EMDR / Dean

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Catie Trainor

10:39

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Turns out, our bodies are computers
And in EMDR, trauma was explained to me as an event that overwhelms our senses
So much so, that our brains don't know how to store it
Cannot file it away, so it hovers in our energy, stagnant

A lost document
So it went
Southern California, five years old in gymnastics
My instructor Dean asked me to stay after class

Your head
My lap
Other way
Take a nap

No one will love you if you cry like that
My skin scratched bright red, but he thought I'd comply
But even at five, I had the same hurricane mind, electricity mouth, veins made of lightning
A girl turned burning house

He doused my young body in its first taste of trauma, crumpled my childhood and set it on fire
A popsicle
We'll make it better
Was it banana

Or cherry
I can't fucking remember
So clumsy
A slide

Fell off
Small incident today
No need to worry
They looked

Didn't see me
More hide
Less seek
I think the light is leaving

While the other kids sat rosy-cheeked and laughing, I sat in a corner spelling out sexual words in graham cracker lettering
My soul screaming out sonnets with paper and pen
I think the darkness cracked something in me open
How could they not have noticed

Those adults were in charge of children, the most vulnerable of our society
So I built my vocabulary bigger than the list of names who failed me
My brain an overheated battery trying to sort out what the flashbacks mean
System overload

My mind shut off in an effort to protect me
Bits and pieces of the scene kept me up at night with all the flashing
Four ceiling tiles
Two beads of sweat

Trauma's funny like that
The details it lets you remember in the main event it forces you to forget
I started screaming into pillows when I was alone and I didn't know why
Overflowing my plate five times over at dinner

Trying to fill up this crater inside
I prayed the rosary
Twice
Was still drenched in a sin

Even when the church opens its doors I refuse to walk in
And I still don't know what makes a soul worth saving
And after being cracked so many times it's no wonder we split open
And when I write poems like these I don't know the right spots to put line breaks in

Because everything at once feels like it's breaking
Now I don't sing acapella
Or cry in front of people
When community knocks on my door I can't bring myself to answer it

Ever since he poured his perversion in a cup and forced me to sip
I don't know how to navigate relationships without manipulation
I start to worry about the burn soon as sunlight hits my skin
I remember being in the shower

Meticulously shaving every ounce of human off of me
One day refusing to be touched
The next, hypersexuality
On a scale of one to ten how disturbing is the memory

Well, I would say that it's a ten
For twenty-seven years I felt his hands on every inch of me
Now I wake in the middle of the night
Drenched in sweat

My lovers have told me I fly up in bed in a panic
In the morning my jaw aches
I have to unclench my fists
Now I'm torn between contemplating the weight of accusation and remembering that scar on your chin

And how many more years have you taught at that gym
How many more girls have you done this to
Dean, is it five
Is it ten

After my first EMDR session some of the details still lacked
But no one ever warned me the rage would be the first thing to come back
I swear to God I could drown a whole ocean with it
But how could I not

With those screaming images arriving in flashes
My hips not yet formed
No baby teeth falling out yet
I guess the way I balanced on a beam stirred up your sick sense of pleasure

The younger the girl, the higher the chance she won't remember
But this is what happens when you f*ck with a writer
My brain is precise
I memorize six minute poems by the hour

I've come back for you now
Pure hellfire and literature
And did you think you actually stood a chance against my power
As if the ground did not rattle upon my arrival

As if the oceans did not storm in anticipation of the hurricane I will rain down upon you
As I rise up and crash down like the waves
You left me outside in the rain
Like a tattered sheet hung up to dry

But just like Maya Angelou still I rise
And my poems are coming for you
I flew back to California
Healing in hand

Went straight to that gym
And walked my ass in
And I swear on everything holy
You will never lay your hands on a child again

Well Dean
Now that this poem is quickly approaching part two
I kindly request that you look me in the fucking eyes when I'm speaking to you
20 minutes

20 years ago
Tell me
What's the value
And since no one ever told you

When a person says no
That in itself is a complete answer
Zero explanation is required to follow
But I guess that's what happens when you feed blood to a monster

You would think it would change him
But it just makes him grow stronger
So if being beautiful means beaten and bruised
I don't want it

I will cut all my hair off
I will scrub off this makeup
We are conditioned in society based on faulty mathematics
The church of her body set on fire by five different arsonists

And the only thing that we question is how flammable her fabric is
The clothes are not the problem
Did you know that only 23% of sexual assaults go reported a year
Has me thinking that the shame lies not in the women silenced

But in the male privilege that silenced her
When flames devour your skin
There's no question if the burning is real
So I vow to pull poems out of ashes

Until there is nothing left for me to heal
And I've made it a habit of lifting weights at the gym
Vowing that if a man ever tried to hurt me in that way again
He would walk away bleeding

So please
Someone just tell me what I'm needing to do to heal
And I'll do it
I will plant gardens in my throat

Water them with the art that I wrote when they're dry
Abracadabra
What potion do I swallow to make my insides a calm sky
How much my center sees sunlight if my ribcage is windowless

And I've been thinking a lot lately about the human heart
And it's capacity for forgiveness
And I know in the future I will arrive at that place
But to be honest that day hasn't come yet

And I've always longed to speak with Rubik's cube lips
But I'm all Ernest Hemingway
Sprawling my blatancy on the table saying here
All I have is this

And I don't know why the tears come to me some days
Maybe they are a part of me now
But if the rumors are true
If there's something in the water

I wouldn't believe that rivers could drown
Purity is found inside of a heart
It does not live in a body
And it has taken me years to understand that it is not something he ever could have stolen from me

So I vow to be gentle with myself as my mind starts rewiring
I'm ready to change the channel away from this endless loop of a memory
Turns out I'm not American honey
I did not grow up so

Maybe innocence isn't real
Maybe it never was but
I have a spine made of iron and one hell of a soul
And while I can't say what peace feels like

I won't rest till I know
So maybe that's why I find solace in poems
These college-ruled pages are the closest I've ever had to a home
Could a person still love me when these lines run like rivers and all that's left is my soul

Maybe that's why I put off therapy all these years
Could I still be interesting even when I am whole
Turns out our bodies are computers
And in EMDR it was explained to me that in order for our brains to process the trauma

Our minds need to update our systems
Toss out our old patterns
Switch out our camera lens
So I've begun to view this pain as an honor

I rewrote my role in this story from victim to warrior
And maybe God, whatever he, she, or it is
Gives these experiences to the ones that are not only strong enough to handle it
But have the ability to do something about it for all of us

Isn't that love
Isn't that love
This morning I stood in the grocery store aisle
Wondering if the bright sky blend of coffee might finally be the right fit for me

Before a man passed
He asked if anyone had reminded me I was

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