying to be a good kid and a friend, I came off as a brown-nosed little shit that acted better than everyone else. You know, the one you want to stomp into the mud to shut up. This created an additional rift as I struggled to understand why everyone around me hated me.
My second grade teacher constantly got after me for staring off into space with a smile on my face. I did it so often that she told my mother about my daydreaming at a parent-teacher conference. It did make it hard to keep up with the work. Still, I made the honor roll and loved helping Nana with her GED math work. I really was a weird kid. My playmates came in the form of animals and grown-ups, so I assimilated.
Except my daydreams weren't the imaginings of a young girl. The physiological terrors I endured in my short life, most I still can't remember even today, saw I suffered from a disassociation disorder brought on by the severe stress and anxiety I lived with. Many times, I carried no concept of doing it. Where I went or what I saw often remained a mystery. Getting in trouble didn't lessen the offenses, it only made them worse.
People look at that and say, but I daydreamed and didn't suffer from dissociation, and you'd be right. The difference exists in the frequency of events, coupled with the individual experience. Where I retained no memory, and my thoughts went blank, what I encountered came closer to a seizure. The fault arrived when they forced me to recall what I sat there dreaming about.
The above description comes from me trying desperately to provide an answer, ever fearful of disappointment. If it originated from a recurring dream or a rare instance when I actually retreated, I could not tell you. All I know is that peaceful scene lives in my memory of that time.
By grade three, I managed to grow out of my daydreams. They still happened, but not often enough to warrant attention. It remains debatable if the constant ridicule or my age contributed to the effect, but by then, a new phenomenon took over.
I started experiencing an underwater sensation. The world went into slow motion, though I remained aware of it, and my movements felt floaty. My mind buzzed in my head, and a warming presence much like warm clothes from the dryer after the heat begins to sink into your skin surrounded me. It was trippy, yet the strangeness of it felt enjoyable. I called it my slow-down and welcomed the rare occurrences when it presented. Trying to explain it to my mother met with fearful questions of concern. This made me stop talking about it as I didn't wish to upset anyone.
The years ticked on and few friends ever came into my life, fewer people understood me. My need for approval ever-present set me apart from everyone else, and those that did spare me a thought used me and ditched me. Coming home saying my sometimes friend played with me today were the good days. Mostly, my peers took to doing things worthy of the teacher's attention, but eventually, even they grew tired of the know-it-all tattletale.
My father returned when I turned nine and in the fifth grade. I finally got out of my grandparent's house and away from my horrible uncle. We lived close to town, and I got to play with the two boys who lived next door more. We rode bikes, played football, wrestled on the lawn, and just acted like kids. Finally possessing some people in my life to show me why I shouldn't report everything to adults, I began to understand the problem, and being neighbors, they were stuck with me.
Author note: This story acquires updates as more about this period in my life comes forth. Due the condition brought on by my experiences, sections of these events went forgotten for a long time. For those reading this at the start of posting, you will travel with me along my journey. If you only just joined my readers, assume my work remains incomplete.
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