Or, as my son used to say gleefully when we finished a troll tale: "And then the troll and all the princesses burst!"
I've started a new category, "BEYOND THE PALE", dedicated to trolls and other monsters that are rendered harmless by sunshine.
I haven't been able to find copyright info on this picture, but I'm borrowing it while I look, because it perfectly illustrates what I feel like now.
Twentysomething years ago, after a lifetime of debilitating nightmares, I dreamed I was a turtle, happily sitting on a tree stump waiting for her wings to grow so she could start flying.
That was the end of the nightmares, and now ... in my 60th year ... the flying is commencing to begin to start!
----
And here is the beginning of the end of my biggest troll:
Oct. 5th, 1988:
My body remembers.
When I first heard the letter,
I could only say: “SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!”
Childish words for a childish reaction. A delayed reaction.
When sister sent me the letter, I was angry, yes, at first.
Angry enough to demand an answer.
Then I died. Just a little.
I could walk and talk but I could not think.
The shadow had touched me again, and killed me again.
Just a little.
“What you’re feeling is wrong I know best, and I know what you’re feeling,
and what you feel is not what you say you feel. You’re wrong!
I say this because I love you.” How many years have I heard that?
My body grew heavy with lies and insoluble dilemmas.
Longing for forgetfulness in sleep.
But my body remembers what happened when I slept in the night.
And I cannot sleep and live a lie at the same time.
My head hears voices. Calling my name.
Telling me what to think, feel, react to.
My body remembers nausea. I start throwing up, 26 years later.
My body remembers anxiety.. My back aches, as it did then.
My stomach aches. My life aches.
My throat aches, with the pain of rage and terror unscreamed
Of betrayal and helplessness unwept.
My body remembers dirty. I wallow in filth,
To mask the inner filth I feel.
Death and nausea and filth.
My body remembers trying to explain. My hand writes.
Hoping again to find the magic words that will change you,
Make you into something I need you to be,
Something more than a petty torturer
Who amputates children with God and sex
To make himself a little bigger.
My mind reads what I have written and rejects it.
As I finally reject you, once and for all.
I dream
that sewage has leaked all over my house,
And I look at the mess and say:
“I have to clean up,
but will I ever get the stink away?”
_____
But ... when I burst one monster, some others showed up, and they were just as sure that my feelings were wrong as the First Monster was:
Double bind 1991:
I am in a cage.
It is marked "patient".
It is too small for me.
All of me does not fit into this cage.
There's no room for my integrity.
And how can I stop being a patient without integrity?
How can I get out of the cage
Without showing that I belong in it?
In living without integrity…
Accepting that there is no room for integrity…
I become a permanent patient.
By fighting for my integrity…
I prove that I am a patient.
Because … my feeling a lack of integrity...
That just shows that I'm paranoid.
Doesn't it?
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