[Trauma is weird. I haven’t had an intrusive memory in a while, but when it does happen, it still manages to take me on with the force of an erratic rollercoaster derailing at the highest possible point, at the highest possible speed. I am outside my body, and nothing is mine. My mind is held sabotaged; strangled, tied, bound and gagged- forced to relive whatever sludge of a suppressed memory suddenly manages to seep from the ugly dark corners of my imprisoned, wounded psyche.]
I finally invested in a skin facial brush. It’s soft pink with fake rose gold colored cheap metal plating around the handles. It was something so unnecessarily vain and foreign to my tomboyish hygiene routine (I thought in the past… why waste money on a tool when a towel works just fine?) but I bought one partly out of curiosity and partly out of a half-assed effort to practice the preached self care routine that bred pure feminine confidence.
At first, I used it with sparsely and with caution. I hid it in my drawer- like it was a forbidden object that I would be publicly shamed for having. I watched myself, on random nights when I remembered the existence of the brush, run it gently over my face in small circles; my expression unable to hide the underlying embarrassment of feeling like a performer lost in unfamiliar choreography.
But as time went on, I learned to enjoy it. I started leaving it to lounge on the counter next to my toothbrush in its cute, matching charging chaise. I invested in better skincare products and committed myself to a little nighttime routine, all centered around this little pink brush. My skin cleared up slowly but noticeably, but it was an unmatched reward to the small match flame that sparked somewhere from in my soul. Confidence. Self-care. Beauty.... Finally taking a small bit of time and effort into simply me.
As I was washing my face tonight, I gazed into the glassy surface as I have learned to in the past few months. With bubbles lathering in the gentle vibrations, the tarnishing stress of my day is scrubbed from existence. I wound down, feeling the thought made its startling advance.
Why haven’t I done this sooner?
And like some magic combination has been suddenly set deep into the locked confines of caged mind and a growling memory lurches forward in an alarming attack. Each fang poisoned with venom of inescapable hyper-reality and unendurable emotions sinking deep, tearing at my unsuspecting conscious and dragging me into an anguished hell that only existed within the ivory bones of my skull.
It was not a specific moment, but a collection of instances playing all at once in overwhelming chaos. He controlled me in every aspect. From the moment we stepped through the threshold of what seemed like a loving home from the outside, my night was meticulously timed and measured to fit the schedule he deemed fit for me. A shower- no longer than ten minutes with lukewarm water (because hot water is a coddling comfort only to be enjoyed when earned). Dinner- first prepared for him and then mine, each grain of rice and gram of food weighed out with precise scrutiny in a volume that he felt was sustainable for me but simultaneously wouldn’t cause extra weight to settle into softness on my tired body. Tinniness of whatever was on tv would fill the void space surrounding us as we ate; me placed strategically in between him and the tv so he could survey me at every moment, with every bite. Dishes were done and the kitchen was cleaned all the while he perched at his appointed seat, or criticizing techniques and tactics of our training day or informing what his day, my schedule, had in store the next day.
“You could be good someday, you know. But you’re so fucking stubborn.” He would laugh.
“Thank God you have me.”
Bedtime was always around 8 PM. This was imperative to ensure the proper amount of recovery in order to be dragged from sleep at 3 AM to have the first session of the day- specifically timed for training under his supervision before he had to go to work for the day. Sometimes he would get distracted, lost in his phone or engrossed in whatever new show he stumbled upon but somehow it was always my fault. I would lumber to the back bedroom, corraled by his looming wristwatch; tracking my night to the minute. We would brush our teeth with the toothpaste and the toothbrushes that standardized the seconds spent on each quadrant of your mouth- all systematically selected by his standards. As he crawled into bed, I would wash my face with quick haste, feeling his eyes bore into my back from the bedroom. Sometimes he watched in critical silence, other times I wasn’t so lucky. The passive aggression always filled the room palpable and suffocating as the panic would set in. A couple splashes of water, a smear of cheap paste across my face, pat dry with a towel still damp from the shower earlier. The quicker I was done, the quicker he was pacified into satisfaction and I would finally find freedom lying awake in the darkness of the room as he snored softly beside me.
Clarity sifted up through the fading flashback as nausea swept over me. I gripped the edge of the counter with shaky, sweaty hands and my heart felt like it dropped straight out of my body and onto the bathroom floor. I hadn’t done it in the past solely because the schedule didn’t allow for it. Simple pleasures such as these were stolen from me out of his selfish desires to dominate every waking aspect of my life and I spent so long cowering down to his control in avoidance of more abuse.
The realization jolted me from my hypnosis as the derailed cars of the trauma rollercoaster met it’s final destructive demise with the ground. Suds were diluted with salt water now in streams that steadily dripped down my neck. I turned on the faucet and cupped the water to wash my face and pat it dry. I stared at myself in the reflection of the mirror, one hand raised to rest my fingertips lightly on my taut, freshly-cleaned skin.
My skin, my schedule. Free of strict surveillance; fluid and unmeasured.
I laid my little pink brush to rest in its bed placed beside my plain plastic toothbrush, turned off the light, and climbed into bed where I would find peaceful sleep in the solitude of my own bed.
Loading comments...