More than a flash

March 02, 2024

More than a flash

An outloud journal entry (trigger warning)

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I had a flashback this morning. It has been building in me now for quite some time, I could feel it coming on but I wasn’t sure where it was taking me until this morning.

I was around 12 years old, 7th grade at Gemini Jr. High in Niles, IL. (actually unincorporated cook county). I was with my parents and we were standing in front of a judge. The school had turned me in for truancy because I had surpassed that magic number that affected their funding from the state.

That was the year my spleen went on hyper-drive in enlarging. I was hospitalized a few times and doctors were completely clueless at what was happening. It was the year they buried long needles between my ribs and into that spleen burning doses of steroids. I had been in a couple of hospitals, Resurrection and Lutheran General.

It was also the year I had to take the school bus to school. I refused. I refused and was punished for it, repeatedly. No one asked me why. I was told how my behavior was shameful, but no one asked me why.

As it turned out, my school bus driver was someone we had known from when we first lived in Evanston. An old neighbor. One of my mom’s friends, her son. He had been an older teen when I was around 4/5 yrs old.

All the kids played in the courtyard — all ages, just running about and venturing off in playgroups. Hide and seek was a favorite. I once ran into one of the apartment building foyer — you know, where the mailboxes were between the main door and the locked door to into the building.

These were those old apartments that once stood tall across from the newstand at Chicago Avenue and Main. They are no longer there, but this memory is and evidently still haunts me.

It was in that old Victorian era dark building, at that very young age, I was first molested. I was molested and told I had to be a good girl and never tell anyone.

He ended up being that bus driver — all those years later and invading my life in a new city, from memories I couldn’t leave behind. Why, I was a good girl, I hadn’t told anyone?

All of that happening that year and when our house had so much chaos. Dad already had a couple of heart-attacks and surgery on shoulder but he was still working. Mom was a bottle of anger, always worried about image. My grandparents moved with us, something that was not known before securing the house. We were tight knit in the ways that were uncomfortable. Everyone on top of each other.

My room was to be the basement, but then Larry took that over and I ended up in what was the dining room/family room/kitchen level. My bed was a pit type couch. I had a simple partition as my wall. Everything I did was on display. There wasn’t a move I could make without the potential of it being picked apart and me criticized. But, yet - again, no one ever asked why I did what I did or didn’t do — it was reflective of being that sick kid doctors didn’t understand. Everyone standing around pointing, talking over one another, and I am sitting there, silent. Cringing further into myself. I just wanted someone to care but I felt guilty to even think that…want that, let alone voice it.

All of that was standing before that judge deciding my fate — one absolutely surreal incident after another — but he was clueless, everyone was clueless. I felt like a freak of nature. They didn’t even know that I had taken a bottle of cold medicine that year and immediately threw them up. It was my first attempt — but no one knew. They wouldn’t know when I was 14 I would try again. They all pointed my way, eyes examining me, poking and prodding, but completely and utterly clueless of my truths. They didn’t even ask.

Thankfully my medical files were thick and filled with a weird and twisted medical mystery documented by significant names. What I had say didn’t matter. The judge had some facts to go off and found in my favor with the caveat that I go to outside counseling to ensure I was not becoming school phobic..that school bus refusal and the stress of being a sick kid was his reasoning for that order.

I did go to counseling, but I wasn’t allowed to discuss anything that would bring shame to my mother. She went with me. That’s another chapter I already have dealt with —

As for today’s flashback — it encapsulated quite bit in one blink of a memory trapped within needing out. I do believe it is one of things to drive me in empowering others to use their voice. While there’s quite a bit of telling information about me from this memory, the one thing I haven’t shared is all the questions I am left with from experiencing it all. The main question is how many other innocent lives were damaged because I was silent and because no one asked why. I was the child, they were the adults. How did all those dominos fall? I know what they did to my life, but how many others are there who were touched by the same hands of evil?

Those are the questions that haunt me. That is the spark in me, I think. My heart has carried the pain of being ignored, going unnoticed, and paying the price for the crime of others. It goes beyond a heartache, it is a soul-ache, the broken heart is the doorway for that pain.

Please know I don’t share any of this for sympathy. For me journaling out loud helps me to process what I need to — like bouncing a tennis ball of a wall and repeating the process while I dig deep. I also hope to reach others going through like steps in life, letting them know they’re not alone, while trying to give that silent little girl a chance of knowing what using her voice could do. Healing.

So with that, take from this what you will, what you need to and just know we’re all in this together — if anytime you find yourself judging others or even yourself, step back a bit and ask why.

As usual, excuse typos, I am just letting the words flow and there is never enough coffee..