staticdecay-blog

[staticdecay-blog]

Post 8 - One Night In Chiraq

The red line train was speeding to its next stop, bringing me closer to my destination. Wiggling the toes of my left foot which was already soaked and freezing from the rains that rinsed the city combining with the hole in my Chuck Taylor shoe. Back to the city lights from underground to approach Cermak-Chinatown. 2 more stops.

It is around 1 in the morning, December 27th but it is still the day after Christmas to me. The Garfield Boulevard stop came and I step back in to the cold and windy city with a few other people and head out to the street. The desolation is already apparent here, and I met with looks and faces that read both “Why the fuck are you here?” and total absence or lack of care.

I cannot explain why, but these are the only types of places that I find peace. It is a dark irony because I know that in a split second I could get robbed, fucked up, or killed by a stray bullet. On this night I find myself in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, which is by most accounts, including numerically, the deadliest place in Chicago. This is Chiraq. In these few city blocks that make up this neighborhood, in this year alone there have been 38 homicides and another 296 people wounded by gunshots. That is a staggering total of 334 people affected by gun violence in a few square mile radius.

I know about Chiraq and I know the rap songs do not lie. I have experienced it a bit in some of my other adventures. Even still, I find a type of peace, a clarity in these types of places. My mind, heart, emotions, and being are just as wartorn and desolate as the landscape.

I exit the station among a lot of people rushing to get to the bus that waits right outside. I turn left with the crowd and I keep going passed the bus. Garfield Blvd. is a main street, full of gas stations, fast food joints and the like. Even still, it only took about 50 yards before walking passed some type of domestic squabble involving a woman and a man. One of them standing outside of the van in the rain, the other inside screaming.

Keep walking under a bridge where the Metra rail rests and I decide to cut up and off of Garfield. It is too busy. My senses go in to full alert as I wander up S. Perry Street. Not a threatened feeling but just knowing exactly where I am, and that now there are no witnesses, there is not even an illusion of safety.

Houses are either boarded up, or have been leveled all together, leaving empty lots, looking even more menacing with the barren trees reaching up and in to the crimson sky. The buzz of the high voltage wires is crisp and apparent. Walk a very long block and get to 57th Street. In the middle of all the despair, the abandonment and desolation, in the middle of all of the violence that rips this hood to pieces, leaving blood on street corners, is a huge community garden. This is beyond a garden, and more like a small farm. It is huge, and it bing there warmed my heart to the point I no longer felt the cold in my soaked left foot. It stands defiant, like so many of the people in this area, and others like it, refusing to leave, refusing to give in to whats happening around it. This is their home and they will fight for it and try to contribute to ending the turmoil, rather than abandon it. I am reminded of the motto “If not you, who? If not now, when?”

I try to get a picture of it but there is no way to get a decent one since it is dark and I have nothing to rest the camera on.

Keep walking up Perry Street, another very long block that ends at 59th, which is a somewhat busy street. Turn right and work my way, along with 2 other people slightly ahead of me, through a bunch of construction that has the sidewalk closed underneath the Metra bridge.

My hands are stiff and cold, they feel the sting of the wind and cold rain but I refuse to keep them in my pockets. Every few feet is another alley, another place for somebody to get the jump on you, and this place is full of predators. I keep my vision wandering, scanning, refusing to look down at the ground, refusing to get tunnel vision.

I am nearing the overpass to cross back over the freeways, my intent is to cross and work up to the 63rd street station. An alleyway on my right giving access to the back of many boarded up houses, an abandoned garage or gas station, a few active house ones, and some garbage filled lots. Across the street is an abandoned lot with a raised train track dissecting it. There are cars parked there, there are some people, and there is an alleyway. Traffic is stopped at the red light, including a cop.

It is 2:15 in the morning when the sound rings out. It is like a lot of those whipper snappers that we all used as kids…..Its so fast but time slows down, and I see one of the bodies in the lot across the street drop to the ground fast and hard. Another person ducks for cover behind the wheel well of a car. Taking cue I run down the alley to a nearby tree and take cover.

Gunshots. There were at least five, and by the rate of fire it was from an automatic or semi-automatic. The smell of firearm discharge catches on the wind as car horns start blaring. I have no idea where the shots came or are coming from, but I see a car with lights in the alley across the street.

The light must have turned green because traffic starts to move. The horns continue and I see a few people looking toward the cop, trying to get their attention, screaming, and the cop drives away.

This is the reality of Chiraq. It hits full force, harder than it ever did. Harder than it can ever hit just by seeing the abandoned areas, hearing the stories, and seeing the statistics. This was a crowded intersection, people around, zero warning. There was no heated exchange, no screaming, just somebody driving up and opening fire and leaving.

I cut up the alleyway, constantly looking over my shoulder to see if anything is coming up that alley, ready to cut through the houses in full sprint if I must. I make my way back to 57th street and am able to cross over the freeway. By this time flashing blue lights are seen where it went down, at least 3 cars at this point. I start cutting up another street that parallels the I-90, and get back on track trying to get to 63rd street station.

Police start showing up on the streets, cars weaving up and down the streets and alleys, looking for somebody involved, looking for the possible reciprocity killing because all too often one shooting here leads to another only minutes later and blocks away. I snap a quick picture from across the bridge of the scene that now has 2 ambulances, and 5 police cars.

Cutting up another alleyway, trying to avoid being seen by police, on top of trying to avoid anything else. I take note that my hands or feet are no longer cold even though they are completely soaked. Alleyway leads to empty streets, empty park, boarded up houses, and a corner boy on the next block. Headlights turn on to the street and I cut left at an abandoned house and up on to some train tracks. I notice one of the side doors has its plywood kicked in, no doubt somebody has been in there, or IS in there right now. The headlights turn out to be police and they have not seen me.

I snap a picture of the train tracks, and try to get one of the neighborhood before I climb back down to the street. The corner boy is gone and I continue up the street, passed the park, and turn left on 63rd street. The ambulance comes through, seemingly on its way to the hospital that can be seen the opposite way on 63rd.

This is just another night for the people that live here. The gas station has people coming in and out, there is somebody standing in the concrete island, and 200 yards away somebody lies dead on cold wet ground. It is trained reaction that when the pop is heard you hit the ground, run, or find cover.

Death can come for anybody and we have no idea when or where or how it will happen to us. Life can end in a second and witnessing this in the South side of Chicago makes that staggeringly clear. Hardened faces, a beggar, are what I fnd in the 63rd street station as I begin to process everything. The cold begins to make itself known to me again, aching my left foot.

Within 40 minutes I go from being the only white face, to a place where people really do not worry about the type of shit I just saw. Walking around this neighborhood, most people get sketched by the homeless under the bridge. I go and get a rootbeer and some snacks and begin walking back to where I am staying, stopping for a couple of minutes to talk with one of the homeless men under the bridge.

Different worlds…a world that exists that a lot of people never know. I can’t help but think about the end of the film “Boyz N Tha Hood” when Doughboy talks at the end about how he was watching TV right after his brother was killed. He mentions how the TV talks about all these foreign wars, but there was no mention of his brother, or what was happening in the hood.

It is still the same. I found out when I got back that the shooting I saw left a 29 year old male dead, and a 28 year old female wounded. 15 minutes later a 68 year old man and 34 year old woman were wounded in another hood. At 4:20am another 25 year old male was dropped in the same Englewood neighborhood where I saw what I saw.

[staticdecay-blog]

Post 7 - Blank

How do you feel when you are submerged in to a cacophony? How long can you keep your calm and stay focused, detached, and rational? Waves crashing against you consisting of ten-thousand voices, countless infants screaming, and never ending rush hour traffic. This is it, you wake up and it still continues, you are one day older, one day removed from your start, and one second, perhaps your last, to your death.

I had come under a battery of self-inflicted psychological violence as my mental health deteriorated. The volatile mix of PTSD, Agorophobia, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Schizoaffective disorder had left me isolated, ravaged, and not even close to functional. The bridges burned or posts abandoned by people who did not want to bare witness.

My father, who was still alive at the time had allowed me and the girl I had married to live in the house I grew up. He was not around much due to working as a driver. This leaves the woman, my wife at the time, as the sole contact of most of the minutes I was awake in between scheduled tranquilizing by Seroquel.

Imagine being shipwrecked, or lost in the desert and you are swimming or walking. You are at the point of exhaustion...not the exhaustion you feel when you wake up from broken sleep...not the exhaustion of running at your best pace on the treadmill...the exhaustion that only comes as life evaporates out of you with every precious calorie or bead of sweat.

You see an island or an oasis. sweet reprieve. You are still gonna have a chance.

March forward, swim harder for that desperately needed break, drink of water, eating of food, being in the shade of the tree rather than the murderous touch of the sun which has rubbed you raw, like the baseball glove or coat or boots you had as a child. Weathered. Leathered.

Despair.

Just as the sweat evaporates from your skin, that last precious drop fading in to the atmosphere...just as that last calories melts from your failing body...the island and oasis fades away and you are left with nothing.

Nothing......

They dont tell you growing up that sex is a weapon, a manipulation. They speak of the birds and the bees, and infections, but never even whisper in our ears of how it is weaponized. It can take you from your body literally and figuratively. Such pleasure can be had in it...like that oasis was not illusion......but it can be a murder weapon which removes an identity, leaves contusions, and leathers you worse than that sun.

We had not had sex in at least 6 months. This was not an established pattern in the years we had been together.  I tried to find a balance of talking about it that involved being understanding and not pressuring, even if it was something I needed. She told me something on a specific night that would become one of the biggest bomb blasts in my own mental health.....

Seeds were being planted and the psychosis would begin to water them... Waking hours filled with an internal rage that only manifested externally with gashes in to my own flesh with razors, broken glass,and knives. This rage was manipulated by hallucinatory voices that urged and pushed and manipulated my thoughts toward violence. At first, I was able to stay grounded and know that I was in control, that these voices were not real.

It is amazing how the presence of something can verify its truth.....solipsism states that that which is in ones own mind is the only thing that can prove true. So those voices became gospels....repeat a lie enough times and it becomes a truth

The ground got a little less stable and clear. Frustrations mounted sexually and given no merit. i was a child and scolded as such, like I tried to spoil my supper by taking a cookie after school. The proverbial ruler to the hand.

Drop by drop this went in to the cauldron being stirred by voices that contained rage, mounting resentment, pain, and frustrations.

Every night she would turn over, go to sleep with her back to me. I would go get ready for the next days scolding of the internet history, providing the ammunition for my own assassination.

In the cold computer room I sat with a glowing light, fantasy worlds I could never belong to, a throbbing penis that I stroked raw with rage. The orgasm raged, and so did the pains. The pains of every hurt, every beating, every rejection including the ones that never happened, the pains of the high school dance, the pain of being in that room at 2am with nobody, the pain of being unloveable and too fucked up....

The pain of the words...."when we have sex, its like I’m being raped..."

In orgasm I found stasis of a type. The rage exploded with the cum and grunts, and then the shell would come. Curl in to myself with only the voices, the hallucinations, the violence. Years later still, when I would get to have sex, when I would orgasm I would break down, shell up and go to this type of comatose stasis. I could not talk, even when I wanted to. All I could do is listen, hear, and sense the awkwardness and frustration of the other person as they dressed and left or just went on about their day. It would take me over an hour sometimes to come out of it.

An idea came to alleviate the problem. I stared at the cum on my leg and looked to the razor. I looked at my penis which I grew to despise and be ashamed of. It had to be eliminated.

The choir sang the ideas praises, hallelujah. reprieve. The demons of the psychosis left out some key information....

The floor felt like wool on my naked skin...an interesting contrast between the rough brashness of the carpet and the still, cold air. A glint of light from a razor, and from the released anguish on my leg abruptly disappears as the computer goes to sleep, like my wife in the next room over.

Memory served correctly as I guided my hand through the dark, feeling a stream move down the pale and scarred leg. The cold touch of steel. Just as cold is the ceramic floor of the half bathroom between the rooms. The stream continues to flow down as I sit on the toilet, naked, alone and desperate. 

The flaccid piece fit back in to my hand and I moved it as such to stretch it, the head clamped softly in between the left thumb and fore finger. A tension was felt in the base but also the mind. The cacophony erupted, and some cold air ventured through my nose and in to my lungs. An eternity in a few seconds as the razor went down to bow its flesh violin.

Reverberations of pain fill the ceramic concert hall. The opera of the muted grunt, and the percussion of steel clanging the floor for one brief solo.

A second stream is felt flowing down my body. Its as hot as the pain washing over my body....

The silence returns in time, and time continues to flow ever forward.

The cut was one of the smallest on my body, right in to the shaft of the penis. It was the most painful cut I ever did, and would be one of the worst bleeders.

Over time it did not leave a noticeable scar. Like so many victims, the scars are hidden behind the eyes and mind. In this case it is also hidden in some nerve damage that resulted in even more sexual problems in the following years. The penis, hardwired to breed and respond to sexuality, for me can also be a dying hard drive. Crashing in an instant, erasing sensation. The coma state I once entered after an orgasm has been replaced by the instant numbing of the penis without warning. No matter how good, how right, how sensational it is and feels....it can go blank for me now.

Perhaps it will one day not be a problem, as I sort things out and perhaps meet healthy people...but to this day, sex often can be the oasis. However, this oasis is real...only to find that the water has dried up......

[staticdecay-blog]

Post 6 - The Raft

Imagine being shipwrecked in the middle of the ocean. Waves and tides and currents batter you at will while predators loom just beneath the surface, some even making their presence known visibly or maybe even with little nips or brushes on your skin. There is no swimming to shore, no screaming for help because even with a coastal wind your voice will dissipate like a fog long before it reaches the human ear.

You are fortunate however, you have a small little raft that at the very least, and actually at the most as well, just keeps you afloat. It gives you a chance, albeit a small one of survival. Maybe you will get lucky, the winds will blow and take you on a course that avoids the myriad of storms, and you get to shore simply dehydrated, famished, sunburned and waterlogged.

That is one outcome......

A sea of shit can be taken many ways. Some may know it as a quagmire. Some may know it as a rough patch. Some may know it as choppy waters.

I knew it as middle and high school. A time where it was a void and felt like that shipwrecked person staring at the horizon and seeing nothing but the horizon....no end. Only the ocean, only the sea that was going to kill me.

The beatings came and went daily, and my cries for help reached seemingly nowhere. It felt like nowhere. There were my parents...there was one aging police officer...there was one boy in school...and there was Mr. Brian Pacos.

But even islands disappear in the horizon as you drift on the threshold of death, the irony rich of how you may die of dehydration in what is ultimately an enormous puddle of water.

Mr. Pacos was my homeroom monitor in the 7th grade. This was the only time I saw him.

He was a good man and I know this because without ever talking to me much he realized how much I was suffering. He was able to see what was happening: that I had no friends only punches, pushes, trips, and kicks. He was able to hear what was happening: no laughter by me but at me; the only words spoken to me being or involving the words "fucking faggot."

And he tried to shield me from it with what he could. He understood that maybe something, even in its limited capacity, could have the ability to provide SOMETHING....some stability, some reprieve, some kind of hope for somebody.

He would let me stay in homeroom after we were supposed to leave and go to first period. He would give me a hall pass to leave after all the kids were clear from the hall, and if he couldn't let me stay a few more minutes and I had to face the battery that came from the students in the halls, Mr. Pacos would walk me personally to where I had to go so for at least 1-3 minutes I would not take direct hits. I would pay hell for it later but at least right then and there, I was spared a bit.

Mr. Pacos was a likeable person and I am sure that translated outside of his profession. He was not out of shape, not ugly, and he could be charismatic.

The year was coming to a close and I was "looking forward" to summer where I would have no friends but at least not take daily beatings. I would hope and dream that in 2 months people would forget about it, forget about me and that I could walk in to those hallways and be cool, not assaulted....that Kayla would notice me finally...or that there would just be silence...no "faggot."

I didn't even want a high five or friends, I would settle for simply NOT being punched again.

It was Monday...the final week of school in 1994. I was 13 at this time.

I had been dropped off by my dad to walk in to hell. I came and went through the door and quickly made my way to homeroom. 2 days of the weekend did not blunt my skills at dodging the "faggot" comments, or my ability to take some physical abuse such as meeting a wall and getting to really understand the particles of those sickly red/orange bricks that made them.

Wipe the brick dust off the mouth...at least there is no tears...get to the safety net of Mr. Pacos.

Walk in to the room and immediately look toward where I would see Mr. Pacos but something was wrong. He was not there. He was not standing at the corner of his desk like he normally was. He had never been late the entire year. Instead somebody else was sitting in his chair, somebody I had never before seen.

The predators were beginning to realize they were in the clear and starting to circle, like sharks sensing blood. A type of dread loomed over and sink heavily in to me.

Thankfully the home room bell rung and all the students fell in to their seats and routines, which started with morning announcements.

That dread feeling? That turned to a heavy somberness at the sound of the first words spoken over the crackling speaker. Those speakers made everything sound like a tragedy already but I could feel that this was different. This was not faulty or cheap technology distorting, this was real.

Something about tragedy. Something about losing somebody in our community.

"We mourn the tragic loss of Mr. Brian Pacos..."

The raft I was floating on in the sea of shit...it had splintered apart, it had been destroyed and taken from me and now all I had was the view of that unreachable horizon...

Blackness. This is the only way I can describe my transition in that moment. I detached, I shut down. I do not remember anything from the rest of that day or the week. I am certain it went no different except I did not have the few minutes of reprieve in the morning. Five more days and I got two months of "calm."

Mr. Pacos died in a car accident. He was 29 years old when he died and would be buried at the cemetery up the road from our house. I have driven pass it numerous times and every single time I say my thank you to him. I have never brought myself to visit the grave...maybe someday...

Until that all I can do is honor him with the words of praise and thanks. He died, as a couple others later in my life, unexpected and without knowing what they did for me... I am thankful he died at the end of the year so at least I got a cumulative few hours of peace that year, I got to float with some hope in the sea of shit. in a world where there are no, or very, very few heroes, Brian Pacos was one of them.

Even heroes die and fall to the currents of chaos.

[staticdecay-blog]

Post 5 - Abandonment Issues

I have been asked before of why I am infatuated with, and enjoy being in abandoned buildings. I can speak at length of the parallels between those spaces and my own self and my emotional space, about the comfort I find in the affinity with them. They stand in their neighborhoods, overlooked or hated by most, neglected, becoming ruins and testaments to the nature of decay......but for the few that take the risk to their health, their freedom, and rise to the fears of being labelled a weirdo or outcast...they find a beauty there, they find story after story after story told on and in the walls, in the furniture left behind, in the documents, pictures, and relics that are scattered among the floors.

To find the history of a building, and how it became abandoned is usually a not overly complicated affair. Sometimes it can be found simply by looking at it, such as when a fire claims it and leaves a large chunk collapsing and charred. Other times it is not so obvious but usually boils down to economic failures in general. The actual details can be so completely varied...some are failed business ventures, some suffer from gentrification, some have slumlords, some have histories of drugs......they are like us in so many ways...a thousand faces a thousand stories...there will be similar circumstances among many of us but rarely the exact same.

I have been asked not nearly as much, how I came to have abandonment issues. For years I thought on this...I would trace scar after scar that is etched in my flesh and ruminate on it. The first answer was "because I am BPD." This is, however, a very common and dangerous answer/dynamic because it shuts down really finding out WHY?

Then I began to think back over my life. I thought of the numerous people in my teens and adult years who said they would "be there" and then cut out as soon as things got remotely tough, or even remotely not tough. Girlfriends...friends....mentors......it was a pattern that I saw and experienced in my life but even those instances...those were not the causes, those were symptoms.

Just as the obvious answers of why those buildings are empty and falling apart can be found but lack the details...so too can it be pretty easy to see the pattern of my own abandonment issues. However, the details may require some digging beyond the daily newspaper archives or beyond the archives etched in my skin.......

The year is something I cannot recall beyond a rough guess, but based on certain things such as the vehicle we drove and the fact we often went to the playground, I would guess it was between 1990 and 1992. I know for certain it was before the years of hell I would face in Fredonia middle and high school. It happened in early summer and I would have been between 9 and 11 years old.

The playground at Fredonia Central School was a sprawling fortress back in those days. It would later be torn down as a safety hazard but in its time it was called the creative playground. It was entirely made of wood with everything interconnecting. A lot of hidden passages, bridges, towers that would give way to tire tunnels, various monkey bars, slides, poles, and no shortage of things to climb, jump on or off from, run across, and potentially break your neck on.

Remember all those old NES games? It was extremely easy to take yourself to those scenarios on this playground. It was NOT a playground it was a haunted castle, or a fortress held by the evil ninjas or soldiers. There is a reason it was called the creative  playground...because it was ripe to create various fantasies to act out in our solitude when we were not star athletes or cool kids.

It was also an extremely good spot to play hide and seek or capture the flag if you had friends or random playmates that happened to be at the playground at the same time.

My father had gotten home from work and after dinner he somehow found the energy after 8 or more hours of grinding steel in a sweltering mill to take me to the playground. The sun was just beginning to set as we were pulling up to the playground. This meant we would get about 45 minutes or so.

The frogs could be heard from the small forest patch that contained a little pond, and the sounds of the night started to fall as I opened up to the playground. It did not take long to ask my dad to play hide and seek with me. There were no other people at the playground that evening, and my father was a good father, despite the fatigue he surely felt he would stand up and he would do something I find myself incapable of as an adult...he could get very in to this childs life and escape the real world with him.

I hid first.

I thought I was clever and I found myself a spot in some hidden crevice. As I would also do as an adult, I would overlook some very obvious setbacks in the plan and soon after I would be crushed to find I was not nearly as clever as I thought.

I do not know how my father found me but he was good at finding things. He grew up in the country and was decent at tracking and noticing things. He probably saw my footprints or made himself invisible and would stealthily wait for me to move a bit and he would see it and then slowly move in to tag me.

Sometimes I would get frustrated with it and the fact that he never let me win. As good a man as my father was, and as good a father as he was, he still had some short comings, as we all do or will. One thing he did not always see was when enough was enough. There was a time we were playing HORSE in our backyard, and every time I would shoot the ball, he would say in an announcers voice "Barkey shoots...and he puts up a brick" and I would get sooooo mad. In that incident I ended up in tears and crying to my mother....

The sun was falling further towards the horizon and the temperature was cooling with it, and I had to find my dad as I was "it" now. I had reached the mandatory count which was probably 50, but I can't recall for certain.

I started up high near the big wizard tower structure. I felt I could see the most ground from there. After climbing up the tower and coming out I crossed the bridge and kept my eyes out both below me, and to the left where the rest of the playground was after crossing a balance beam. There was no sign of my father.

After the bridge I started looking in the hidden areas below the bridge before going to the area that connected to the hard, one board balance beam that I could not get across without stepping off a couple of times. This area had more hidden areas within it and I started clearing them. Numerous people had been there, as was evidenced by the simple and young graffiti displaying things like "Jenny <3's Tim" or a statement of dislike against one teacher or another.

None of the people that had been there though were not there now, nor was my father.

Temperature drop. Losing light. I clear the playground with no sight of my father. Panic rising.

My mind went to the place it went every time my parents would leave: "what if they dont come back?" If they ran late I would become very panicked inside of myself and think they were dead or that something happened to them. They always came back though.

My mind was racing because I could not find my father. It was racing faster than the speed of horizon swallowing the sun, faster and louder than the frogs who were screaming at me.

I combed through the wooden corridors, towers, bridges and nooks looking for him again.

I came to sit at the foot of the widest slide in the playground. I watched the sun disappear over Lake Erie in the distance, creating intense shadow figures of nearby trees and houses. I was crying hysterically at this point with full rivers being developed from what were first gently moving streams down my cheeks.

I was left alone. It happened.

Through misted, glassy, blurred eyes I made my way back to the van. I opened the passenger door and climbed in to the seat. I was hoping that my dad was in the van but that was dispelled as soon as that door opened.

My head slumped down, staring at my feet...this is a position I would come to know well a few years later for numerous reasons. I would occasionally find the hope and will to look out the window to see if my dad had magically reappeared. He didn't.

The sun was all but gone but my tears certainly were not. My breathe was dwindling from the sobs and crying. No hope was felt so I aimlessly looked back at the window.

A shadowy figure moved and I realized it was not a backlit tree. This figure moved closer and closer until it could be recognized as my father..........

Parents have the best of intentions a lot of times. Mine certainly did. My father never considered the consequences of not "letting me win." He, nor I could have ever predicted that twenty years later I would sit within the walls of, or on the roof of some decrepit abandoned building self portrait, watching that same sun disappear, taking the light with it....and contemplating HOW I came to relate more with that spot than any person I have ever met.

[staticdecay-blog]

Post 4 - Acute Pain

There is a wonderful ignorance in childhood that may, or may not go with innocence. A lack of knowledge that fuels ones imagination, sense of adventure, and genuine curiosity. The things we find in the explorations during this time can forge things in us that will not manifest for decades, and when we do we may never make the connection of where it came from.

"Why do you cut yourself?"

It's a question that at least one person will think of daily when they see me. but maybe one in a hundred will ever ask me in any capacity.

I stare in the mirror, at the flesh braille that tells countless stories over my entire body. Thousands of letters sent to a world that never sees them beyond disgust.

Next to this mirror I stare in to is a bathtub and this is where it began.

Not this exact bathtub, but an old claw foot bathtub that could collapse through a floor because of its weight...especially in our old house. I do not recall my exact age but would venture to say it was probably between 7 and 9 years old...I would take baths and I would play with various toys...this one scuba diver was my favorite...my mother bought him for me at Fayes, which was behind Hills department store and I would spend hours with him...he could be wound up and he would kick to explore the depths of the world I created for him in my mind...a vast ocean on a different planet, full of dangers, creatures, and strange forces. I cant remember all the things we explored and found together in that tub, but this is one thing beyond my childhood yearning of Punky Brewster that he witnessed.

We had finished our adventure and I would guess the sun was going down since the water was cooling and my skin resembled a prune. We were getting ready to head back to our planet when I noticed something on the edge of the mini ocean I was in.

The item was plastic, had a handle that was about 5 inches, and then a cross section of about an inch...it looked kind of like a "T" and it was a drab orange-brown...more on the orange side though. I knew it belonged to my mother but I did not have any idea of what it was for.

Curiosity killed the cat they say......

I picked up this strange item and started examining it from all angles. I asked my scuba diver friend if he had any idea of what it was but sadly, he did not.

I brought it closer to my face, I turned it around and I noticed a contrast in it. I noticed something flat and silver in the little cross section. My soft and fumbling fingers touched the various sections, I slide one of the fingers up the longer part and toward the cross where it met my other hand. My finger went gliding over the cross section...

Maybe it was like tearing out one of those scabs that has set itself deep in the wound...maybe...the feeling of ones flesh slicing apart provides an acute sensation that may just be like no other sensation.

The sting was unmistakable as was my scream and cries that followed immedietly. My scuba friend seemingly swam away for fear of sharks that would surely come hunting, but my mother came in to the bathroom to see what the matter was.

I could not answer her obvious question, but it did not take long for her to see my finger and the gash that was in it, and was leaving a stream flowing in to the ocean where I swam. She airlifted me from the dangerous waters, leaving my scuba friend behind but I could not even be concerned at that moment. All I felt was fear and stinging...panic would be an apt word to describe it.

My mother would go on to nurse the wound, but I had more subconscious questions than conscious answers. Though it was explained to me, I could not really understand and I had no concept of the pathway that had just been cleared years ahead......

It would be a few years later and it was summer. I was helping my father outside with some housework...though it could probably be argued by a third party observer that I was just keeping him company. My father did not seem to mind though.

All of my hard company keeping made me hungry for an afternoon snack so I went inside and  I grabbed a can of Slim Jim snacks. It had yet to be opened so I was gonna get to do some work after all, and I figured I would bring my father one as well.

The can had a peel off aluminum lid which I struggled to get off but I did succeed. It had such a unique shape and shine that I thought it would be fun to take outside and play with after delivering the snack to my father.

I walked back outside and accomplished my mission of feeding my father and keeping him alive. After all, that IS what I did...it was a most dangerous mission and it was critical for the survival of the hero that was my father. He was happy with the boost from his sidekick, and I was happy for the recognition.

Now I had this interesting treasure to deal with and figure out. The top from the can was transformed in to some mysterious artifact that required a lot of research and thorough examining.

I crushed it between my hands, and then I rolled it across my hand, and it clicked in my mind that it kind of resembled a pizza cutter. My mind ventured to thinking my hand was a pizza and I was cutting it up for delivery to some lucky person.

Acute.

Pain.

There was a long gash across the palm of my hand and the blood came almost faster than the screams from my mouth. The pizza cutter can lid had fallen to the ground with my tears and both my father and mother came to find me, with this gash in my hand. It took them a minute to realize what had happened, but soon they saw the lid and matched it to the wound on my hand.

The sight of this wound, with the flash separated going right across my palm...from the thumb area to just below the pinky finger. It would not be the deepest wound I ever took once you tacked on the rest of the years that would come, but at that age it was most assuredly the worst wound I had ever had, or seen.

Years later I would come to hold a razor to my skin and consciously pull it across the flesh of my leg in a wound that would not even be half as long or deep as the one on my palm. There was a huge difference however, an important difference. Like so many things from when any of us are kids, the palm wound was very much an accident born of ignorance. The leg, however was very consciously decided upon. The result was anticipated though the pain of being a child WAS forgotten to a degree, until that familiar splitting of the tissue occurred.

On one half of the slice was the past, the innocent ignorance that causes accidents.

On the other was the first steps in the novelization in my flesh of trauma, pain, and strength.  It would become not a book but a tome, and it has yet to be completed.

[staticdecay-blog]

Post 3 - Reasonably Certain

Have you ever noticed how tall a flag pole at school really is? Looking up from its bottom, when you sit at it, it can make you feel similar to how the cosmos does: small and finite. It seems to reach forever, and sitting at its base, watching the autumn sky turn shades of orange and fade to dark, I might have wondered if any tongues were ever stuck to this pole on some ridiculous childhood bet or dare......

My spine crushed up against the shining metal giant, my head crushed in to my knees and I watered any secret flowers in the ground with tears. I didn't want to be here. It felt like hours had passed, actually it felt like years had passed and that is because hours actually HAD passed, which brought the tide of the student body from the cleared cafeteria of the local high school to the courtyard waiting area, where parents had already been waiting to pick up their shining little stars.

Eventually I heard a car slow down, and stop in front of me. I didn't have to look up to know it was my families car...just as any person can learn the sound of their own car, you pick out the little nuances in its sputters, squels, and clunks......or maybe you only do that when you are one of the only families with a car manifesting those discernible and audible traits......

I didnt want to look up, I didn't want to get up. As much as I hated facing the student body and the torment they brought to me, I hated facing my mother even more because I knew I broke her heart. I was one of her greatest joys but to everybody else besides my father and maybe brother, I was nothing but a joke and punchline......I didn't want to have the conversation, I didn't want to be right, and I didn't want to compete in a crying contest......

It was 1994, October and I was 13, going on 14 years old. I was in 9th grade which had just started the prior month, but for me it was the same as 8th grade, which was the same as 7th grade, which was the same as 6th grade: that is I got punched everyday, shoved, spit on, and called faggot at least 100 times...everyday.

There was a girl that had transferred to our school and her name was Kayla. She had wonderfully wavy auburn hair that fell to just below her shoulders, and a pale face with soft features, and lips thatdefy description. I remember her laugh, hearing it in the hallways or classrooms. She was beautiful to me, and to most people, and she gave off an air of innocence, like she would not harm anything.

Kayla had no trouble adjusting to this new school system and was already, in the less than 2 months she had been there, surrounded with friends who were both boys and girls.

Now, there is a neccessity I find, for somebody faced with atrocity to put themselves in a fantasy world in order to process and make it through the harsh reality they face. Kayla was my fantasy in those times. Not sexually, I had not reached that point yet. This fantasy centered solely around the idea that she would be different, that she would NOT call me a faggot, or point at me and sneer, and laugh with her friends. I fantasized that she would talk to her friends and make them relent the torture they put me through. And most of all, I fantasized that Kayla would actually talk to ME, and that we would be friends forever.

There was a homecoming dance approaching and though 9th grade dances, I am told decades later, dont mean anything, to the 9th grader version of me it meant a lot of things. It meant dread, and it marked perhaps the first time my delusional and wanton love propelled some fantasy, which put me in harms way.

I suppose it didn't help that my mother forced me to go.

It's not that she was malicious, she was not. Quite the contrary. My mom believed in attrition, and she came from a pretty moral, catholic polish upbringing. Turn the other cheek was a big concept for her. I remember her telling me how I could not let those kids see that I was being bothered by them, that if I just acted like nothing was wrong, and I let it roll off me, that it would pass eventually.

I would find later in life that this tactic does have its place, in fact it can be both a miracle and a nuclear bomb to somebody. During this time in my life though it was nothing but emaciating......hindsight is bitch but its always 20/20......

I fought as hard as I could to not go to this dance because I knew what awaited me beyond the assault of "you never know if you dont try" that I was being subjected to, and would fire off like a machine gun in the trench warfare that would be my life. There are some things that are reasonably certain: that the sun is going to rise for the rest of the days I am alive and that you are alive; that someday I am going to die and so will you; that pizza is universally great (except the cardboard-like pizzaposter they served in school lunches...that was nasty....though again, hindsight...) and that the kid who had been getting beaten and called faggot everyday of his life for the last three or so years and had zero friends or social skills, was going to be anything BUT the laghing stock and joke of this school dance.

Maybe not guaranteed, but most definitely reasonably certain.

Parents are always correct and I was on my way to the dance. I remember the shirt I wore, it was this long sleeve button up, with metal snap buttons. It was a blue/grey and it had a colorful stripe pattern that was not obnoxious, but certainly was not setting the paris runways ablaze either. I thought it was cool and I liked it.

In the car I started to escape in to my fantasy world, where Kayla would notice me, that THIS would be the night. I got a lot crammed in to this fantasy in the 10 minutes it took to deposit me in front of the entrance to the school.

After getting out of the car with the information that my mother would be back in about 3 hours, I looked at the entrance to the school, which resembled exactly how the house in Night of the Demons looks when the characters first arrive for the party. It looked overwhelming, scary, and unwelcoming.

The sidewalk was wide and was poured with that really white cement, and it would narrow to where the doors gave entrance to the main hallway of the high school. As you would walk up this sidewalk, the cafeteria was on the left, and before I even started walking I could see the crystal ball, the lights, the decorations, and the numerous girls and boys.

The dread I felt to walk up that sidewalk, and expose myself to the student body was immeasurable. Imagine a sniper who has wounded you, but you have taken refuge behind good cover. However, you know to go anywhere, you have to leave said cover, and you know that is certain death. That is pretty close, I imagine, to how I felt in this moment.

I warred with myself to move my feet, and slowly I watched them take one step, then another. I somehow picked my eyes up, looked in, and scanned the place. I would try so hard to project the thought and energy that I was cool, that I was worth knowing. This projection would get smothered and obliterated as soon as my presence became known. I would nod at somebody, smile, and say "whats up?" like we were buddies, nd I would get a response that insinuated that I wanted to suck their dick, and then laughter from the person and any of their friends.

Though numerically speaking, in terms of feet and inches or meters, it was shorter than the walk up the sidewalk, It was an even longer walk across the cafeteria/dance floor to where I would try to stand and blend in and wait for a girl to ask me to dance. I got myself a cup of orange drink and stood among the other boys.

The first remark I heard was from a kid who told his friend to not stand with his back toward me because I would try to fuck him. The friend turned around laughed, and told me "back up faggot."

More similar comments  came my way until I was standing in the corner by myself, looking mostly at the ground and having already gave up on the orange drink. I looked up at some point and I saw Kayla across the cafeteria, she was with a few people. I longed so badly to talk with her, for her to just notice me....to dance with me.

I saw one of her friends look at me, laugh, then the other friends looked at me, at which point I cast my gaze back to my generic brand pump sneaker. I dont know if Kayla laughed at me or not, or if she even looked at me. In my mind I was not even worth her looking at to mock.

I could not hold on to the fantasy, and I felt it slip away with each beat of the song that was playing. Kids had started dancing with each other and before everyone was paired up, I received a shower of some ice which had been thrown my way by an upper classman. There were a few girls who did not have dance partners, but I was not worthy because to dance with me, to even talk to me, would have gotten them thrown from their social circle. So instead they snickered, laughed, occasionally gazed at me while doing so.

Again...not certain they were talking or joking about me...but reasonably certain.

Before the song was over, I made an even more awkward walk back across the cafeteria to the door. More than one person remarked about having to watch out for the faggot, protect their date from the faggot. In a surprise turn of events, there was not nearly as much physical pushing or tripping as I expected.

I walked out the door, back in to the hallway, and then back outside and tp the flag pole.

I collapsed under it and though the sky was mostly clear in its dusk, a rain flooded down my face. Just like any storm it came in waves over the next couple of hours. I would cry myself out then just sit, feeling the rapidly cooling and darkening air, and then I would have another wave of tears, sobs, and heavy breathing.

The fantasy crept back in, that Kayla would come out and see how much I was hurting, how I was alone. She would put her hand on mine, and her arm would entwine through mine and we would watch the burning sky. She would dry the tears and be the rainbow that came after the rains.

Shortly after the fantasy started it dissolved in to replaying the loop of the last 20-30 minutes, and wondering when my mom would get there. I tried to break up the loop by projecting my thoughts to my mom, hoping she would hear them and come to the rescue. Just like Kayla however, they never reached her, and I waited under that flag pole for about 2 hours.

Unlike Kayla, my mother eventually came and before any words were spoken in the car, I knew her regret. I saw it on her face, I felt her painful energy. I don't think we spoke much on the ride home. There was not much to say, but anybody who would have seen us, or would have been in the car, even near an opened window of it, would have felt that heavy energy of sorrow pour from that car, like a fog in those old science fiction and horror films I escaped to.

I can say that with pretty reasonable certainty.

[staticdecay-blog]

Post 2 - Baby Skates

I grew up in a working class family. My father was a steel plant worker, and my mother was a home maker. Our financial situation is what would have been known as "middle-class" which is something that is largely gone now. My brother and I would get decent Christmases and birthdays, which was hard due to the proximity of both of our birthdays to Christmas, but my dad and mom always gave us the best they could.

In the other months of the year, and in most ways, at least in the view of the broader social world, we were behind the curve. The rest of our town was filled with a lot of doctors, lawyers, politicians, and professionals. Our house was old and run down, our cars were old and breaking down, our toys and belongings were not quite up to date.

There were some kids on the next street down, which is named Hillcrest Drive, and it is just as affluent as it sounds, and once in awhile I would play with them when I was around 7 or 8. There were two brothers, a brother and sister, and then one other girl who was especially stuck up and snotty. If the four others thought s their parents did, that they were too good to be having me around, they certainly did not show it. The lone girl though, who I will simply refer to as R, she was entirely different and she showed her disdain for me.

It was late September or early October, just after a summer where I saw my first vagina, and other penises besides mine.

It was cool enough that I wore a blue denim jacket when I went outside after playing this game on Nintendo......in that game you were heroes on roller skates fighting through the city against a gang and trying to save somebody.......

I wanted to be that hero and like most kids of that time, I went out and pretended to be.

The problem was, however, that I did not own any roller skates. Well, not any REAL roller skates as most known them.

What I had was something that came from either The Salvation Army, or picked up from a yard sale by my mom. They were these Fisher-Price solid steel frames, painted royal blue, with bright orange hard plastic wheels that were anything but smooth to the touch, or to the spin. You would fasten them to your own shoes with a couple of leather straps on the top! Voila!! Roller skates of the poor.

I didn't have roller skates from whatever brand was big back then, but I had these and I loved them. They allowed me to live out this fantasy that I had just been implanted with from that video game. I had used them before but never with the vigor and passion I was about to.

I strapped them to my camouflage sneakers, put my coat on and I stepped out in to what were now the mean streets of my town. No longer was it a small village but was instead a sprawling metropolis ruled by a ruthless gang. I went down our broken sidewalk, walked over our stone driveway to the road, and I zipped in to action.....okay, I probably didn't zip because the skates barely rolled....but in my mind I was so thoroughly cool and anybody that saw me would be envious.

I made my way down Pine Drive, which was directly across from our house, and in the late afternoon, post school sun I beat up bad guys and narrated the commercial for the game that I was the star and hero of. I turned on to Main Street and continued down the curb, so totally absorbed in my own world. I got more confident and more in to it. I skated harder, punched faster, did some very feeble jumps over cracks, and tried a spin move that in hindsight could not have lacked any more in grace. It did not stop me though, if the gang of hoodlums could not stop me, my own lack of athletic ability or basic coordination was not going to.

I found myself "skating" toward, and then up Hillcrest Drive.

There was a field right next to the house of the brother and sister, and this house would be the first I went by and would find them, along with the two brothers playing in the field where we usually gathered to play kickball, tag, or climb the pine trees.

I don't recall what they were doing at this time but I decided to take a break from being crime fighting hero to say hi to my friends and perhaps invite them on the adventure. After a brief talk the rest of them were getting their roller skates and we were meeting in front of the house of the two brothers. Their home was next door to where R lived, and she came out when she saw all of us. We told her that we were gonna roller skate and then she looked at me, looked at my feet, and started to make fun of my Fisher-Prices.

She kept referring to them as "baby skates" and her insults would center around that, around calling me a baby. I defended them because I loved them, and I told her how my mom got them from me from a sale or thrift store. I did not have the awareness at that age to know the hole I was digging myself......it felt like how when you are walking down the street, and the sidewalk has come up but you don't see it, and you stumble and jam your knee...just not seeing it coming......or you are watching the sky, or your phone screen and step in a huge pothole...lack of awareness so often hurts.

My family, my skates, and me kept getting made fun of by R and I was on the verge of crying because I felt terrible for not having as much money as her and her family. The four other kids did not chime in, they did not tell her to back off, and I guess that demonstrated what kind of "friends" they really were but again, awareness...

So I reached a point where I had had it and I spit in R's face. Its the only thing I could think of. I was not really old enough to fight, and even if I was, I didn't believe you hit girls....even one like R who was about 5 inches taller than me (she grew up fast, I grew OUT more at that age) and may have deserved it.

So I spit on her, thinking that would shut her up.

R looked absolutely stunned and I thought to myself "good you fucking twat" (Yes, I had a HORRIBLE mouth when I was a kid, worse than now.) She blinked a couple of times, made kind of a sour face and I smiled inside, if not on the outside as well. I had won, and in my mind the fantasy I had just lived out 10-15 minutes earlier had become a reality. I stood up against this bully in front of a group of people.

I did it.

The next thing I felt was my nose crunch in to my face, and that unmistakable pain of being punched square in it. The tears shot up and out of my eyes, rolling down my face at rapid speed. Almost just as fast my hands came up and a loud wailing scream, followed by sobs.

The four other kids laughed at me and R told me to take my baby skates and to go cry at home with them....and I did. I took them off on the spot and I walked home crying and sobbing. I don't recall if I threw the skates outside of the house, or in my room, but I know I never touched them again after this day. I hated them so much and I felt bad for hating them.

The four other kids and their laughter have echoed for a long time, and once in awhile I still hear them. That day marks the first time, certainly not the last time, where an entire group of friends turned on me in an instant and went from close friends to being ruthless bullies.

I sometimes find myself thinking about those blue steel frames, and I apologize to them in my mind and try to thank them for the fun they gave me but it always happens that over the remembered sound of the rough wheels spinning, comes not the sound of praise for the hero I was in my fantasy, but the chants of "baby skates..."

[staticdecay-blog]

Post 1 - “It’s Going to Be Okay...”

Are you familiar with those shag type carpets? They are kind of soft, fluffy and welcoming to a certain point. It gave a comfortable illusion of something to cuddle when I didn't have a stuffed animal. At that age I always slept with a stuffed crocodile that was named Mr. Croc. The only time I didn't is if I stayed over at a friends house. I made that mistake once and got called baby and other variants of it for the trouble I went through to be able to sleep more decently.

It was October and it was 1990 and it was a few weeks short of my 10th birthday. I was going to be staying the night at the house of a friend. Two friends actually as they were brothers. One was the same age as myself, and his brother was 4 or so years older than us. For some reason this older kid liked having me around so that made me feel like one of the "cool kids" which is something I would come to struggle with more down the line.

I was always a bit awkward and off center. A bit slower in some ways. I had big ears, longer rat tail/mullet, I couldn't tie my shoes until well after other people, I picked my nose, I swore a TON, and I had silly clown wall paper that I loved and felt bad for because everybody hated it and made fun of it. I still remember the clowns now, and the ring tricks they were doing on those walls...

So for an older, cooler kid to kind of take me under his wing made me feel pretty good and acceptable.

I had stayed on the floor of these brothers before numerous times. It was always really cold and drafty, but there was this patch of shag carpeting that did not cover the whole floor for whatever reason, so at least I was not laying on the even colder, even harder wood floor.

It was like any other time, we stayed up playing video games, playing with toys (because that is what you did when we were young) such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers, and our wrestling action figures.

The room was set up where when you came in the door, the older brothers bed was along the wall directly to the right. You would be looking straight across and up the bed of the younger brother. It was a rather large room actually and even with the two beds and brothers there was still ample space, though a lot of it was covered over with clothing, socks, and a beanbag chair which inevitably, would get involved in a pillow fight or 'rasslin match......that is until somebody got smashed in the face with the "heavy" pillow....it was usually me or the younger brother and we would break down in to tears. It happens.

I am sure it happened that night. It was all in good fun and deep down inside, through the pain we knew that. Or thought we did anyway. I thought I did.

The night wore down until the eyelids grew heavy. I cleared away my usual space on the shag carpet, pushing aside socks, pants, tee shirts with crazy patterns from the late 80's. It was a colorful pile that is for certain. I then put my sleeping bag on the carpet, put my pillow down, and after all of us agreeing to get up for Saturday morning cartoons, we turned off the light.

Darkness. I was afraid of the dark still at this age. And I didn't have Mr. Croc. This is why I didn't sleep too good at other people's houses most of the time.

Another thing that happens to me, even back then, is that I will have a wave of heat just wash over my body. Now that I am older I would just sleep naked, or near naked to mitigate this but even then, I will poke my feet, or entire leg, or entire half of torso, or everything except my genitals because I will get so warm that I am pretty sure I am pregnant, or have some oven DNA in me.

Back then I did not sleep naked. I had pajamas. Full pants and shirt, then I was in this burrito of a sleeping bag. It would get excruciatingly hot, so I would bring my arms outside of the sleeping bag, and would usually unzip it at least half way, sometimes more.

Darkness Darkness had come to a brain shut behind heavy lids of eyes.

That's when the fire started. Not an actual fire, like, the house was burning down. No, that would have been worlds better but I would have to wait another 9 or so years for that catastrophe.

This is the fire that comes with being stabbed or cut. I would become no stranger to the sensation of my flesh being opened by blades both surgically sharp or rusted dull and I will tell you that none of those wounds, no matter how scary, how deep, burned or hurt like this wound did.

Have you ever been woken up and you are unsure of what is happening to you? It takes a minute or five for the alarms in your head to shut off, for you to pull focus and realize that you are not dead? It was a similar effect as this pain woke me up.

Pure uncertainty and confusion. I had never before felt precisely, or so intimately how a shag rug carpet feels against your cheek. Wait...why was my face in the golden brown shag carpet and not on my pillow?

I was almost ten years old and already felt the weight of the world pressing down on me. Wait...that is a body and it is crushing me against the floor, putting pressure so that my chest cannot expand to take in oxygen. Suddenly the shag carpet is not so soft and I feel so thoroughly the hard wood that lies just beneath it.....funny how this would become a metaphor I would see over and over in my life....the appearance of something soft and comforting but really it is just cold and hard and offers no solace or forgiveness.

My brain finally was pinpointing, as much as it could when you are being stabbed, laying on a hard floor.

It is in this moment I felt wet in two places. The first was in my eyes as tears welled up. I do not know if these tears would ever reach the ground because a hand quickly came to my face, mainly my mouth to silence the gasps. I heard a phrase that would also become a mantra spoken to me later on by many different voices: "It's okay."

The second point of moistness can be summed up by me saying I understand to a degree how a teen girl feels the first time she has her period and is in NO WAY prepared for it. Blood from a place you didn't know it would come from. Except I do not have a vagina and I was not experiencing my first period. My anus was being torn by the erect penis of a much larger boy. I felt the blood trickle down.

This is the first time I notice the cold air hitting me. My sleeping bag was open, I was completely exposed. The sensation of warm meets cold is something later in life I would find fascinating and it is only as I write this that I might have an idea why. The feeling of warm blood draining over naked skin which was being washed in the crisp, dark air of this old bedroom.

There was nowhere to run. There was nowhere to hide. There was only the pain of being stabbed. and then stabbed again. and again.

The stabbings finished after a steady progression of intensity, the weight of the world hitting down harder, the breath being restricted my a stronger hand. I could feel the muscles of the older brother convulse and tense up.

Then I felt even more warmth and wetness coming from my wound as it sought to close around the knife-like instrument that created it. I felt his breath come over my face and eventually the hand moved from my mouth. Shock had come over me and I began to shut down. This is something that will still happen to me sometimes when I am doing really bad. It is a response to extreme trauma.

The last thing I remember is hearing the words again "It's okay. It's going to be okay"

I would have a hard time sleeping for a long time. I could not process what had happened. I don't remember watching Saturday morning cartoons the next morning. I don't know if anybody noticed if I was off, if they did I didn't say anything beyond just saying I was sick. I didn't tell ANYBODY about what happened until I was about 23 years old. In those years so much more happened, but the waves that cast out in my person still make my waters choppy.

I don't know if any of those tears I cried that not hit the floor. I damn sure hope though that if any of them got on the skin of the older brother, I hope they burned him, and I hope they haunt them now. A type of stigmata. I have never forgotten, I never will. It IS my experience though that people who commit heinous things or cause immense pain or damage, the do forget, at least sometimes. They often go on to live fairly "normally." I will see this with other people from my life who committed horrible atrocities against me, cross my path and act like nothing ever happened.

Just like victims, they compartmentalize the violence. They lock it away. History is written by the victors and violence too often does not haunt the perpetrator as it does the recipient. We get the ghosts and we get the voices of support and do you know what they say?

"It's going to be okay......"