Things Remembered

A forgetting mind dusts off the past.

When I was 18, I decided that I would completely clean my room. Move everything, clean every surface, and keep it clean so I wouldn't have to scourge my room before moving out. 

After organizing a majority of my things, I went to the bookshelf to dust off about an inch of dust that had collected there over a number of years. I cleared off all the decorative jewelry boxes I had been given over the years, one for my Baptism, one for my First Communion, and one for my Confirmation. One box remained, the largest and most decorative of the four. I had been given this box, from the store Things Remembered, by my father's cousin when I was six as a gift for being the flower girl at her wedding. Child me was not very grateful for a box, but adult me was. I adored that little box. 

The box was wooden, painted white, covered in colorful round butterflies and pink hearts. The little knob on the drawer was even in the shape of a daisy. My name was engraved across the top, giving it an elegance that a six year old girl doesn't understand. Looking at the box now, the silver cursive gave my name the sophistication I had worked so hard to give it over the years. I smiled and opened the box, excited to turn the crank and hear the tune I used to fall asleep to while napping. 

The ballerina of this box was another little butterfly, all rounded edges and child friendly colors. I turned the crank on the back of the box several times, anticipating the nostalgia I would feel. The butterfly began to turn. 

I was transported back to being a child in that very same room. I remembered napping in my twin bed, my entire room pink and adorable. I had forgotten about that bed. I had forgotten I used to hide under there away from my oldest brother, praying that he wouldn't find me.

As the song progressed, I looked at the door next to me. I remembered desperately pressing my entire body weight against the door as an eight year old, trying to keep my brother out of my room as he picked the lock and pushed himself in. My hands would turn red and my knuckles white from gripping the knob and pressing my hand on the door. I was so small, I had always been. I remembered when he slipped money under the door as a bribe to let him in. I had begged my mother to get me a real lock on the door, one that couldn't be picked with a bobby pin. She refused, assuming I wanted it to keep my older brothers from bothering me. My mother told me that I was overreacting, that I should just not provoke them. I never asked about a lock again.

I glanced at the floor in the middle of the room. I used to play there with my Barbies, imagining what my life would be like as a teenager. My brother used to pin me down among my toys, and I zoned out during all of it. My mind raced, thinking of all the pain, all the anger, and all the goddamn medication that coursed through my veins as I reached adulthood. All the blood that had dripped on that floor. 

I turned to see my bed, stripped of its sheets, nothing but a bare mattress. When I was a child, I would cuddle with all my stuffed animals in bed and dream sweet dreams. As I grew older, I still had to sleep with a hall light on, an irrational fear of ghosts keeping me awake until 2 in the morning every night, hiding under my blankets for fear of the boogeyman. There were no ghosts. I knew there were no ghosts. But I was still afraid. I thought of every bed I had been shoved on, every guy that had been on top of me. All the times my eyes were glassy and my mind was far away. Sometimes I was in love. I wanted to be in love, anyways. I clung desperately to some of them, imagining that they loved me and what that would feel like. I always felt so hollow after those thoughts. So cold and alone, it kept me up all night. The boogeyman was real.

Miscellaneous thoughts whirred through my head. The screaming matches I had with boyfriends. The pain of everything I had ever done with someone who didn't love me. The times I had gotten so high I shook and couldn't form sentences. The late nights I spent in my room alone, chugging gin and calling the man I loved. All the times I had been taken advantages of. The shame I felt. The shame I had felt for my entire life. It would never go away as long as I opened that same door, sat on that same floor, slept in that same bed. 

The song ended abruptly, pulling me back from my thoughts. I pulled my hair with my hands, tight enough to draw blood, but said nothing.

 I never said anything. I was silent.