Sadly it’s just another day of my parents fighting. My father has come home drunk and my mother failed to hold her tongue. There have been times when she has said nothing and they have fought anyway but today was a bad day to ask him to be quiet. “Shhh, Irwin, the kids are in bed” she whispered from down the hall. My father ignoring her continues his verbal attack as he slams kitchen cupboards and throws dishes around. As violent as the sounds are they are comfortable, they are what I know as normal and the days when the house is calm I feel like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. On the quiet days everyone is on edge, everyone is waiting for the inevitable eruption. This was our reality, our normal despite the normal that existed around us.
My father is still raging and the sound of dishes shattering are the precursor for what I know will come next. Sitting in the corner of my room, baa baa wedged between the knees I am tightly hugging to me, it comes. The sound of calloused hand meeting soft flesh. I know the owner of the hand, the hand that now screeches through the air is the same hand that has tenderly held mine. I know the smell of the soft skin. It feels like velvet against my cheek and smells like baby powder and lilacs mixed together. I know that it’s only a matter of time before there is less time between the sickening sounds of violence and the hushed cries of pain. It will escalate, it always does.
Terrified I push farther into the corner, experience has taught me to stay put and wait for the quiet to return. I bravely ran to protect my mother once, but only ever once , I learned that lesson quickly. I can hear my mother cry out, I can hear my father cursing, I can hear the stomach turning sounds of flesh violently meeting flesh and I am frozen in fear, I feel shame because I am too small to stop the violence. I feel forgotten as the rage goes on. I feel lost and alone.
Decades later my body has grown, my understanding of mankind has deepened, my ability to have compassion has increased beyond reason and my fears have stayed behind, trapped in the body of a little girl too small to fight back.
Despite the years that we add on, the attempts to heal the hurts, the acquisition of knowledge and an understanding of mankind we are each prisoners of traumatic events seared into out memories that caused us the greatest fears. Inside each and every one of us is a small child trying to reconcile their own powerlessness with the strength of the adult they have become.
