The monster, he lives in my neck. He’s next to my ear. It’s easy for him to whisper,
“You have nothing to say.”
And be heard by me and only me. His whispers run down my spine, constraining my movement and making it impossible to see what’s coming until it hits me square in the jaw.
* * *
I’m a baby. The monster comes to life here, before I have words. Before I can say stop. If I could, I would scream the word until I’m hoarse.
Stop is a complete sentence. Its meaning: clear.
* * *
My brothers hold me down and tickle me. I’m gasping for air, struggling to fill my lungs with enough air to plead.
“Stop! Stop!” Through riotous laughter and tears.
“I can’t breathe.” I can’t stop laughing. I know this is my fault. Somehow this is my fault.
“Why should we stop? You’re laughing. You’re having fun.”
Stop isn’t a joke.
* * *
“Relax. Come on, Alyson. Don’t be such a cold bitch.”
I am ice cold, uncontrollably shivering and trying my hardest to keep my legs clamped together, but his fingers are insistent.
“Stop, please, stop. I don’t want to do this.”
“You’re here. You knew what was going to happen.”
No. No, I didn’t.
Stop isn’t a lie.
* * *
My professor loathes my script but I refuse to integrate all of his notes. It’s a comedy about a woman looking for the perfect fuck. And therein lies the problem for him.
“This script is about a whore. Only a whore could write something like this. Disgusting!” He tosses my pages toward me, searching my face for contrition.
Instead I hold my ground. “Stop yelling at me.”
“I’m not yelling at you.”
He’s yelling so forcefully that I have to wipe his spit from my face.
Stop isn’t a request.
It feels like a cruel trick that the signs on the street have worked out how to get men to stop. It must be my own weakness that I cannot master the most basic of commands.
* * *
An old friend from college and I are catching up on the decades between then and now, career, marriages, kids. The usual. And out of nowhere she says,
“I sense you have a lot of trauma.”
Awkward laughter from me. “I…I’m much happier than I ever thought I’d be. I feel like I’m doing…well.”
She nods, taking a big bite of her bagel, then stands suddenly and begins digging around in her purse,
“I have her business card here. She’s helped me so much. She could help you. You shouldn’t have to carry this around.”
I take the card because I don’t want to insult my friend; it is clear from the concern on her face that her intentions are good.
She senses my hesitancy.
“It’s not talk therapy; it’s trauma therapy. She does EMDR. Just think about it.”
I do. Enough to Google EMDR when I get to my car and to keep her card in my wallet.
* * *
On a sunny afternoon I’m running around with my giggling children, gratitude flooding me. I have a family. Two sons and a husband who love me unconditionally. They do not try to change me or tamp me down. They accept me. The monster convinced every last piece of me that I was a difficult and unlovable bitch who could never have this. I look at my life. I conquered the monster. I am a survivor. I wipe the tears from my face as I breathe it all in.
The next morning, the monster creeps up on me. The alarm beeps and I realize, with a slice of pain, that I can’t move my neck to either side. My neck is frozen. The pain, excruciating. For school drop off, I have to turn my entire body to say good morning to my son’s teacher.
Self-care begins. I know the drill. Chiropractor visit, CBD oil, ice. But this time it goes deeper than that. This is not a pain that mellows. Once my monster tastes blood its hunger is not satisfied, on the contrary, it is insatiable. Down deep in my spine, I know this is my fault. I felt safe and relaxed. That was my mistake. I can never get comfortable and let my guard down. The monster immediately senses my complacency, and the pain and shame rush in.
* * *
Over the years my chiropractor has become a family friend. He’s treated all of us at one time or another. And a few years ago the car accident that left me reeling led me to his office on a weekly basis for months.
He gently touches my neck. I jump from the pain. Fortunately I am not afraid of neck adjustments. They help me tame the monster. The adjustments relieve the physical pain and they scratch the itch for action and forward movement. My neck hurts. Tell me how to fix it, and I will fix it. I fix myself because I don’t remember the feeling of being unbroken but I desperately want to believe that I will someday.
This time it’s different. I can barely stand for him to touch my neck or me. Newfound awareness washes over me. This is trauma. My monster has a name.
Before my neck froze, I’ll admit, I had been engaging in some dangerous behavior. For longer than I would like to admit, I’d been listening to the seductive whispers of my monster and they’d brought me the comfort of denial. I was beginning to accept that I made it all up. No one would do that to a baby, and how could I even remember?
It’s easier for me to accept that I’m defective. That I lie. I would rather be broken than to accept what I know is true. That the world is unsafe and the people who were meant to protect me, left me untended or even worse, fed me straight to the wolves.
Deep in self-blame, the monster gains strength and begins speaking not only to me, but for me, gliding along those well-worn pathways in my brain.
“I should take into account all points of view. I can’t assume I’m telling the truth or that stop means the same thing to everyone.”
Believing the worst of myself was a lifetime addiction I couldn’t kick. The monster accepted his victory without fanfare. To him, it felt inevitable.
* * *
My new therapist practices EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing). She is a trauma therapist. The missing piece I’ve needed all along. I explain to her my neck, my trauma, my relatives.
I hold the tappers. The vibrating plastic ovals that are the tiny remote controls in charge of changing my programming. Before we dive into my neck trauma, she wants to talk for a couple of sessions to get a sense of my life. I want to start now. Once I understand I can heal this, get it out of my brain and body, there’s nothing I want more.
After a few weeks, it’s time. I grip the tappers with purpose. I’m ready. The tears are immediate. The tappers uncover the pain. And we go back to that place, that time.
“Imagine yourself. What are you feeling?”
I am the baby. I’m not imagining the scene—it is present. Real enough to touch. I hear the laughter of the teenage boys, the unzipping of his pants. And suddenly something is in my mouth and it’s not what I expect. It’s not feeding me; it’s taking from me. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. Can life be over so quickly? The answer is “yes.”
And then he stops, the joke turned unfunny. And it’s over.
“What do you need right now?” My therapist asks, as I wipe tears from my cheeks.
I think about that. At first, I’m not sure. I have my list of people I can access for help. Do I want Wonder Woman to come and kick their asses? Yes, definitely. But I need something more and then it comes to me so clearly. I see my mom coming in before any of this happened. She grabs me and walks out the front door with me and never looks back. I cry tears of relief that I’m safe. I feel safe.
My therapist tells me. “The body knows. The body keeps the score. If you ever doubt yourself, remember this.”
With a clarity I didn’t know was possible, I don’t doubt myself, not about this. There are still other doubts but I’ll keep coming back and work through those. This experience was my linchpin. My breath, my voice, I do have things to say. I do belong here.
* * *
It’s been a year and a half since my neck froze. And about the same amount of time since I sat sobbing in front of my computer watching Christine Blasey Ford testify. I believed her and knew, at the same time, that it wouldn’t make any difference in Kavanaugh’s appointment. I do know that her act of courage made me braver. If she was willing to testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee and take possession of her own history, I could look within and not turn away in shame.
I am getting better. Clearing out the big cymbal crashes of trauma uncovered the low constant hum of trauma that was the soundtrack of my early life. Magic wands are from fairy tales. In my experience, nothing in this life comes easy. But EMDR makes me wonder if magic is possible. I feel lighter. More capable of forgiveness. Less prone to self-loathing and self-doubt.
For example, when I hurt my neck a couple of weeks ago, it was painful but not unbearable. I needed to get to the chiropractor. He was out for a couple of days. I didn’t panic. I knew I would survive and more importantly, I knew it wasn’t my fault.
* * *
I understand now the monster is all the men in my life who couldn’t comprehend the meaning of the word, “stop.” At least not when I said it.
It’s only now, so very recently, that I look at these monsters and understand that it is not the way I say the word that makes it difficult to understand. I’m not defective. The power of #MeToo is knowing I am not alone. We live in a world where women say, “stop,” and men hear something else. A joke, a lie, a suggestion.
In my mind, I take the monster. I wrap my hand around his neck and ask,
“How does it feel?” It doesn’t take long, not even a minute passes and he’s having trouble breathing.
“I don’t like it. Please stop.” He coughs out.
“I know. I know how you feel.”
I can hear his ragged breath and sense his terror. A moment of what I’ve spent my whole life living with paralyzes this monster. I have a choice. And I make the right one. I give him the respect he’s never given me. I stop. I walk away. He’s not my monster anymore.
