We need to walk away from the corners where the labels are, and move toward the center where the people are, in their Santa hats and yarmulkes, their habits and burkas, topis and kufis and zucchettos, giving dolls to skeptical teenagers, feeding each other, and without spite, saying “Merry Christmas” or whatever comes from a place of best intentions.
Maybe many things that moved through the girl's body over the years can be explained by the animal's presence, a hovering, not threatening but not comfortable, a memory that isn't a memory because it never was clear.
You used to stand there, looking into the refrigerator and ask to eat those bits of vegetables. Those fit-in-your-hand premade sandwiches. They were all so nicely arranged, just sitting there, waiting to be eaten. She’d close the door and offer to cook you something instead. You’d nod, say: “Yes, please,” because maybe manners would make her like you and you always loved her cooking.
That fercockt tree would become a member of our family. So much so, that I’d say goodnight to it every night. Maybe because I knew that without it, my family wouldn’t be.
Trauma is like ivy. No, it’s an actual snake that suffocates and devours. It winds itself up and around every part of your life and squeezes all of your dreams and relationships. It oozes into your cells and hides there.
I went to Guatemala because, regardless of what the courts say, I, too, am on trial. Collectively, we, citizens of the most powerful democracy in the world, are responsible for making sure our government doesn’t fund genocide. And when it does—and it did—we are responsible for making sure it never happens again.
I had experienced bouts of profound sadness before, as well as overwhelm and anxiety, but at the age of 33 I had my first experience with this kind of depression and I was stunned.
I could have taken on the daunting role of single mother even though I know that I’m not strong enough to handle the very real emotional hurdles that come with it. That’s not the kind of mother I would want to be. It’s not the kind of mother any child deserves. So yes, I made a choice.
He was shaking me in the hotel lobby as we got onto the elevator. The man at the desk came up to our room to “check everything is OK,” and I told him nothing, but I promised myself it would be the last time.
I was pregnant when I was 17, too. Where I came from, just a mile and a half up the South Hill from Crosswalk, the shame wasn’t in getting pregnant, it was in staying pregnant. To have a baby as a teenager is to have a permanent and public record of the sex you had in your older boyfriend’s parents’ basement.
