Autonomy

Every time I sit down to write I end up exploring a different event than the one I intended to detail. It’s a perfect representation of how my brain normally functions, starting with a base topic and branching out due to a word that triggers a memory and launches me into seemingly unrelated happenings. This journal was originally titled “Crooked Nose” and explained the events behind a man-made alteration to my would have been perfect rhinoplasty, six-days post-op.  

I have habitually made records of everything since I got my hands on the first iPod touch. The notes app was by far the most visited feature. I didn’t have the means to archive my scripture anywhere during this stage of my life — God only knows what my eleven-year-old self typed out. Whatever profound things that rattled my brain are lost to the world forever, probably for the best.  

Trauma can do a lot of things to the brain. Atrophy is one of them. It’s a state of degeneration in which the breakdown of tissues can lead to a decrease in size or mass. Brain shrinkage is just one of many fallouts of trauma. Other notable side-effects that are potentially life-long include psychological disorders, disruptions in the stress response system and memory loss. I’ve undoubtedly suffered from all these things, but the most prominent has certainly been short-term and long-term memory loss. Think about looking up at a sky filled with stars, the milky way is saturated with luminous celestial bodies. You blink and suddenly there are no beacons, just a dark blanket of nothingness. Sometimes when I try to think about my past, that’s what happens to me. My mind becomes void of all light.  

The faculty of my mind has essentially wiped years of data from my life as a self-defense mechanism. A protective measure to keep myself safe from information that I would otherwise not be able to process. In other words, I am incredibly good at dissociating, it’s a skill I acquired young and have perfected over the years. So much so, a lot of my diaries make reference to events that I have no recollection of. These notes and journals act as my guide and fill the gaps of what my brain has effectively blocked out. It’s beneficial in that regard but acts as a double-edged sword, forcing me to re-experience memories I buried for a reason.  

This is the main reason for my misdirection in my writing process, although there are others. Sometimes I get halfway through typing out one of my stories before deciding I am unwilling to delve deeper, filing it away to be reviewed at a later date.  

I record everything. If you’ve ever wronged me, I have a catalogue of evidence against you. I still have accounts of my first boyfriend’s best friend admitting to groping and secretly taking up skirt shots of me. To this day I’m made uncomfortable by Apple’s cheap imitation of an ASDL camera lens shutter— the perverse half-wit forgot to put his phone on silent. I used to think about printing out his confession, enclosing it in an envelope addressed to his parents and hand delivering it to the letterbox of his family’s home. He lived two streets away from me and although I had not met his family he had been introduced to members of mine. We would hang out after school, mostly he would third wheel, sometimes it’d be within a group setting, but occasionally it would just be the two of us. In the budding stages of our friendship, we would part ways after getting off at the same bus stop. At some point he started accompanying me home. We would binge food that my current self would not even consider safe for human consumption and watch cartoons. That was the foundation of the bond. I remember him playfully putting me in a chokehold, forcing my head into his armpit, the same way my brother used to. It felt like such a wholesome connection at the time. I started viewing him as someone I could trust and rely on. I don’t know how it came about but one day he gave me a shoulder ride home. I know now this was to feel the embrace of a girl’s legs around his neck, but if you had warned my sixteen-year-old self that this was the purpose of the activity, I wouldn’t have believed you. He ended up groping me, grabbing my ass. It took me by so much surprise that it put me in a state of shock. Over the next few days, I worked up the courage to admit to myself what had occurred. I was avoidant of conflict and had so much fear that the friendship between my boyfriend and his best friend would end and that I was to blame. I unconsciously translated the assaults as being my fault and emotionally spiraled into a cocoon of guilt. A couple more days went by before I was able to tell my boyfriend about what his best friend had done. My boyfriend iced out his best friend and as a result, he stopped appearing within the social circle at after-school gatherings. My relationship with my boyfriend changed. The love I had for him bled dry. He started to resent me and eventually the feelings became mutual. Maybe it was the other way around. Either way, what we were ended and almost immediately a friendship rekindled. My ex acted as if his best friend had never sexually assaulted his girlfriend.  

I made a point of not making friends within my partner’s circle after that. Being too friendly had gotten me in trouble and I was sure not to repeat that mistake.