I’m not good at hiding mine nor am I great at explaining them. Emotions are the result of actions. Yesterday I forced myself to examine an emotion I felt after discovering the garage door had been left open since three am.

I prefer the house in lockdown when I go to bed. Blinds shut, lights out, doors and windows locked. That’s how I feel safe. When I walked out into the kitchen and light was pouring in the back hallway my first emotion was frustration which soon turned to anger. I felt the need to explain my feelings.

Traumatic experiences suck. Leftover emotions from them NEVER go away. I don’t want to relive them yet here they are rearing their ugly memories.

I’ve been married for thirty years. Dave knows just about all there is know about me and my past. The worst of it he has only known for a couple of years now. I wish I knew how to explain how difficult it is to unlock those dark moments in time, to be vulnerable and subjected to judgement or pity. It was so much easier back then to just act like these things weren’t done to me and move on. But today when I questioned why the door was left open and his reply was “nobody got you” I found that I needed to write out an instance when someone did. Put him in my place, make him feel my fears and understand me.

Picture this; It’s the fall of 1986 and I’m eleven years old in 6^th grade. All the previous school years I had the same friend in my homeroom class but not this year. This year we got separated. The separation gave opportunity to discover other friends. Being our last year of elementary school and like every other class before us, we were a class divided. Divided into athletic and not, rich and not, thin and not, musically inclined and not, good looking and not and of course popular and not. Let’s just say I fit nicely into the not side. Red hair, freckles, hand me down clothes, the reduced lunch ticket and the same back pack every year all things the “mean girls” pointed out. My friend was discovering our differences and without shaming her she figured out she fit better with a different crowd of friends. I’m assuming most of us knows what that feels like.

That very same year a new girl came to town. She was taller than some of the boys and curvier than most of the girls. She got called names and like me was the last one picked for teams during gym. We discovered we had a lot in common and at recess we’d run to the swings or sit in the dirt and talk.

In sixth grade, sleepovers are all the rage. Mostly slumber parties with multiple friends. I wasn’t big on having friends over to my house but I was allowed to stay the night with a friend once in a while. My new friend lived just two blocks from our school and after only knowing her a little while we hatched a plan to spend the night at her house. After school that Friday we met at our lockers. I grabbed my backpack that held my pajama’s and a clean sweatshirt and she stuffed her books into her locker. We talked about what we wanted to do that night as we walked down the wide staircase at school and exited the back doors. We strolled past the playground equipment and on a worn path of grass toward the road.

Now, I can tell you what I didn’t know about this girl. I didn’t know her Mom worked nights or that she had two, much older brothers. 

Walking up to the house, I noticed a few things like the paint chipping off, porch steps sagging and a rusted out old car was parked in the grass in cinder blocks. My friend opened the broken screen door and I followed her inside.

The house was small. I remember walking first into the living room where her brothers were drinking beer, smoking cigarettes and watching tv. Besides the smell of smoke there was another indescribable smell of moldy trash, dirty dishes and alcohol. Now, I recognize that smell as the smell of poverty. The mismatched furniture was torn and a leg to the couch was missing. Over flowing ash trays and crumbled up fast food wrappers littered the area.  The tv in the corner sat on a rickety metal stand with wheels. It was small and had a VCR hooked up to it. But the thing that really caught my attention was what was on it. There, on the screen, for all to see, were naked people. Guys and girls doing gross things to some really weird music. My friend hadn’t stopped like I did. When I turned toward her she was gone. I found her in a room in the back of the house.

The room she claimed as hers wasn’t even a bedroom at all. It was more like a back porch with a daybed. We dumped our backpacks and went out the back door. That night we stayed out late, for whatever reason I can’t tell you what we ate that night or what we even talked about. But I can tell  you we stayed out of the living room where her brothers were. Without anyone to tell us what time to go to bed we stayed up late. When we did get in bed, my friend crawled in first leaving me to lay exposed on the side of the bed that wasn’t pushed up to the wall.

In those days it was common to wear nightgowns and that night was no exception. My friend took up most of the space on the twin size mattress and the sliver left for me meant I couldn’t stretch out. I just laid there flat as a board on my stomach. We started talking and drowning out the ruckus her brothers were making. They were well into the case of beer and the sounds from the television were sickening. Yet, somehow we eventually drifted off to sleep.

My mind was foggy when I was startled awake by a shushing sound and the touch of someone on my backside. My mind started to race as did my heart and my memory came back that I wasn’t at home. I felt my nightgown being pushed up, exposing my underwear. Goosebumps covered my skin. My stomach did a summersault. “It’s okay, turn over” the voice slurred, hot breath in my ear. A rough finger ran between my thighs as I squeezed them tighter together. Panic ripped through me. I didn’t know what to do. With my left hand I started pinching my friend to try and wake her. She didn’t budge. Then I felt the tug of my underwear being pulled down. Wet lips started kissing my naked skin. How could I make him stop? I was trying to act like I was sleeping so he wouldn’t get mad at me for not doing what he told me to. If only my friend would wake up and stop him. I grabbed her arm and then another voice yelled our direction. The voice was female, raspy but firm and coming from another room. She told him to get going, something about a paper route. He ran his hand one final time across my exposed bottom then he stood, walked out of the room and the last thing I heard was the slam of the screen door. Barely any light was filtering into the room as I lay there. For a minute I couldn’t move. I lay frozen on the bed, my nightgown up around my waist and my underwear pulled down past my bottom. When my breathing returned to normal I redressed myself but never fell back asleep. 

The next day I remember trying to tell my friend what had happened. We were sitting in the old rusted out clunker in the yard. She didn’t want to talk about it, she just ignored me and then changed the subject. Today I wonder if that was a common occurrence at her house and if she was usually the victim.

I’ve had too many traumatic experiences. They torture me at their will. Today when I came out discovering how easy the access was it all came back to me. Logic is thrown out the window and I feel like the eleven-year-old on a sleepover at her new friends’ house. I remember the racing of my heart, the panic in my chest, the bile in my throat. I remember the tears stinging the back of my eyes but mostly I remember the other time this happened. The time I returned home with blood in my underwear. The time I never want to remember.

Emotions. I was frustrated then angry. I examined my feelings. I can explain them but will anyone understand?