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SoulSong

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Blog Entries posted by SoulSong

  1. SoulSong
    He was seven months old.
    She was the first of my childhood friends to have a baby.
    She had gotten married in January and he was born in April.  Though she loved him dearly, she wondered what people in our closed, Conservative circle would say.
    But I loved her for it.  Because everyone who has walked the hard paths of life in a broken Creation know sorrow.
    I knew it.  And I knew that she knew it.
    She was the first of my friends to get married, and to have a baby.
    And she's the first of my friends to lose a baby.
    Ten days before Christmas.
    So my best friend, who is also friends with her sister, and I stopped at Target to get a few things for them.  In the end, we picked out a cream woven basket, a blanket with the words, "I love you" printed across it and teal microfiber on the other side, a stuffed fox (reminiscent of his favorite toy), an elephant lovey, teal-and-grey fuzzy socks for Mama and Daddy, chocolate, a notebook, and a candle.
    I'm thinking now about his first birthday in April, and Mother's Day in May . . . and the first anniversary of the loss, a year from now.
    Sweet friend.
    I'm at a loss for words.
  2. SoulSong
    I just happened to glance at my phone as the text flashed across my screen.
    "NEVER let anyone walk to their car alone.  Sarah* was almost grabbed last night by a man in a ski mask.  She got away but he exposed himself to her."
    I sputtered.  The girl on the other side of the Zoom call was waiting for me to speak, but whatever we had been discussing faded away like fog being burned by the sun.
    After the call was finished, I re-read the text.  My heart dropped.  My hands felt clammy.  I started to shake.
    I called my best friend, the person we'd been celebrating.  I sent her the screenshot.
    "What?!"
    More fading.  
    I got off the phone and texted my mom back.  Her only response: "That's how people end up dead."
    I know.
    My eyes brimmed with tears.  Only a few months earlier, I'd told my mom how her best friend's son, my ex-boyfriend, sexually assaulted me numerous times.
    I know.
    She had dismissed me.  "I don't want to know."
    I wanted her to know.  I wanted desperately to be heard.
    Instead, I developed PTSD that haunts me to this day . . . especially when I learn about situations my friends are in.
     
    Sarah, over the next few months you may think that no one knows.
    It's not true.
    We do.  We know the pain and loss and sorrow, and we grieve with you.  I grieve with you.  Jesus weeps for you, Sarah.  And He knows.  He said, "Behold, I suffereth the pains of all men." 
    I don't know what words to use . . . but I know.
     
    - Soul
    *Name changed for anonymity
  3. SoulSong

    Two Years

    By SoulSong,


    anni
    I was scrolling through Reddit.
    "What's one thing you wish you'd never gone through?"  Ahh, AskReddit, the deeply philosophical subreddit.  One of my favorites.
    I paused before I wrote.  "I was a victim of domestic violence from sixteen to eighteen," I began.  "It's made me a better therapy student," I admitted, "but I could do without the lingering anxiety and PTSD."
    For the first time in therapy a few weeks ago, I had acknowledged that I wasn't sorry the abuse had happened.  I wouldn't wish it on anyone - ever - but for myself, I have learned things about myself and my world and my God that I would never have known otherwise.
    Later that night, after watching my comment blaze past 25 upvotes, then 50, and then 200, I got up.  I had a chord progression in my head and it wouldn't leave.  It was a sad one - if you know music theory, it's I-vi-IV-V.  If you don't . . . I'll just say it's one that frequently hits me in the feels.  It's a blend of happy and sad, kind of like my life.
    As I played the progression, I looked up at my bedroom walls.  There, situated on a shelf, was a tiara my parents had bought me when I was a child.  Memories flashed as I remembered the events leading up to the purchase of this tiara.  I'd had one given to me by my aunt, but one night in a fight before bed, it was broken.  I remembered the shame I felt as I realized that one of my prized possessions was broken beyond repair.  If only I had never fought with my dad . . . He promised to buy me a new one, and he did.  But I still remember the shame.
    I thought of other things I felt shame about.  Next to the tiara was a German-made teacup and saucer set I'd bought at an antique mall with my boyfriend and his mom.  My boyfriend was my abuser, the perpetrator of the domestic violence.  
    This December 31st will mark two years since we broke up.
    I remember knowing I'd never continue without him.
    Two months after we broke up, I auditioned at my dream music conservatory and got in.  Five months after we broke up, I quit my retail job and started working at a clinic with autistic children.  In the fall, I started school at the conservatory.  I began teaching piano lessons, soon getting all of the referrals for children with disabilities.  I made a new friend at my conservatory, and I consider her one of my best friends now.  Another friend, who was at another music school and in her senior year, is now also one of my best friends.  I found out I have ADHD.  I finished the year with flying colors as a double major, studying music therapy and psychology.
    This year I have survived a COVID-19 pandemic for nine months, including my own mother coming down with it.  I've done school at home.  I started an on-campus job (which, ironically, has been almost completely off-campus).  I've attended two music therapy conferences.  I've read books.  I even dated a boy for a couple of weeks before he broke things off for an unrelated reason.  I'm writing a research prospectus so I can complete a research thesis my senior year.  I've attended two music therapy conferences, virtually.  I've been diagnosed with PTSD and anxiety.  I've been to fourteen sessions of therapy.  I've written about my experiences with PTSD, anxiety, and ADHD.  I've suffered with PCOS, too.  
    I'm still listening to the chord progression, which I recorded.  It's still, C, A minor, F, G. The A minor chord still sticks out because it's sad.  But I think what I hear now is the shift from the A minor to the F - sad to happy, broken to healing.  
    I know things are not always easy.  I know because two hours ago I was sobbing.  But look at all the changes two years brings.  I can do this.  We can do this.  
    Like the poet says, "I hear the real, though far-off hymn that hails a new creation."
    Come, new creation -- come.
  4. SoulSong
    I'm a psychology student, but until this summer I didn't know about repressed memories.
    I was a sophomore in college.  It was the height of the COVID-19 pandemic - or at least, I hoped it was.  I had been exposed and I was living in a house for two weeks with my other friends who were exposed.  I was living an hour away from home - and I had never moved out before.  I had to get a COVID test before I could go home to my parents and my animals.
    My cousin was driving me, because my anxiety was through the roof that day.  I had heard that some patients who were tested got migraines after, and I was prone to those.
    We had to drive up to my hometown to take the test, because there were no urgent care centers in the little tiny town we were living in an hour away.  So one bright June morning, Heather and I drove up the ancient, pothole-filled highway to the place I'd lived for the last twenty years.  We found the urgent care center and turned into the parking lot.
    And there it was.
    An orange-and-green sign plastered on the side of a brick building.  It was a grocery store.  I stopped.  I froze.
    My blood chilled.
    "What's wrong?" Heather asked.
    I sputtered.
    I had been there before.
    I didn't know when.
    But he had touched me in his mother's car in that parking lot.
    "I was sexually assaulted there," I said softly.
    "...Oh.  Are you okay?"
    At the time that Heather and I drove by the grocery store where I was assaulted, I was aware of only one sexual assault, at another grocery store parking lot across town when I was seventeen.  Now, I am aware of five others - all by him, all in places where no one else would know. Two were in grocery store parking lots, one was in a dollar store parking lot, one was in my basement, and one was on a three-mile walking trail.
    I was seventeen.
    He was twenty-nine - and later, thirty.
    I feel broken and disgusted.  I want to wash my mouth out, but I can't.  I want to wash my body, but I have.  Broken and disgusted.
    I am a sexual assault survivor.
  5. SoulSong
    "Blackbird singing in the dead of night,
    Take your broken wings and learn to fly . . . "
    I remember hearing that for the first time.  I think it was Kel who sent it to me.  I liked him, Kel.  He was tall, stocky, reminded me of my dad, but my age.  And I liked him as if just yesterday I was fourteen.  But that makes sense, because the years between then and now are fuzzy at best.
    Kel had an affinity for the Beatles.  Oh, when I say it that way - it sounds cute.  Like Kel wasn't a megafan, like he didn't talk about them every chance he got or know every song.  
    Kel's attraction to the Beatles was one thing about him I didn't understand.
    But he sent me this song, and immediately I loved it.  
    "Blackbird, fly, blackbird, fly,
    Into the light of a dark black night."
    The months since Kel sent me that song in April have felt just that - like a dark black night.  I have felt as though I am flying blind, and yet as I look back I realize that I am simply growing my wings.  ...although, it would be silly to pretend that I don't have growing pains.
    I started therapy in July.  I'd been before to get testing for ADHD, but this was different.  I sat across the chair from the general psychologist in the cold blue room.  It was July.  I shouldn't have been cold.
    "You wrote on your form that someone pressured you into sex."
    "Yeah."
    "I won't make you talk about that here, with me.  Would you like to talk about it with a woman?"  He was so understanding.
    "Yeah, I need to talk about it but I don't really want to."
    For once in my life, I couldn't speak.
    As I drove away, I remember thinking, How could this awful thing have happened to me?
    I was growing wings, and those were growing pains.
    I've met with my therapist almost weekly since July.  I've talked about my grandmother.  I've told her bits and pieces of my story.  I've remembered traumatic events.  But only now am I beginning to piece together what really happened.  Especially chronologically.
    I am a survivor of domestic violence.
    These are the words of one learning to fly.
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