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Tuesday, June 22, 2004

 
3:54 AM: dear mom, [#] [0]

hopefully, i'll have a mailbox key tomorrow. after 5 different stories from 4 different people, we leaped through the flaming usps hoops and we'll see what happens. *crosses fingers*

i had a lovely time w/ michaelmas tonight: he made me chocolate-chip cookies and we went to rose's, which was the first place i went when i moved here. i returned tori to him (after some struggling w/ the itunes deauthorization process) and we hung his last piece of art: the white tree of gondor hand-etched onto blended cobalt blue glass. the only sadness is that they've replaced his apartment's outside door key w/ a wireless fob, and they only give fobs out to people who are on the lease. so it's back to buzzing in at the front door. meh.

[fair warning: skip the rest of this entry if you don't like sob stories. it's hard for me to write about this in public, in part because i find my own behaviour mortifying, but that's also why i want to write about it in public. the toltecs might appreciate it, of all people, but they also might think i'm not strong enough. whatever.]

then i took sven home, and as we got out of trixie, the night went right to hell.

a child was screaming and crying in the house next door. i've seen him before; he's about three, and he's always been quiet. i understand tantrums, but i recognized that scream: there was something in it that made me stop in my tracks and made the hair on my arms rise. and he just kept screaming for minute after long minute, until suddenly he stopped. then an odd crashing and smacking began in a different room.

i've always been a survivor. for anyone who doesn't know, i spent ages 3-10 alone with my mother, who abused me in the "locks me in closets, breaks dishes over my head, kicks and throws me across the room, doesn't feed me for days" sort of way. i was actually a pretty good kid: i did what i was told, i was quiet and polite, i always got good grades & did my homework, i even happily attended sunday school because it got me out of the house for a few hours. but no matter what i did it was never good enough -- think the wire coathanger scene in mommie dearest and you might have an idea of my childhood. (i really have a hard time watching that movie -- anyone who thinks that scene was campy has never had a mother like that. i even have a hard time with the introductory bits in harry potter when the dursleys mistreat him; it seems hopelessly exaggerated to those who haven't experienced it.)

so i ought to have had no doubts about calling the police when i heard this. but i didn't want to. i even had a vivid flashback of my mother beating me while i shrieked at the top of my lungs in this same way, praying the neighbors would hear me. and i still didn't want to get involved. i was frozen in the back yard, tense, barely breathing, hyperaware and trying not be noticed. these things helped me survive once, but they certainly weren't helping this boy if i really thought he was in danger.

i usually do better in crises. i detatch and drop into "do what must be done" mode until things are copasetic again. i've handled at least three general domestic violence interventions with panache and rescued a kitten trapped in a very tall tree in a very scary junkyard. but this time i failed me. i almost failed him, too, but sven, thank god, was a good boy. he called the police, told them what we had heard, gave them the address. the police (all three of them) were very nice and were even good enough to stop by and tell us that both the children seemed fine and that there was no evidence of struggle in the house. very good news.

so who knows what was really going on, and all's well that ends well, right? but i still can't believe not calling was even an option to me. i didn't want to judge, i didn't want to jump to conclusions, i didn't want to ruin anyone's future just because of my past. i have all sorts of justifications for what i wasn't going to do, but they don't comfort me. instead i feel small and scared and weak.

no, i haven't made my peace with my mother. i don't forgive her. but i thought i had buried her well enough so that she ceased poking me at inconvenient angles. i accept responsibility for my own life: i am only who i am now and don't keep expecting someone or something to make up for my past, though sometimes i wonder who i might have been if i had had other options. but more importantly, who will i be now?