The 7 Year Old, the Empty Prescription Bottle, and the Baby Crib

Where do I begin?

I think the waves are starting to settle a little bit. I think I’m finally entering into acceptance for a lot of things.

For the last several years there’s been all these inner versions of me that have been crying out for help in different ways.

They’ve always been there, but I just chose to live really fast and really hard so I didn’t have time to hear them or feel them. I just made sure that my present was so wild and intense that the past couldn’t possibly compete or creep in. I thought that I was happy that way, but *surprise twist!* it turns out I wasn’t. Whomp whomp.

The truth is I just found excellently effective ways to block everything out. No wonder I loved bartending. You can’t even stop to think for 10 seconds, it’s just go go go go go for 12 hours, then you get off work and drink and do blow with your friends til 6 or 7 AM, feel a shallow but poignant sense of belonging for a few hours, then you go home and sleep til 6 PM, have a shot of tequila for breakfast and do the same thing again. And it was fun, don’t get me wrong. Super fun. That’s the problem. I didn’t have a lot of fun as a child.

When I switched to hairdressing, I had a hard time not drinking while I worked. I thought it was because it made me feel more comfortable socially, but really it’s because alcohol helps me to not feel my body, which hurts constantly because of my disability, which I also just flat out ignored for years and years until it quite literally brought me to my knees.

Anyways. I don’t really know what the point of this entry is. I have stuff I want to say but I’m scared it’s boring or it’ll scare someone or … I don’t fucking know.

A few months ago, maybe a year, I had an emotional flashback that was really bad. I felt like I was 8 years old. My husband found me huddled in the closet under a blanket. I was trapped in a memory from that age when my mother collapsed in my bedroom. I hated that bedroom.

Well, that’s not necessarily true. I didn’t know I hated it, how about that? I just felt so lonely in there. Maybe not lonely, but definitely very alone. Nothing in the bedroom was mine. There was a big crib that was mine and the other girls’ as a baby, a huge scary 4 poster bed that was one of my mom’s most beloved possessions, and a huge stained wooden chest of drawers that my mother loved because it was from 1880 or something like that. She loved Victorian stuff. So I had all this big, scary antique furniture in my room, and that big stupid crib. I don’t know why we had it. My mom was 46, 47? No more babies on the way at that point. I remember the windows had these old treatments from the 60s–those yellowed roll-up curtains with the plastic circle at the bottom tied to a string.

I can see myself from a distance, a little blonde girl, playing Barbies all alone on the floor of this bizarre room. Part forgotten, storage room, part antique museum, part little girl’s room. I had a little plastic pink night light that I picked out myself at the dollar store. It was plugged in on the side of my bed which was pushed against the wall. I remember it used to singe my minkies–my baby blankets that I still slept with. I wasn’t even alarmed. I just tried to remember not to let them by that edge of the bed. It’s a wonder I didn’t burn alive in that fucking stupid ghostship bed.

I say I didn’t know I hated it because I wasn’t allowed to have an opinion. I didn’t know little girls could have options, choices. I was never asked for my opinion. If I said I didn’t like the bed, Mom would say, “Oh, yes you do! It’s GORGEOUS! Just look at it! Just pretend you’re in an old movie, like one of those with the big mansions! This is a very special bed.” Same thing for the dressers. “This dresser is so old! Who knows what it’s seen. Who knows, maybe a special princess had her things in here a long, long time ago. And now it’s yours! Isn’t that special!” .. “Okay, Mom. Thanks, Mom. That is cool, Mom!” And that’s just what it was. big scary bed. big scary dresser. big crib. no curtains. no art. no child stuff.

Except for the pictures I started to tape on my walls. I used to cut out pictures of kids from the teeny bop magazines, even if they were tiny, once inch photos, and tape them on the wall next to my bed, the one with the pink night light, until it was almost completely covered.

One day my mother came in while I was sleeping, switched on a little lamp and she started going through those drawers on the baby crib.

“Oh my God! Oh my GOD!” She started screaming. She just fell to the ground in sobs.

“Mama? Mama, are you okay?”

“NO, I’m not okay! Your FAther (she used to say it in this special way when she was mad at him, snarky, hard F. Faaahhhther) has been taking your sister’s medicine!”

“What? What medicine? What is going on?”

Then I remember she looked at me from the floor with a crazy look on her face and shook the pill bottle at me. “Your FATHER has been taking your sister’s ADD medicine TO GET HIGH! Like drugs! Like SPEED!” My mom was always talking about speed. I never really fully understood.

It’s kind of a blur after that, but I remember it went on for a while.

My whole face is hot and red remembering this.

Oh wait, now I remember. She told me she had been hiding them, that’s why they were in my room like that. Hiding them from him.

The next day, we never spoke about it. We never addressed it ever again, really. And for years I knew there were secret pills in that crib (which had a little baby dresser attached to it) but I dared not look.

So when I had this flashback, it felt like it was real and it was happening again. I felt all the feelings. I felt confused. I felt so scared. But most of all, I just wanted to be small. I just wanted to be invisible. I wanted to not exist. I wanted to help my Mom not be so upset, but I hadn’t the faintest clue how to do that. Not for my sake, but truly for hers. She was in such distress. Yet also, I wanted her to leave, and that made me feel guilty. Please, just leave me alone. Stop telling me your… your problems in the middle of the night like this. Just dump them on me, and then I just have to carry on like a normal little 3rd grader. Focus on multiplication tables all the while trying to not think of that image of my mom shaking the pill bottle at me, her hair all fucked up, and her voice all crazy. Wondering, what is speed? Why is my dad taking medicine? Why is it my room? How much of this is my responsibility? Am I supposed to do something? How come no one cares if I’m okay? I want to be there for my Mother, so badly. So badly. But I also don’t want to be the person she does this to all the time.

After that, a weird thing started to happen to me. There’s a name for it. Let me look it up. I thought … I don’t really know what I thought about it. I never told anyone about it until I told my husband and he told me there’s a name for this.

Ah ha–It’s literally called Alice in Wonderland Syndrome. It’s where physicality becomes distorted. I mostly experienced the version that’s called Macropsia

Anyway, after this incident, I started feeling really tiny in my bed. Like the bed was huge and I was a tiny little tooth pick inside of it. It’s so hard to explain. Also, my tongue would feel like it was huge, bigger than my head, and my teeth were tiny around it. That happened only for a few years until recently, actually. I was about 6 months into therapy, which is why I brought it up to my husband, and was much relieved to hear that there’s a name for it and–

Sorry, I have to stop there because I’m understanding the connection between those things, which I didn’t fully grasp before. Wow.

Listen, I’m sorry this is a little hodge podge and all over the place. I like to keep things tidy, but I’m just kinda lettin’ it flow tonight.

 

My husband was really frightened when he found me like that, in the closet. I couldn’t breathe and I just kept saying, “I just want to be small. I just want to be small.” He brought me my anxiety attack medication and just sat on the edge of the closet with me until I felt good enough to come out. The thing about episodes like this is that I literally just snap out of them. It all feels super real and I can’t function, I can’t hear, I can’t see, I can’t think, I can’t feel, and then… poof. It lifts, like a fog, and I look around, and everything is fine. Of course I’m riddled with confusion and embarrassment and a plethora of other emotions, but reality returns in its true form nonetheless.

I’m also realizing now that I’ve had flashbacks like this for my whole life, I just attributed them to other things — usually being drunk. Imagine finding someone under a blanket in a closet, but she’s smashed. I would probably, just like you, assume, oh god, she’s just drunk, she’ll be fine in the morning and just move on.

I’m reading this back and I want to clarify that the flashbacks and the macropsia are not the same thing. The AIWS macropsia would happen to me when I was a little girl, when I was all alone in that bed, usually during the night time, but sometimes during the daytime if I closed my eyes. That stopped happening after a few years. But after digging things up in therapy and slowing my life down considerably, I felt the macropsia happen again for the first time in 25 years. That’s not the same as the flashbacks.

That version of my inner child, the 8 year old with the big baby crib and old scary furniture in her room, I remember her. She wasn’t sad yet. She knew things weren’t right, but she wasn’t sad yet. She was just so alone. She still had optimism, a big, big, red bleeding heart, endless compassion. She never thought a bad thought about anyone. She just wanted to learn. She had endless curiosity. Truly endless. She got in trouble for asking too many questions many times, but it didn’t make her upset, not yet. She knew she was different, but she didn’t see it as a bad thing, not yet. She wanted to be helpful as much as she could. She used to make beautiful, pleated, complicated clothing for her paper dolls out of tissue paper. She used to record her own pretend radio shows to an old cassette recorder. One time she even carved her initials into the window sill. She knew her mother would be furious if she found, but… the idea that another little girl might see those initials one day just like her made her feel connected to something. Her mother never discovered the carving.

I weep for her now.

What a sweet child. Treated with such carelessness.

 

A while back I wrote that I wasn’t sure how to do inner child healing. I think I’m figuring it out. And I think it’s working.

A funny thing happened. I put a picture of myself barely a year old on my fridge. Strangely, when I would see the picture, I would furrow my brow and think bad things, get a yucky feeling in my stomach. Bad Katy! I couldn’t look at it for a long time. I see my son now, the exact same age, and I can’t imagine anyone treating him with nothing but the utmost tenderness, gentleness, patience, love. So why am I angry at the girl in the photo?

Because I was taught to. I was taught she was bad bad bad. And though I know that’s wrong in my brain, it’s hard to make my body understand that. Visceral reactions are just that, visceral. We have no control over them. I can’t help that I feel negative feelings towards myself as a baby. A baby! That’s insane. It’s … it’s awful. It’s getting better, though.

I still have a hard time looking at the picture, but I make myself look longer, and I make myself think something nice about her. I soften my gaze, relax my muscles.

Jesus, even now I’m hearing the words “YOU LITTLE HELLION!” Is that an echo from when I was a baby? Did my mother call me a little hellion instead of precious one? Next to that is, “GOD DAMN IT KATY LEE!” That one echoes clear as day. It makes me shrink like a puppy that’s afraid of getting hit. I slump in my chair and wince my eyes, bracing myself.

But it’s all in my mind. There is no Mother here to hurt me anymore.

All of this processing and painful work I’ve been doing is finally starting to yield results. I’m finally moving out of my grieving stage, I think. I can see things much, much more clearly. Bringing things into focus was incredibly painful. For a while I was scared I had done the wrong thing, that I had perhaps re-traumatized myself, and maybe I was better off in a state of perpetual distraction. This isn’t true, because the only way I could effectively distract myself was through many different forms of self harm, self destruction, self avoidance. It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay.

I genuinely believe that. I really, really do. It’s nice, actually.

Even though I didn’t know why, I’ve always pushed back when things didn’t feel right. Unfortunately, because of my programmed self-doubt and care-giver role, I sometimes (most of the time, let’s be real, people!) wasn’t sure what I was even pushing up against. I just knew it didn’t feel right.

“It” takes on many different forms throughout my life. But … I’m proud to say that I did it. And I was right in all those times.

I fought and fought and fought tooth and fucking nail. I fought and pressed on and bounced back after gut punches and trudged through the mud, and I made it. It’s not what I thought it would be. It’s even more beautiful than that, actually. But I made it.  I’m sad my sisters aren’t here with me, yet. I still hold out hope that they will come back into my life once they’ve walked their own journey, but for the first time in my life I can say … It’s okay if they don’t. Because I know that I did my best. I truly did. I showed up in ways they will never even know, and that’s okay. I was happy to do it. If they aren’t strong enough to come walk in the light of consciousness with me, I can’t force that on them. I can’t force something that painful on them if they don’t want.

Perhaps being distracted is enough for them, but it wasn’t enough for me. And that’s okay.

And as for my mother–I see her now. I see her completely. She did not deserve children. And she certainly did not deserve children like us, like me. She has her own set of values. She desires to hurt people. It makes her feel good. It’s difficult to imagine a mother being this way, but not all women have the capacity to be mothers. I wasn’t lucky enough to receive one. That’s okay. It’s not the end of my story. It’s the end of the beginning. My life starts now, with my beautiful family. A house of love. A warm home filled with laughter and kisses. Endless possibilities. Endless love. Endless joy.

But most of all, honesty, and the tenacity to face hard situations with confidence and trust, to know that they will pass and we will get through them together, always. Forever.

 

P.S. I only had a friend over two times during the 5 years we lived at this particular house on Lombardy, with the crib and the bed. On my 11th birthday, I had a party at the house, but it was outside, and no one was allowed inside. I remember a girl from my class–Paige was her name–she asked to use the bathroom. I took her inside, and when she was done, she asked to see my room. My mother had told me not to let anyone in any other rooms except the bathroom under any circumstance. But… I was proud of something and wanted to show it to someone. I was proud of my wall of taped up pictures from my magazines. I looked around to make sure no one was around, and I waved Paige over. I cracked the door slowly and just let her pop her head in.

I expected her to be impressed with my wall, but what happened was very subtle. She looked sad and confused. She said nothing. I said, “No, look look… come here, see all my pictures?” with a big proud smile, waving her into the room. “Yes,” she said. She perked up and tried to put on a nice face. Paige was a very kind and compassionate girl, probably why I felt safe to show her my room, though we were never particularly close.

She looked around for a little bit and took it in before I hurried her out and said, “Don’t tell anyone I let you in there, ok?”

“Okay. I promise, Katy Lee.” She looked me in the face and nodded very sincerely. I remember that very clearly. I don’t know if she ever did tell anyone or not.

I remember at the time feeling … what did I feel? I felt … disappointed? confused? a little excited? I wanted her to be impressed, to shriek like little girls do and giggle and laugh, which she didn’t do. But also I just kind of felt nothing about it. I mostly was worried about the wrath of my mother. Not until I thought about it years and years later and really remembered what her face said that day. It said:

“This is your room? I’ve never seen a room like this… Oh… this is sad. This explains a lot.”

That same year Paige brought me a “fancy” chap stick from Bath and Body works. She just said, “I noticed you always use chap stick, so I got this for you.” I’ll never forget that little act of kindness. I felt so seen. I used that chap stick down to the very bottom.