I rarely anticipate anniversaries beyond birthdays. My husband's death-versary always catches me off guard as does my father's. They both died in the same year. Social media and a few amazing friends make sure I don't lose track of all the moments that have led me to this moment, these moments, to today. For that I am grateful.
Today, April 29, 2019, was an ordinary day that promised, as almost every day can, to spin me around and force me to see myself. In my life, directly because of disruption and the mental impact of trauma and disassociation, I often miss major ... hallmarks? anniversaries? moments in time? I tend to succeed at the most unlikely of times. I have succeeded through traumas that I know should have resulted in my life looking more like the archetypal caricature of an abandoned child - young welfare mother - social screw up... and at times my life did/does look exactly like that. Somehow, as if living in parallel planes of existence that didn't impact each other in any way, I was both a disaster and a success. I don't know these things as mutually exclusive. When I have been most down, there is almost always ... a thing ... that pulled through the darkness with me. Like Peter Pan's disconnected shadow.
I live, as many children of trauma - including adoption - do. I live disassociative and disrupted. I am both here and almost always missing. It is like having to remember to clap at the end of a play you didn't see. You were there, but you were so distracted by the hard stuff, the life stuff, the survival stuff, that you didn't get to see the magic and music that were on stage. But, when everyone around you start clapping, you clap too because you understood that clapping is what you are supposed to do. At the end of the night, you piece together what you missed by listening to those around you. The greatest surprise comes when you realize that not only were you at the play, you were IN the play. Actually, you were the star.
When I was 24 I was a single mother of two little boys. We were traumatized and alone, I was dealing with fairly substantive mental health issues. Nothing was in my control. My children were keeping me tethered to this life. That is no way to live let alone parent. I was seeing a psychologist. I wish I could remember her name because she saved my life. During the only session I remember, in her dark office lit with amber lights, this person whose face I cannot recall gave me one of the greatest gifts of insight.
As I remember it, the psychologist told me that children who had experienced the kind of trauma and abuse that I had usually had one of two mental (psychic?) responses. What I heard her say was that severely abused children either experienced varying degrees of mental health breakdown - psychosis ... or they disassociated and continued to live their lives. She explained that this was how children who were raped in the morning could get up and go to school and never mention it. This is what I remember.
Whether or not my memory is correct, the idea of disassociation has stuck with me. It feels directly related to my thinking about genealogical disruption. It explained how I would come up missing, not that anyone noticed, and find myself in a place that I had no recollection of traveling to. It was like reentering my body, on a bus, an hour away from where I lived. It was living with the fear that I might misplace myself or my children. It was not being able to find my car, because I was somewhere else entirely. It was not being able to tell anyone because I understood what the systemic response to this behavior would be. It was somehow having a 3.5 gpa at a school I barely remember going to. Disassociative disorder was an answer that said survivor rather than subsidence.
Disassociation was my super power, my magic wand. I moved through terrible things in my young life and managed to keep moving up. I got up in the morning and went to school, to work, to job interviews. I won civic awards. I implemented award winning programs. In blocking out the terrifying, I also blocked out so much of the light. Maybe someday I will write about those things. Maybe I won't write about those things because they are no longer there - no longer accessible to me - no longer memories.
I will share that because of this "disassociative" affected life, most of my memories lie in pictures. I annoy everyone around me with the number of pictures I take. But, without those pictures, I would have almost no memory at all. Pictures are how I remember my father. Pictures are how I recall my father's laugh.
Today, I received an email at around 6:36 am from my new colleague at my new job. The email was a forwarded message from the man who took care of my father. My father had ALS and was in a hospital for special care and supported living for almost 20 years. P was a friend of my fathers with his own life and family. P took care of my father. I was unable to care for him. I would have insufferable guilt about not taking care of my father if I had the ability to retain such memory emotion in the ways other people do. All I have are mental (and some actual) still photos of my father over time. And the smell of the hospital... I will never out run that smell.
None of this is remarkable except that this email came on the exact day of the fifth anniversary of my PhD defense (without revision - has to be said). My colleague video tapped the defense. P showed my father that video. My father died five days later. My father was waiting for me to move into the space I am currently in - as his daughter - as the over comer of things. My father got his PhD when I was 3. He did his dissertation work while blocking out a wife that had severe mental health issues. My father was abused. I remember his graduation at Cornell. I remember almost not getting there because my mother was angry. I remember nothing else. But there are pictures.
I remember P. P sent my birthday and Christmas cards for almost 20 years. P sent my wedding china. P kept me connected to my father. My father's genetic family didn't understand my inability to be a proper daughter. They did not understand why I didn't visit regularly. The didn't understand why I was not in contact. At 3, my grandfather would yell at me for taking my mother's side. I think I did take my mother's side for a very long time. They don't know that I would call my father to come get me ... as blood ran down my thighs from the beatings. My mother would stand there and look at me while I talked to him. He never came. My father, whom I love dearly, was no better at parenting than I am. My father didn't teach me how to survive my mother nor how to live a fully connected life. I am an isolate in every possible way.
I am disrupted and disassociative, but I am here.
Within a span of an hour I had received P's email and a Facebook reminder about my PhD defense from a friend. I am so very grateful for both. In my mind or my memory or what ever passes for either of those things, these moments are not connected. My father's death and my PhD success do not touch in space and time. I understand that they happened almost simultaneously. But I had things to do. Running out of time with the parent I believe truly loved me, before I understood that love, was too painful. So I let go of that - my father's death - and with it, I let go of my PhD moment. I let go of something that I had worked almost 12 years for.
When i got my diploma, I left it in the Federal Express package... for two years. When I got to the job I am currently at, I finally framed it. The only reason it made it here is because my colleague had carefully tucked it away so I wouldn't lose it. For that and many kindnesses like it, I am grateful. I thank all of those folks, especially P today, for holding the pieces.
I have another huge life change coming in about 30 days. I will take pictures. I will try to remember.
More soon,
Baby Girl
