Christmas Art

These things I carry with me...

I can't remember ever loving my dad. My earliest memory of him is from when I was around 4 or 5, and I was standing in his backyard while he was beating a rabbit to death with a shovel. I'm not sure he was even angry, that was just the kind of thing he would make us watch him do. Sometimes it was a threat or a "punishment". Sometimes it was just because he could. When we were a bit older, sometimes he would make my brothers join in. They would have a "choice" to hit me or the dog with a stick. I remember one of my brothers had tears rolling down his face while he flung a stick around. It's disturbing to think back to that time and it's difficult to talk about. It was terrifying then and it terrifies me now.

As Christmas approaches, I find myself re-experiencing some of the terror I felt throughout my childhood. I'm having nightmares every night and I'm waking up disorientated and distraught, remembering the weight of his body crushing me down.  I've never been able to forget the Christmas Day when I was almost 9 years old. I was unwell so he put me in his bedroom with a movie. He came back in while other family members were eating lunch. That's when he raped me for the first time. 

I know that I am not alone in struggling around the holidays but it can still feel really isolating and overwhelming. It's a time of year when there are so many more social events, but I feel withdrawn and 'not myself'. Most of the people in my life can't even begin to imagine the depravity of my childhood and so I end up feeling a sense of separateness. There's a time and a place for a rape story and it's not at a Christmas party, you know? 

So I try to 'take back' this time of year in small ways... I try to stay in the moment with my children, and it is actually nice to be around their excitement and joy. I feel like I am in a better place than I could be and I am grateful for many things. There's a little analogy that I sometimes share with my students about disruption and the potential for posttraumatic growth, and it's about the process of seedling development and how there's no seed that breaks through the soil without disrupting the soil. So you start with disruption, but you end up with growth and perspective. I think this year, thinking about those kinds of things helps to step out of the helplessness a little.

I've been wondering how I get myself out from under the weight ... the literal weight that I feel when I remember that first rape, and the sheer terror of all those years.  I've been working on a few different art pieces, but I don't know how to depict the darkness and the heaviness without falling completely into it. Instead I have tried to focus on where I would go in that moment if I could get out from under the heaviness.