How do I keep this memory at bay? by Deborah Koche

I have a thing. Sometimes I cannot remember what happened 10 minutes ago. My train of thought diminishes until it’s nothing and so I try to start from my earliest memory.

The one I dubbed “The Indelible.” The flashes usually start from his sickening hands on me, but what happened after that? Another flash comes and he is lifting my dress. I am only five years old, but I know that this feels wrong.

I can remember that my mother arrived at that particular moment. I can remember how grateful I was that she did. I cannot remember what happened after, or that least that’s a lie I tell myself. The truth is, I do not want to remember what happened after, it is a memory filled with pain.

The kind of pain that haunts my dreams now that I am 20. It has been 15 years of torture, of pretending not to remember, and yet, and yet.

Today I am in a room, entangled in crisp white sheets with the most beautiful woman; her body is warm, she smells so fruity and I want to lay here forever, inhaling her, feeling at home but I cannot.

I wonder if she knows that I do not want to be here, that I am struggling to breathe. Does she know I only got into this bed with her because this thing we do makes me remember that I exist? That the intentional touch of her fingers in my hair reminds me that other people can see me.

I eventually find the courage to leave her and battle these thoughts behind the locked doors of the bathroom because I have convinced myself that I can do this alone. I can overcome this feeling.

My memories are once again haunting me in the daytime, they have infiltrated the clouds and the sun. My day has become sour and dark.

I am struggling to breathe in the bathroom and I hear her hitting the door, she wants to hold me, she wants to be here for me but she cannot help me.

I need to do this myself, (another lie) I yell at her to let me be and she does, I’m scared that I have hurt her, but I need to overcome this.

I am a coward, I cannot overcome this myself and so I call him. The man I was in the sheets with the night before, and several nights before that. I have a meaningless affiliation with him but when he picks up the phone I am finally breathing, but hard. I am gasping for air and taking it in all at once.

Tears are streaming down my face and he can tell I am having a panic attack, he asks me what he can do, he pleads with me to be okay. This is the second time I am calling him when I am experiencing this so he should know better, I am once again needing too much from one person, especially one with a meaningless connection.

I do not need him to ask me questions, I need his lies, the ones he speaks of so freely. I need him to tell me that he loves me, that he will always pick up when I call, to say he will listen to the entire discography of Jacob Banks so that he can hum the songs with me to calm me down. I know he will never listen, he hates soul music, he doesn’t care enough to try.

I know that he enjoys lying, he relishes in the fact that I need his lies. I can hear her return to the door as she pleads with me to unlock it so she can be here for me.

I know that if I told her what was really going on with me she would understand, being with her would even guarantee these memories stay at bay for a while.

His lies would be her truths and that is what scares me; I would one day be a disappointment to her and that if she sees me as I am, her truths would turn to lies, she would make herself want to love me out of pity, out of fear of my self destruction.

So I take the easy way out, I keep the doors locked and the coward I am continues to find comfort in the man’s lies at the other end of the phone.

Song rec: “Stockholmsvy” by Hannes and waterbaby