trauma

After running “Operation Cleanup” to take down random musings on a variety of subjects from this blog, I thought being psychologically naked was the next step. The point still holds good though the past fortnight brought its own challenges. Hardly anything from my six plus decades of existence surfaced. Random memories came through, from as early as two or three years after my birth. They appeared as I sat silent. But nothing made sense. It was only after a fortnight that certain patterns bubbled up. There were scattered dots I was attempting to connect in some cohesive order. Only one straight line emerged – instead of treating them as memories, I was giving my own reasons for why those instances occurred when they did. A second pattern came through later – these memories were seldom in chronological order – they were random. 

Recently, I had read somewhere that the sole difference between humans and other life forms is that we recognise time and space. At first this did not make much sense till I observed my pets – for them time denotes when hunger, play, pee, poop and sleep. The latter didn’t require any specific invitation – just lie down, yawn, close your eyes and enter dreamland. We humans are trained not to do any of the above minus a time reference, right? Our ecosystem trains us to be cognizant of time and space from childhood – more specifically by the time we get set for schooling. It is the schooling that comes before our schooling.

Anyways, I digress. When it comes to memories, time remains an important factor but not so chronologically. Over the past fortnight, my attempts to seek out my earliest fears became quite the ordeal. There were many. Like the first time I made friends with a dog. Or when I realized that catching a cockroach wasn’t kosher. Or that playing in rainwater wasn’t exactly a healthy pastime. Or the time when I found myself locked out of the house and banged my little fists on the door to be let in. As I mentioned earlier, the mind wasn’t really laying these out in chronological order. This left me more confused till a solution presented itself unconsciously. 

As a mass of flesh and bones, there is no way I could go back in time, but the ethereal mind could and did. Helped me accept my existence as a combination of body and mind. I became aware that the mind’s access to the past was happening in the body’s present. Right here, right now. So, I traversed into my past and filtered out some random memories. Once the chronology challenge was removed, what remained was what the mind wanted me to process. Sounds simple, but one can never be sure, can one? 

So among the myriad memories, the one that stood out was getting locked out of the house – when my parents weren’t home and only my paternal grandma and a home help were present. One moment I was talking to some friend outside and the other moment upon turning to go back, the front door was shut. I remember banging my little fists on the door, hollering at the top of my voice and crying like I have never done so since. The home help opened the door, pulled me in, picked me up and took me to my bedroom. It was as if the nightmare got over in an instant, just as it had started. Many years later, my mom gave me an explanation though I never asked for it. 

It did make an impact though. Today when the incident plays out, I barely recall the househelp and my grandma’s face is a blur. The only face I can remember is the horror-stricken face of the little boy aged three or four years. Wondering why he was thrown out or locked out. Wondering if he could ever get back into the warmth that a home offers as comfort and security. As this vision became clearer, the child’s face did too, before it blurs out. But, not before I recognise my adult face on the body of that child. As I aged, so did this face and today it was that of a 61-year old me.