Aadalen

LIFE IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE ARE BUSY MAKING OTHER PLANS

This started as a craft blog, but Life sort of came in the way ... when I was writing about MILLION SHADES OF GREEN, things started to get personal. Now I’m working on another project called ROOT AND BRANCH AND TREE AND LEAF, but I had to take a break from that and revisit THE CHILD WHO REFUSES TO DIE and take a look at some trolls from the past.

I'm going to keep posting personal stuff in "Beyond the Pale" -  specifically for others with similar backgrounds, with grateful thanks to those who have shared bits of their lives with me.  

All this is part of a journey I embarked on a long time ago, where the goal was to give myself who I am. It won’t end until I have ended, but it has had many different phases, and right now I seem to be in a fusion phase, where crafts and trolls and all the good things are blending and mellowing into ... something. 

I’ve been saying for years that I don’t know where I’m going, but I’ll recognize it when I get there. And so far I have, and I trust that I will in the future.

The current PLAN with this blog is to have three sections – crafts, “Beyond the Pale” (as in “palisades of civilized behavior”, which is what the British called the parts of Ireland that they had no control over), and “Sunny Side Up” ... which is most of my life right now, even when the ambience is wet and cold, like the summerwe’ve just had. 

TROLLS BURST WHEN THE SUN SHINES ON THEM

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?

THE CHILD WHO REFUSES TO DIE

WARNING: Personal content. This was written a long time ago, and I've shared it with many, but it's the first time I've posted it openly.

I see a child. A war-torn child who has survived torture and betrayal. It does not show, but I see it in the hand I'm holding ... a shiver, as if she wants to escape. I feel waves of suspicion and need. What she wants, most of all, is to trust someone. She has always been betrayed.

I am sitting with my back to a tree. She is standing in front of me.

Part of her is far, far away, in a place where no one can reach her. The part she hides in order to survive.

A part of her wants so badly to sit in my lap and give in to the longing for love. But she knows that she cannot trust me. I have betrayed her earlier, and I can betray her again.

She does not run away. She cannot. She is me.

"I love trees," I say to her. "Trees never change. If you chop down a tree, the stump will remain for a long, long time. Trees and mountains just are there, they never hurt us."

She nods. Silently.

"I have hurt you. I know that now. I did not want to, it was not my intention, but I have hurt you. I cannot ask your forgiveness - that would be to cheapen your hurts and my responsibility for them. I can only say that I see you. I feel your pain. I see the scars you have kept hidden for such a long time. I see what I have done, and I take the responsibility for it, and when I do that, I can see your strength and your courage.

"She turns away. "I am nothing."

"You always thought that you were cowardly. So did I. But consider what you have survived. Torturers know that the best way of breaking parents, is to damage them while the children are looking on. Or damage the children while the parents are looking on. Children need their parents, the child's existence is dependant on parents and other reliable adults. To be helpless and be hurt by the people we need is the worst thing that can happen to a child."

She sits down beside me, carefully, ready to flee. "I was scared all the time."

"Yes, you were scared. And you had good reason to be scared. But you did not give up. And what are people who do not give up, even if they're scared?"

"Stubborn? Brave?" A shadow of a smile. "I am brave."

"You are very brave."

"I am brave. But I get scared when I say that."

"So do I. Remember that you are me. I have been escaping from you all my adult life, but we belong together, you and I. Your pain is my pain, your loneliness is my loneliness, your grief is my grief."

She shakes her head. "This is wrong. You are never scared. You can do anything. I'm a failure."

"No. I have tried to lose you, forget you, lock you up the dark cellars of my mind, but that is impossible. We are the same person. We are one."

"But why did you, whom I needed to trust more than anyone, betray me? Do you know what is the very, very worst thing? To be invisible. Untouchable. To scream as loudly as I can ... into nothing.

Now I'm the one who wants to look away, but I force myself to look at her. "Do you remember all that stuff about "chin up and keep smiling, they didn't mean to hurt you, don't think about it and it'll go away, children forget so easily, it's all my fault...? I really believed it. I really believed that if I stopped thinking about you, you would just fade away and disappear".

A fierce grin. "But I didn't."

"No, you didn't. And I'm glad you didn't, for you are my soul. I have met many people who have managed to shut away the hurting child inside, and there is something missing. Thank you for refusing to be shut away. What does that make you?"

"Rude? Pushy? Do you really mean it? Can I say ... persevering?" 

"You are a brave and persevering child. And much more than that. And I love 
you.."

"Is that possible?"

"Yes. I love you. There has been a wall of guilt between you and my love for you. Now I know that the only thing that can crumble that wall, is responsibility. I have to take the responsibility for what I have done to you. See how much I have hurt you. Not hide between a wall of explanations and logic. I have been afraid of you, I have tried to escape from you. What does that make me?"

"Weak."

"That's right. I am weak. And I am not going to ask you to forgive me or trust me or anything. I am not going to promise never to hurt you. But I am going to see you. Hear you. Experience what you have experienced."

"Do you promise never to shut me away in the cellar again?"

"I think I have to promise something else: If something happens that makes me shut you away, I'm going to tell you. Then you'll know that it's not your fault. Then we can continue later."

"It is so painful. I have lived this. It is so painful to be made invisible by someone who is just going to hear about it."

"It is painful. It is very painful. And you are very brave."

"I am brave. I thought I was a coward, but I am brave. I also thought I was sinful and bad. Please don't laugh ... that hurts so terribly. Why do you laugh and make fun of us?"

"I think we laugh to make children invisible. We make fun of the things we are trying to run away from. And we make fun of the things we don't understand. You are really quite improbable ... you have survived."

"Yes, I have survived. And I know what I want you to do for me: Listen to me. Believe what I say. Do something about it. Show me that I can trust you."

----

The story continues in A MILLION SHADES OF GREEN, day X, under TUNISIAN CROCHET

(c) 1986