Читать книгу Trapped In Between - Marilyn Elaine Lundberg Lundberg - Страница 5

Summertime, after the sixth grade was difficult for me, because I was grief-stricken from the loss of my kitty. She had filled a huge void in my life and I felt hollow without her. There was something so special about that little kitty that had wandered into my yard. She seemed to love me unconditionally; I didn’t have to do anything for her love. She was never in a bad mood or too tired to play. Even though garage doors were intentionally left open, she never ran away from me. On my bad days, she was the one who comforted me. If the other kids teased me, she lifted my spirits. She gave me joy and now she was discarded.

I never let my dad know how much he hurt me. He never saw one of my tears, I kept them all inside, hidden away from his eyes.

I also had a little baby squirrel that I had nursed back to health during the time I had Tiger. He had fallen out of his nest and I scooped him up and protected him from other critters in his little shoebox home. He would eat tiny peanut butter sandwiches from my hand.

As he grew up he would look for me to sit on the yellow metal lawn chair in the backyard. He would come a running and jump into my lap. He was sweet and fun, but he wasn’t my soul mate, like Tiger kitty.

The rest of the summer my poor belly was crammed full of fluttering butterflies. With fall approaching, those butterflies changed into pain with nausea, and my poor mind was spinning with worrisome thoughts about school being right around the corner again. I wanted the calendar to stop. I couldn’t bear to think of another year trapped in a brick building.

My new school, Jordan Junior High was a one mile walk from my home, compared to my elementary school which had been a hop skip and a jump across the street. Instead of having one teacher, I would now have six teachers, one for every subject. I tormented myself with worrying about the what if’s. What if the teachers are like my fifth grade teacher? What if they want me to give speeches? What if I can’t make new friends and the kids don’t like me, and continue to tease me about my teeth and blushing. My mind was worried about all facets of school.

Something very strange happened that summer, I began to see less and less of my best friend, my sidekick who had always played with me in the schoolyard. She and her sister sort of slowly disappeared from my life, she had so many friends, and I just had her. She not only didn’t come knocking at my door, but if she saw me she turned the other way. I was devastated in the loss of my buddy and fearful of having to walk to my new school alone. This was such a big deal for me, and I never dared to ask my best friend what had happened.

This became a new worry that consumed me. I began to daily obsess about this loss of my friend, and what I had done to her. How was I going to solve this dilemma? I remember sitting in the living room and looking out the window to the schoolyard, that had once brought me all my contentment. That’s what happens when you put all your eggs in one basket, and you only have one friend. When she was gone there was no backup. Going to a new school, walking twelve blocks without a friend by my side was just too much to deal with. This uncertainty controlled me that summer, I felt so alone. No kitty and now the loss of my ally.

This was the summer that my nervousness, sadness and anxiety went to a much deeper level. I believe depression began in the fifth grade with the oral book reports, but took a nose dive when my mind began to calculate all the unknown fears in going to the new junior high school, alone.

The dread escalated each passing day. My mind was constantly trying to calculate a way that I didn’t have to go to school, but I was trapped, there was no way out of it, and each day that passed was a day closer to the first day of school.

Those commercials would come on the television about buying school supplies, and I wanted to vomit. I never told anyone about my thoughts or the terror that I felt. It wouldn’t have helped to tell my parents, they both worked and there wasn’t any such thing as homeschooling in those days.

If only I would have had some control; if I could have picked my teachers, or said no to speeches, it would have helped, but once again, I had no dominion in those areas. My mind was always on overdrive trying to figure out how to stop the madness. I needed to be able to grab onto something, or someone that could help me, but I had no one.

I no longer had my little soft fur ball to talk to, and comfort me, I was totally alone. All I knew was that I couldn’t walk those twelve blocks by myself.

The darkness was now so close to me I could almost touch it. I had felt it slowly creeping towards me since the beginning of fifth grade, but now it was here and rubbing against me on all sides.

I am now going to write about my thoughts of suicide. I was unsure for quite awhile if I wanted to reveal this portion of my life. Suicide is so wrong, and I would never want to encourage someone else to think the way I was thinking, but I am going to tell it like it happened, and not sugar coat it. If you are having thoughts of suicide, please seek help, it is never an option for you.

One day the lightlessness totally engulfed me, and whispered into my ear, “Just give up, forget about life, it’s not worth it, go ahead and commit suicide.” I was shocked when I heard this voice in my ear; that thought had never ever entered my mind before. It was an idea that made me sick to my stomach, but on the other hand it did seem to be a possible way out of my dilemma. It was extremely drastic, but a viable solution. There was almost a peace that came over me when I thought about the suicide event. No more jokes about my teeth, no more blushing, no more summersaults, no more oral book reports, no more wondering who I would walk to school with, no more listening to Mom talk to her imaginary friends, and no more Dad showing me his private parts.

In Sunday school they talked about heaven, and how wonderful it was, and now I could make that happen, if I chose to. Finally, I have control over something in my life.

Perhaps if I had lived with animals, for instance cats, dogs and horses, in the middle of nowhere, I may not have thought about suicide, but it was the fact that I had to be around humanity, and had no control over their directives, that is what made life torture for me. I needed to find a safe place where I wasn’t so afraid, and I thought heaven might be the place for me.

In the animal kingdom, the weak don’t often survive because the strong bully them and destroy them. I regularly felt that was happening to me by the passing rude comments that came my way from other kids. Mean words by the strong would slice me, but no one ever saw the damage except for me.

My intention to commit suicide was not to say, “I’ll show you," I was simply saying I can’t take the agony anymore, it hurts too badly, I want to live in a place where I will be free of chaos, and I will find my own peace and joy. No malice towards anyone, just got to go and then slip away. I put this idea in my back pocket so it would be there if and when I couldn’t take the suffering any longer.

The nightmares and night terrors stepped up a lot that summer. The bears continued to chase and devour me, and there was also an assortment of other nasty dreams. There was a reoccurring dream in which intruders would break down the doors and windows of my house, torturing and then killing me. Other dreams would be me in a vehicle and the brakes failed, so I was killed. I was killed in an assortment of ways every night, and they all left me upset and weeping when I awoke.

Along with the depression there was anxiety. I had persistent and excessive worry about everyday things. I was always thinking the worst was going to happen in any given moment. Every day was like that, I never gave myself a break. Most of the time my stomach was sick and I was fatigued from not having a good nights’ sleep. I needed a safe zone in my life, but no matter where I went, I didn’t feel protected. I used to feel secure in the schoolyard and the alone time with my kitty, but that was gone now. I hated feeling vulnerable all the time.

When the first day of school arrived it was as difficult as I had imagined. There were so many different teachers, all with their different quirks and personalities, lots of new kids that I didn’t know, and so many expectations that were heaped on me. I carried on as I had in grade school by getting through each day to Friday night when I could finally take a deep breath and relax, and then by Sunday all the apprehensions began in earnest.

At school I had acquaintances, but I never allowed anyone to get too close to me, because my walls were high and thick. I also didn’t want anyone to know my secrets, because remember Mom said, “Don’t trust anyone.”

I remember sitting in the school auditorium one day waiting for the program to start, and a boy leaned over to me and said that I appeared to be such a calm person. I heard that many times and I thought, if they only knew what was going on inside of my head. I guess it was my way of fitting in. I could wear my serenity mask and no one ever knew all my hindrances.

Around the middle of the seventh grade, when I was thirteen years old, something unusual began happening in my mind, and I hesitate to even write about it, because it brings up so much shame, but it may help someone so I will continue on. My mind began to have very strange thoughts; these were desires to put myself into dangerous situations. This is a time in my life when two other personalities emerged. One personality was that of a prostitute, the other was a nun and of course me, Marilyn.

As the sun was setting and dusk was appearing, a strange new thought would enter my mind, and a strange new feeling entered my body. The thought was to leave the safety of my home, and take a walk along a busy road or highway. As I was walking I was supposed to look into the eyes of the men in the cars speeding past me, as a prostitute would do.

So at the young age of thirteen, I felt like prostitution was calling my name and trying to drag me into this dark unhealthy lifestyle; me a sweet young girl that went to church every week. How could that be happening to me?

I can’t even find the words to explain the tremendous pull that I felt to put myself into this dangerous sexual situation, and I didn’t feel like I could say no. The really odd thing was that I knew nothing about sex except for the explanation that I had received after the circus fiasco. All that information went in one ear and out the other, because Mom had been so mad. I had never seen pictures or read any books about sex, and didn’t know how it was done. I was as naive as a young girl could be.

Something in that night air would call to me as the sun was setting. It was a dark, ugly, drawing that would consume me at times, for what I thought, was no apparent reason. When the thoughts were whispered to walk at night, it was virtually impossible to put it out of my mind. The purpose of walking at night was to have some strange man pull his car over and drag me off into the bushes, and sexually abuse me. Better yet, many men hopefully would emerge, over power me and do what they wanted with me.

If a man in a car did slow down, I became terrified and ran like the wind in the opposite direction for my safety. This was the nun personality taking over and getting me out of the danger that the prostitute had put me into. The nun would be appalled at the idea of walking the streets at night in the first place, and would be very disgusted and upset with me. She would scold me for leaving the comfort and safety of my home, and putting my life in danger.

Then there was me, Marilyn, who was very confused as to why I was thinking about any of this stuff in the first place. My mind was not acting as it had in the past. It had this new agenda and I had no idea why or what was going on. These weekly walks were terrifying for me, but I felt I was being forced and again had no control over the situation. The prostitute personality was the strongest, the nun was second in command and I was the powerless one.

The rest of seventh, eighth and ninth grade are obscure. There may have been speeches; I just don’t have substantial memories of these three years. That period of my life is all very black. Drag myself out of bed, get to school, get through five scary classes, and then go to my wonderful gym class, and then home to angry Mom and naked Dad. That was my life.

The only solid memories that I recall are of me in gym class. During sports I was able to block out all the anxiety and focus on the goal of each sport. In the ninth grade I won the schools’ badminton championship, this was a very exciting achievement for me. I loved this accomplishment, but it only lasted for a few short moments and then all the blackness engulfed me again.

Besides loving gym class, I also excelled at sewing. My mother had taught me how to sew as a kid. I made most of my outfits because I enjoyed creating clothes that nobody else owned. At home I could sit at the sewing machine for hours and get lost in the creativity of the project I was working on. My three passions in life were animals, sports and sewing. I am very thankful that I had those three passions in my life to get me through the difficult days.

I was fifteen years old at the end of ninth grade and the problems just kept piling on. On top of all the problems of the past I was now contemplating suicide because I needed peace at any price. I was shutting down emotionally when I needed to, and was experiencing severe depression. I felt crazy different from other people, and so I would withdraw and isolate myself. At times I felt confused, numb and separate from myself, which scared me to pieces. To make matters worse there was now three of me, a prostitute a nun and me, what in the world is going on with my head I wondered. There was a general sense of hopelessness that surrounded me, and I envied all the other people around me who were laughing and appeared to be enjoying life.