It’s just what’s happening. I’m trying not to do anything to interfere. Over and over again I see a metal rod reaching from the top of my head down to my feet, like my spine kind of, but not physical. Like a note played without the damper pedal, wide open to vibrate all the way through all the pain behind the PTSD.

I stopped crying in defiance when I was 7. I stopped speaking and having an expressed opinion in 4th grade. I didn’t start talking again until I was 23. I stopped closing my eyes, stopped sleeping in the dark when I was an early teen. I had an emotional breakdown at 14, which permanently damaged my memory. When I was 15. I had a force field. It appeared when I was about halfway down the block to our house on Hemlock St.

Every day it would stop me in my tracks. I was so embarrassed, afraid somebody would see. Afraid I was going crazy. I fought my way through and went home for another installment of Pop in the afternoon and Matt at night. Another night of waiting up with a shotgun to prevent Pop from coming home and killing us all, one of his often-repeated threats.

We stayed up. To this day and almost 65 years old, and I am still staying up.

I always dreamed the world would be a safer place without my father in it. I was right, it is safer than it was WITH him in it. But it’s not really safe. This is one of the main things I want to heal: insomnia.

So this is playing out like a massive arpeggio, the biggest chord you can imagine hearing. It booms in the bass, it screams in the treble, and in between my stomach feels queasy. I remember feeling sick. I remember how it felt to be so afraid as a tiny tot, so abandoned as a little girl with Polio, so disgusted as a teenager, so angry as a college student being raped.

But I gotta say remembering it all at once is a bit much. I’m just hanging on. Trying to remember this was my choice my own idea. It’s a Psychic Detox.