#listened to brave enough in like 4th 5th 6th grade

[snonkerdoodlefizzy221b]

ain't no way brave enough by lindsey stirling and prayers for the damned/blessed were all released in the same year

[talvin-muircastle]

Illness as a Trigger

I will occasionally discuss aspects of the abuse I suffered as a child and how I cope with it now that I am an adult.  I do this here because it helps me to write stuff out, and also because it may reach someone who has lived or is living through a similar experience--and I know just how alone you can feel.  

So please consider yourself warned.

Welp.  I’m sick.

Nothing serious.  Nothing that even calls for a Doctor’s visit as yet.  Fluids, rest, I should be fine soon.  Very...ordinary.

Except, of course, that this brings back painful memories.  Yeah, just being sick can lead to flashbacks.  

I was ten.  At the urging of my Fourth Grade teacher, I was entered into the County Spelling Bee.  The stakes were high: if I won the 3rd and 4th Grade division, I would receive $50 and a trophy, and my teacher and my mother would be lauded as the most wonderful people for having produced such a genius!  If I won against the winners in the 5th/6th and 7th/8th divisions, I would go to the State Bee, and why I could even go on to the Nationals!  

Very, very high stakes, here, as you can see.  The future of the Free World rested on my ability to show up and Win. That. Spelling. Bee.

So when I had to stay home sick from school for three days before the Bee, it was a Crisis.  

I wasn’t just sick like that kid in The Princess Bride.  I was sick.  The night before the Spelling Bee, my temperature spiked to 105 degrees Fahrenheit, and Tylenol wouldn’t touch it. (I can’t have Aspirin: clotting disorder.)  My mother was a Licensed Practical Nurse.  Now, normally I would have been in the car or even an ambulance hauling ass for the hospital.  I should have been so lucky.

I remember screaming at the cold as I was washed down to try to bring my temperature down.  When you are that feverish, regular tap water feels like ice water.    I was given (on the prescription of an LPN, not even an RN or Nurse Practitioner, and NO Doctor EVER got involved!) doses of Tylenol that would normally not be given to an adult.  

The next morning, my temperature was down to a nice “safe” 102.  

So my loving, wonderful, caring mother did not call the teacher and say, “Look, he’s improved some, but he is no shape for this.  Put your second team in, this kid is on the bench.”  Oh, hell, no!

She took me to the County Spelling Bee.

I won the goddamn division, and took second in the County.  I was on my feet numbly reciting spelling words that I had memorized over and over for the last few months, and somewhere in the midst of that Hell my fever finally broke.  

My mother.

Was.

A.

HERO.

What a brave, wonderful little boy I was to still do tricks for the adults even though I was sick enough that I should have been in the fucking hospital!  

And my mother, beaming with pride, tears in her eyes, took credit for it all.  

That was the day I started hating my mother.  That was the day I finally realized I was living with a monster.  That monster drove me through four more years of Spelling Bees, soaking up all the admiration, even when I tried to flunk out of the entry exam, even when I declared that I would kill myself rather than show up on the Big Day.   When I tried to hide from the teacher on the day of the in-school preliminary and she just found me and dragged me to it.

In later years, I had the opportunity to tell this story to a friend who is a Pediatrician.  She was horrified.  Talvin, she told me, if a child like that was in my practice, I would be reporting it pronto.  And the mother a nurse?  I’d report her to the state Board.  Talvin: That. Is. Child. Abuse.  Hearing that from someone in her position did a lot for me.  I had been gaslighted so much over that incident, made to think that I was blowing it so out of proportion.  She was not surprised about that, either.  I guess she has seen a lot.

A few years ago, we got a notice about a Spelling Bee in our daughter’s school that she could attend.  I did NOT shoot the messenger, nor did I rip their head off and shit down their necks, nor any of those other things that I felt immediately inclined to do.  After I had my emotions more or less under control, I gave a very condensed and highly edited version of the above, and said, “Thank you, but NO.”

They dropped it.

Because I have a slight fever, some moderate congestion (gack!), and some achiness, I am reliving those days in my head.  Helluva way to live, no?

If you made it this far, thank you for listening.

I listen, too.

*sneezes*

This sucks.