Built For This

CPTSD in crisis and writing what really needs to be said

It’s been weeks. I guess about a month now, perhaps more. Like chewing on a stick of gum too long and it’s gone gluey and bored. I’ve been trying to figure out what exactly is it that I’m doing. Here, I mean. No, not like that. Not in a flailing what am I even doing but a curious scratching and rattling around. What kind of writer am I? Now that it’s been a little more than four years since I left the previous version of my life. Now that it’s been just shy of three that I’ve been able to write a different way- less updates, less insular, less Dear Diary. Since then I’ve been able to write about joy. About safety. About a life not always glistening but one that doesn’t leave bruises. I’ve been sitting with all that has been afforded to me these last three years and I can hardly believe it at all. It was safety. It is.

I realize now that I’m honing and becoming closer, and closer yet. And I’m doing it out loud still, in real time. A writer I admire recently said they don’t want to read the out-loud process. They want to read after it’s fully actualized. Once it’s more than thoughts and speculation. They want it in its entirety. I’m not here to give you that- I can’t. The truth is, I don’t want to and maybe this is a guise but it’s good enough for me now. This is how I write although you can see its evolution. My blade becoming sharper and sharper still. Maybe I’ve had more of a niche than I realized. Even more than food being the thread that spans and spackles most of the things I touch. I’ve been this writer but there’s always that same dishwasher hum in between sentences. All this time and the updates. The picking up and picking up again. I write as a way to process and to understand. But I’ve been missing saying the quiet part out loud. At the heart of it- I am a 36 year old fully birthed and present and alive human being that’s as wobbly as they are standing. I am 3.

3 out of 36.

A drop in the bucket. Fewer years than Little’s age. The average life span of a betta fish. I’ve wrote about this, sure. How hard it’s been. The newness. The fumbling. The way it makes me feel soft and scared at once. But what is it? It’s that I’m 36 years old living in a world that doesn’t support this and yet played a part in making this. I’ve left you breadcrumbs. On occasion I’ll show you all my cards. My story isn’t so much a secret as it is still an apparition. My childhood, the things I saw, the things done to me. It doesn’t get better after childhood, you see. It was a continuation but I got better at applying makeup and making sure I had somewhere to wash my clothes at least occasionally in between wearings. My family, not all of them, send me Facebook messages telling me they can’t believe I made it and not in a condescending way but they can’t and neither can I somedays. I wasn’t supposed to. In a ditch, in prison, institutionalized, in the ground, with my mother. I’m in a space 3 years later where the moths have stopped bat bat batting against the side of my head. None of that should’ve happened and it did and it shaped how I think and speak and cook and parent and write. I have CPTSD. I have had dissociative disorders. My new psychiatrist hovers over other possible diagnoses but hasn’t flat out said it and I don’t know that she will. I still have nightmares. I am self conscious of the way I speak. I over explain. I am windy. I am weird. This is what I’ve been trying the process in my own writing because this is what I’ve been writing about. Not Ava after divorce. Not Ava when I came out still married to a cishet man. Not even Ava when my mother died. I’ve been writing about what it means, what it looks and feels like, to move about this world with the brain and nervous system that I have. I have had reactions that are so out of proportion than what happened- as a child and even now as an adult. If a shirt wasn’t fitting the way I imagined I would heave and tantrum like a toddler, making us late for our dinner reservation. Anaya never, not once, losing his patience as I sat on the toilet and cried. Then crying harder because my mascara was running and we were going to be even later. We don’t have to go. We can stay right here. I can just hold you. It was that, it is that steadiness, his safety, that has gotten me here. Sure, there’s all the logistics and privileges and basic needs met- the home we rent with an actual yard and the fact that I can afford to buy things in bulk or fill up my gas tank all. at. once. But still with me are the times as a child that I would smack myself with a hairbrush repeatedly- both with the bristles and the wooden back into my head and cheeks that became welted apples flecked with tiny dots because my hair wouldn’t cooperate. The mornings before school that I would rage and howl at my mother, writhing on the floor and inevitably making us both late because she couldn’t get my ponytail tight enough. Like the time I ended up cutting the baby hairs right at the root- thwack, one shear and two vertical impressions- permanent barrettes on either side of what would’ve been a middle part and eventually did to hide my misdoings. But all of the big things, the moments in life that should have shocked me. Should’ve scared me. Should’ve made me break down and demand answers or plead or beg- they eventually left me stoic. I didn’t rage or cry out- I twirled pasta around my fork. I went to bed. I brushed my teeth before work.

Alexander Chee encourages the writer to write what really needs to be said and I’m not afraid to show you- I’m still learning.

me at 3? 4? Who cares- greatest side eye ever.

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I have resigned to the idea that somehow, someday I will have finally arrived- there is no arrival. There is no one destination. While eating dinner, just Anaya and I, our conversation meanders to a time before him and I tell him that I cannot picture Little when he was around nine months. Of course I can conjure him in my mind- his downy mullet. The rash that once cropped up on his cheeks like the pink sand I saw at Elafonissi Beach (me? in Greece?) but not without choking back what I’m not ready to feel again just yet. I know, he tells me and I believe him. He believes me when I tell him that my body will allow me to remember someday and he knows that too. With each passing season I’m struck with a type of nostalgia that I still don’t understand. I am trying.

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The day of the inauguration I smoke a little pot and Anaya drives us to meet friends for a mid-afternoon, silly (One of Them Days! A feminist Friday!) movie. Only after I’ve settled and steadied. Only after I’ve spent a few beats in ritual for myself of course, but for others. For what’s to come. For what already has.

I send the same flurry of texts, checking in and checking on. How’s your heart. Make sure you rest. Stay off social media for a bit, hey? I print Know Your Rights cards in Spanish to tape to the Latine-majority grocery store, the only grocery store in my neighborhood, and to the aisles inside 7/11. I do stay off social media and instead do a brief read and/or watch of news, maxing out at 15 minutes- I need to keep tabs on our friend-family in Santa Monica. I need to keep a tab on what’s happening in Florida (snowing?!) because of friends there as well. I lift my tea bag from the mug and lower it down- back and forth and back and forth. I watch the tea bag empty and fill, fill and empty.

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I am built for blatant crisis and not because it makes me any better or any worse, I just am. But it’s a spectrum- almost two years ago Little had toddled off ahead and in his two year old state ignored our calls to wait! stay right there! hang on! It was already dark and he was right there- right in the middle of the frosted over entrance to a parking lot. His head turned over his left shoulder, making it even more impossible for a two year old to realize what was happening before the truck had to slam on its brakes. He had been looking at me. I didn’t run or call out. I didn’t scream stop! I didn’t wave my arms or try to get Little to wait. I looked away. I completely froze and I looked away- shielding myself from the possible outcome that would inevitably unravel me like a thread you shouldn’t have pulled. Like the green ribbon around her neck.

Sudden movements frighten me but crisis that I can examine, crisis that slow-burns its markings on me, on my heart, on yours, leaves me feeling steadied and ready.

I was built for this. I never should’ve been.

Let’s talk about this more because I know I’m not alone. In the next 5, 10, 15 years I absolutely won’t be so alone and for the first time I wish I was.

Biggest love,

AR

Currently Reading: Pansy by

Jasper Joyner

- it’s written in a way that makes you feel as though you’re shooting the shit with them sometimes and I love it.

Currently Listening To: sounds from Wicked being watched by the babies- they’re home again <3

Currently Cooking: The first recipe in

Teresa Finney

’s truly beautiful cookbook zine, Panadería, masa harina shortbread!