“We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again… The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” — Pema Chödrön
I was outside, finishing a smoke with the puppy curled up on my lap. The wind blew and fallen leaves ran across the patio. The puppy was watching. I started to see the image in my mind’s eye, when I pulled myself back and said, “Are you watching the leaves blow around?” I looked again at them, lifting and slowly moving, then twirling across the patio. I again saw the start of the image, but I refocused on the present. Then I remembered what Dr. said yesterday about this image. She said to recondition my reaction to sensory seasonal stimuli and to replace them with the current positive image. She told me to let the image play out and close the loop to bring me back to the here and now.
I hadn’t called it a memory, but rather an image of a child walking home during Fall, arms holding herself, looking in at the warm houses. They were not just temperature warm but rather warm and glowing with love. I had thought it was a mental image from books I used to read as a kid because I’d have the same image and same feeling then as I do now. It would happen sometimes while reading when certain settings were there – my sensory stimuli.
So I let the image play out in my head. Walking on the left side of the road, on the street, not sure if there even was a sidewalk. Looking at my feet, dragging over the road, shuffling the leaves. Wind blew and I looked up, watching leaves dance across a lawn, shifting my weight due to the bag on my back and slowing down. It was almost dinnertime, dusk…the cusp of darkness that falls so much earlier in Fall and Winter. The house was glowing bright from a big wide front window, and the other windows. People were gathered in one of the rooms, smiling. The wind blew again and I got cold, pulled my open jacket around me, hugged myself, and adjusted the weight on my back all while looking ahead at the quiet street with their lights turning on and a line of houses – all warm, all glowing, all screaming about love and family. The image of what layed before me, set back from the road, a long driveway, shrubs and thick curtains blocking the light and the warmth from shining out and I felt…so much as I walked toward it. I recognized the road and some of the houses, surprised that it looks colder, barer, and with more foliage than in other flashing memories of this road.
I realized, it current present life, I know the road because I have walked it before, with two of my brothers. That, then, there was no weight on my back. The trees had more leaves hanging on them, scenes of the same road, all progress through Fall, leading up to the one here. At first I had walked with two out of three of my brothers. We walked by that very house with the wide glowing window on a evening not much as late. We would joke about the family, my older of the brothers playing voices, the younger trying too but failing and the elder would smile encouragingly and continuing back at him, working off his joke that wasn’t funny. There would be a hard edge to some of the eldest’s words. We would walk to the park and back – to where I realized I was headed – to my foster home. It was a memory.
Now I remember it. I walked the road with first two brothers, then one. The younger of them would try to make the voices and happenings of the house inside, but I didn’t laugh now. And I didn’t look up at him with the same awe and adoration as I did my other big brother. Now, here in this memory, I was walking alone.
I remembered, it was the day I got on the wrong bus after school. My brothers usually led me to the right place, taking my bag and asking me about my day. This was my first day back at school since both of my brothers were gone away. I hadn’t realized I was on the wrong bus until everyone else was dropped off and I was the only one left. I gave directions to the bus driver as he passed a road I recognized. Although I was the only child, I remember a girl my age – she was impressed by my ability to get a grown up to listen even when I didn’t know what I was talking about. She found it amusing. I suppose though, in hindsight, it was an alter. I thought I saw the house I was returning to, so I told the driver, here it is. The driver quickly stopped, thankful perhaps that it didn’t take so long to get me to the right spot. I thanked and ran off, not comfortable alone on the bus with the driver, although I can’t remember or see if it was a male or female.
I waved as the bus driver drove away. As I walked up the long driveway to the dark house, I realized it wasn’t my foster home. I panicked. I had been so sure I recognized the area, but this was not the right house. Then I had a thought of my middle elder brother. I suppose because I was scared and I wanted my protector there. To laugh and jok and put me at ease. Thinking of him helped me realize I recognized where I was enough to walk to the right house. I started walking, which is the end of that memory and the start of the image I held for so many years.
I was so shocked to find it was a memory, a forgotten half-mirage memory – that I did not close the loop and bring myself to my home, here and now, with my family. But, my heart sinks with the desires of a child…for my brothers, my family. I was only six, and yet walked those cold evening windy streets alone, scare, but mostly heartbroken. With no one left who I knew or trusted or loved or depended on or came through when no one else did. My middle elder brother was the last of the people I had turned to for comfort, for safety, for food and shelter because at the end, he was my shelter from the horror of it all. And with those memories of the walks the previous months in fostcare, first with two, then one, and then none. I was the none…they were the two and the house I was walking back to was not a home.
The image with the feeling, that I had thought was my visualization of a book – it was nostalgia but not of happiness. It is the child’s feelings of nostalgia for the family lost while feeling the searing abandonment and utter ‘aloneness’ in the world. I was the youngest of seven and then I was alone and lost – metaphorically and literally.
I feel a lot right now. I wish I was close enough, comfortable enough, to ask the brothers I eventually tracked down. It’s great that I can now, but it isn’t the same. Too much was lost and broken between us, too may years apart and unconnected. We are vastly different now. He is. Another betrayal. Just like his promises that were all broken. Promises of protection and guarantees of never leaving…
It was worse because they were the last ones I could depend on…everyone else had already gone. My step-mom, my two elder step-sisters and elder step-brother, all left in fell swoop. And then, one by one by one by one…my Grandma…my eldest brother…my biological father (although he was a good one to lose)…then the house we all had last been in together…then my elder middle…then the youngest other than me. Slowly stripped so that each remaining piece was depended on that much more than the other and each loss reducing me slowly of everything I knew. Until I desperately clung to the remainder until it too was gone.
Then the state was gone. The foster home, foster mother and father, foster brother and sisters. But, none of them actually felt like the roles they called themselves and their loss did not hold the same sting as the others. I was too numb to even acknowledge them as a loss.
Then, there was new. New narrowing eyes, harsh criticism, and cold empty energy radiating from her. Then…there was her husband. I had never met him. Yet, once he was pointed out and I saw him kneeling, arms open, a big safe and loving smile across his face – I ran into his arms – the arms of a stranger. A man. But I could feel he radiated love and safety. And he became my new protector.
Until I lost him too.
I never looked at another as my safety and protector until my ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ my two loves. We didn’t really trust it. Now I understand why some alters hated them. Feared them. Always questioned their love and commitment. Every other protector – for my Littles and Parts – left us. I suppose I get why some alters would distrust it. And be angry at them for being this unspoken reminder of pain and loss. I too now understand why they pushed him and her away, fought with them, and instigated problems. To protect me from their eventual and unavoidable loss . So my parts tried to be the ones who left before I could be left. Or provoke them leave us to prove to me and the Littles and Parts who adored them, that no one would actually stay and protect me other than the people inside of me. They were the only ones I truly had who didn’t leave me. Who continued to always protect me. From my memories. From my nightmares. From the truth of the past that they kept locked away.
I shared all of this with Dr. We talked about how to close the loop, how to bring this painful moment back into the timeline here and now. When I am loved. When I am safe. When I have family. I said I could have her, the Little One in the memory, walk forward and arrive here, in our home. I could end it with the warmth and love radiating out of her own homes’ windows. Dr. said that was one way to do it, or I could try out hard mode. Dr. suggested I go out onto that street, take the hand of my child self, the one stuck on that street, and I could walk her home, to her home, to our home, and to everything she ever wanted. Everything happening now.
I broke out in goosebumps and tears filled my eyes. Even just the suggestion was a powerful image. I instinctively recognized it was the best way to close that loop. For her, for me, for us all.