Trauma

Needles.

Hypodermic needles were my first fear.  The doctor’s office became home to my nightmares.  Sharp objects—knives, spears, and swords—became my first obsession.  My first compulsion was to hold a sharp object against my chin—GI Joe’s scuba knife, a Fort Apache spear, or Galahad’s tiny sword—grit my teeth, and count.

When I was 13, I needed a booster shot.  In the weeks before it happened, I developed a new obsession: glass.  I collected sharp pieces of glass from the roads and sidewalks.  I collected rusted bottle caps.  I collected sharp stones.  It had never occurred to me before, but what if a sliver of glass gets caught in a car tire, gradually sinks deeper and deeper into the tread, and finally causes a blowout on the freeway?  If I didn’t keep filling my coat pockets with the dirty little “hazards” I plucked from the ground, someone might die in a car accident.

When I was 19, I rolled out of a moving car and ran as fast and as far as I could.  It probably saved my life. If it hadn’t been for the two black eyes, the gravel embedded in my back, and the two painful head wounds beneath my bloody hair, I would not have recalled anything but a chilling scream.  I desperately wanted to remember more. I wanted to remember more when I panicked without reason and pulled my car to the side of the road, when I turned and chased the images that lurked along the dark edges of my brain, when I told the story of how I’d rolled out of a car and mysteriously wakened entangled in an electric fence.

I remembered being alone.

Continue Reading