If you had a superpower what would it be?
Well I sort of have one; I have vivid selective amnesia.
I literally block out mass amounts of time in my life; and most of it isn’t with pure intention in doing so.
It seems as simple as taking a caustic smelling Sharpie and marking big red X’s on whatever it was I wanted to negate, like you would dates on a calendar.
I blocked out bullying, having little friends, my sexual assault as well as a slew of other things.
To me, those things were in the past; done and over with.
It’s totally weird, I remember very little of anything before I was 23.
It’s like having my own personal superpower, but before I had that I had a sharpened No. 2 pencil and a raggedy spiral bound notebook. That’s how I used to negate all the negativity.
Hours were spent in a closet with a flickering 13inch black and white T.V., a pen and pad, and my thoughts.
In that closet I escaped from everything; the bullying, my siblings and reality. It didn’t just take me away from negativity it allowed me to just BE; without ridicule or judgment.
Poetic prose got me through my youth.
However, I abandoned writing as I entered high school, as mandatory reading and writing overshadowed my recreational wants.
Next came the side effects of life and being an adult.
Everything else seemed to take precedence; military deployments, college, spouse, kids…LIFE!
I actually lost my love of it, as I write for a living now. All creativity has seemingly oozed out of any orifice it was capable of seeking refuge, leaving me just a walking talking flesh pod of military jargon and writing style.
There is little room for creativity in military writing. And my blocks of time where forever to remain lost.
However, when I started to the write The Invisible Sorority: Surviving being a Survivor of Intimate Partner Sexual Assault it forced me to face those images I vowed to forget, all with the intent to help other women.
While trying to help other women I seemed to have helped myself. I was forced to talk through my issues with what happened to me.
Instead of burying my head in the sand like an ostrich, I was now pointing my head to the heavens and picking the sand crystals out of my feathery eyelashes. My vision was blurry at first, but with continued writing some of my quirks found its root in my tragedies.
I call them the “side effects of me”.
I developed habits and personality traits out of my darkness, but I never related them to that incident. They were and are my protection mechanisms.
Writing the book eased my sensibility in regards to my sexual assault. It helped me to see why I was having problems with intimacy and why I am so overprotective of my only child.
The pen (well pencil) can get right to the middle of your psyche and put it right in your face.
It can soothe your soul like that warm glass of milk you’d drink to release melatonin to force you into deep slumber.
And in my case, it may save your relationship.
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Genre – Non-Fiction, Self Help-Abuse
Rating – PG-13
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