2008-10-22 - 6:11 p.m.
Jack's Recurring Nightmares Of His Antagonist (2)
***Please read the entry before this one first. Thanks. ***
Continued...
That dream brought back a lot of memories. Flashbacks. Feelings.
The Tyler way I acted when he had me pinned, reminds me of the way my sister reacted when he had her cornered against the kitchen wall.
His fist pulled. Ready to punch her in the face.
Repeatedly I am sure.
And I just stood there, frozen in my terror. Furious. Helpless.
Watching as my bestfriend, my Tyler, was about to have the shit beat out of her.
She seemed fearless. She said to him to go ahead. Her hand was on the phone. Go ahead. Do it. Then I'll call the police.
And he relented. His violence was thrown off guard and put at bay long enough for her to walk away and tell him she was leaving. Fuck him. She never wants to fucking see him again. She hopes he fucking dies.
And she never did come back.
Though they have since made peace.
That night is one of the worst memories I have of him. But I never had more respect for my sister, than I did that night.
She did something that I never could have done.
He tried but he could never break her. The way he broke me.
And that was how my therapist put it. He broke me.
She said that he overloaded my young impressionable mind with more terror and violence than I could deal with. Finally I could not take anymore. My mind crashed. Like an unstable computer. And it never fully recovered.
Ever since I was a kid I was afraid of him.
And I had every right to be.
The earliest memories I have of him are threatening and verbally abusive. I was probably not even in kindergarten. Maybe I was in first grade.
I remember sitting at the kitchen table one summer afternoon. Playing colorforms. He came in from outside. I always feel like he had been working on the car.
Well he grabbed my arm. The circumference more than easily fit into his whole closed fist. He squeezed it really hard and said in a gruff, almost sadistic could be playing snarl that he could pop my little muscle. What I heard, felt and realized was he could break my arm if he wanted to.
I felt so disturbed that I went into my room and hid for a long time.
This might sound like I was being over sensitive. But the next memory, the worse of the two puts it into perspective.
Again I was sitting at the kitchen table. He was watching TV in the livingroom.
He came into the room, and began explaining to my kindergarten mind that corpses float. He said that if he killed me and dumped my body in the creek behind our house, he would have to weigh me down or my body would float.
I found the new knowledge both intriguing and disturbing.
Dead bodies float.
Like most kids, I sort of made a game of it. Trying to test different things against the new knowledge.
I asked how would you weigh a body down. I imagined it like a helium balloon. He began explaining different ways of weighing down a body. I kept defiantly saying that I would still float. Part playing. Part wanting some sort of reassurance of Justice. Though I was too young to understand the concept fully. Hell, I was too young for the concept of murder yet alone death.
He ended the game by reassuring darkly that if he weighed me down with cement I would NOT float. And they would never find me.
Then he left the room.
This is what I grew up in.
I was raised in fear. In violence.
I was raised that he was bigger, stronger, and more powerful. But not in a warm fatherly way that comforted and protected me. This was about dominance, control and ownership. He let me know he could kill me if he wanted.
I made you and I can destroy you.
He put the fear of God in me.
Only I think I was more afraid of him than I was of God. Who he strangely modeled after himself.
And I never outgrew that mindset.
Instead, I took it with me into adult life as base instinct.
As something essential to my survival.
There will always be a mistrusting wildness to me.
One of the reasons I was resentful (afraid) of taking medication was I feared I would lose that wildness. So much of my edge would be taken off, that I would be sedated into danger. Yes, part of me felt that I would or could die.
The ironic part about that is by panicking in a danger situation you almost always guarantee your own death. But what did I know?
I am Jack's Blaring Blinding Instincts
I felt my adrenaline at anything less than full volume would fail me.
My therapist thinks even at this medicated level it is too high.
The thing is I could never be at peace without it.
I explained to her that I am wired entirely in Fight and Flight. Certain things are hard wired into me. I likened myself to an animal.
I am Jack's Heightened Survival Instincts.
I am not above remembering that I am an animal.
I think of it as an advantage, rather than a social disadvantage.
Like she does.
I like my highly attuned reptilian animal brain the way it is.
Well, it could use some fine tuning and adjusting.
But that does not mean turning the volume all the way down the way my therapist wants me to.
A book I am reading right now, explained that spending too much thought in the reptilian (survival, instinctual) brain causes you to obsessively worry and develop anxiety. Usually over things concerning modern survival such as your job or money. Sometimes it can also become paranoia or develop into OCD behaviors.
That part could use to relax a little.
But the part that eyes other people suspicously, can keep right on being vigilent.
Continued...
Jack's Christmas Eve Alone - 2008-12-24
Jack's Christmas Letter To His Asshole Uncle - 2008-12-08
Jack Is Still Fighting His Antagonist (2) - 2008-10-22
Jack Is Still Fighting His Antagonist - 2008-10-22
