![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The ringing in my shoulder
Nov. 19th, 2013 08:31 pmFrom last week's writing workshop. The prompt: Start with the following line, and don't let you pen/fingers stop writing: "That long-distant day when your father took you to discover ice."
-----
I am supposed to write without stopping, but just saying father is enough to paralyze me with scenes, or flickers of scenes, ominous but unformed, the memory of the feeling without the memory of the event.
The flashback I've been having recently is an actual flashback, a "real" flashback. It used to be that I'd slip out of my body and hover over my left shoulder, and I was remembering a feeling, that moment before something happens, but I couldn't' remember the actual event, or events. I felt that something's-going-to-happen feeling all the time growing up, so the flashback was just of that eternal moment, hundreds of times over, infinity squared inside a black-hole singularity. My mind would swirl — I always tried to remember the event, any event, it seemed like if I could just put a scene to the feeling, it would stop. But my mind played dozens of scenes at once, all superimposed over one another on the movie screen until it was just a blur of grey and black.
Now, though, I end up in that night with the gun. Not when he fired the pistol into the wall, not once I'd turned the swivel rocker around and could see the gun pointed at me. I am in that moment in between. I have heard the first shot in the bedroom, known and not believed what it was, heard the second shot and known and believed, and in a second I will be turned around and see the barrel in front of my father's swaying body and vacant eyes. But I have not yet turned, and I do not yet know what I will see, I just know it will be bad, and it may be the last thing I see, and I need to see it, I need know what's going on, whatever it is, it's worse to not know, and right now, I have no idea, and so every possibility still exists, so many variations of blood and smoke and holes, and none can be ruled out.
I can hear the echo of the shot. I can hear it in my shoulder, the back of my left shoulder, as if there's an eardrum vibrating above my scapula, see, I was sitting sideways in the chair, my back against the left chair arm, my right side against the chair back enveloped in the curve of the chair, and my left arm, my left shoulder, out and exposed and I felt the sound there. I am 41 now and it happened when I was 16 and I saw a shrink for 18 years, not counting the crappy shrinks before him, and I described the scene dozens of times, hundreds, to shrinks and friends and in writing, over and over, and not until a week ago at work did I remember feeling that sound in the shoulder, the shoulder I hover above when I dissociate, the shoulder I look over when I don't hear someone behind me, always exposed, always cold, burning cold. I never gave it a thought; I was born with that shoulder dislocated, that collarbone cracked, probably too big for my mother's small birth canal, it's not uncommon, and I did a repeat performance of the same shoulder and collarbone at a year and a half. It's my earliest memory. Not of falling off the bed and dislocating it, not of the doctor's office. What I remember is standing in the kitchen, I remember the tabletop taller than me, and I'd just dropped a crayon, and I was left-handed, very left-hand dominant, but my left arm was in a sling, and it apparently never occurred to me to just pick up the crayon with my right hand, because what I remember is reaching over with my right hand, pulling the sling off my elbow, reaching down and picking up the crayon and standing back up, and then crying because my arm hurt. That's the shoulder, it's never been right, always too loose, prone to popping out of place, weird-feeling, just not right, but not cold and hot and vibrating with the sound of that small snap that wasn't even that loud. That feeling was that one night, and after all these years I know where I am when I'm not here, and it's such a relief to finally know, even thought it hasn't made it stop happening.
-----
I am supposed to write without stopping, but just saying father is enough to paralyze me with scenes, or flickers of scenes, ominous but unformed, the memory of the feeling without the memory of the event.
The flashback I've been having recently is an actual flashback, a "real" flashback. It used to be that I'd slip out of my body and hover over my left shoulder, and I was remembering a feeling, that moment before something happens, but I couldn't' remember the actual event, or events. I felt that something's-going-to-happen feeling all the time growing up, so the flashback was just of that eternal moment, hundreds of times over, infinity squared inside a black-hole singularity. My mind would swirl — I always tried to remember the event, any event, it seemed like if I could just put a scene to the feeling, it would stop. But my mind played dozens of scenes at once, all superimposed over one another on the movie screen until it was just a blur of grey and black.
Now, though, I end up in that night with the gun. Not when he fired the pistol into the wall, not once I'd turned the swivel rocker around and could see the gun pointed at me. I am in that moment in between. I have heard the first shot in the bedroom, known and not believed what it was, heard the second shot and known and believed, and in a second I will be turned around and see the barrel in front of my father's swaying body and vacant eyes. But I have not yet turned, and I do not yet know what I will see, I just know it will be bad, and it may be the last thing I see, and I need to see it, I need know what's going on, whatever it is, it's worse to not know, and right now, I have no idea, and so every possibility still exists, so many variations of blood and smoke and holes, and none can be ruled out.
I can hear the echo of the shot. I can hear it in my shoulder, the back of my left shoulder, as if there's an eardrum vibrating above my scapula, see, I was sitting sideways in the chair, my back against the left chair arm, my right side against the chair back enveloped in the curve of the chair, and my left arm, my left shoulder, out and exposed and I felt the sound there. I am 41 now and it happened when I was 16 and I saw a shrink for 18 years, not counting the crappy shrinks before him, and I described the scene dozens of times, hundreds, to shrinks and friends and in writing, over and over, and not until a week ago at work did I remember feeling that sound in the shoulder, the shoulder I hover above when I dissociate, the shoulder I look over when I don't hear someone behind me, always exposed, always cold, burning cold. I never gave it a thought; I was born with that shoulder dislocated, that collarbone cracked, probably too big for my mother's small birth canal, it's not uncommon, and I did a repeat performance of the same shoulder and collarbone at a year and a half. It's my earliest memory. Not of falling off the bed and dislocating it, not of the doctor's office. What I remember is standing in the kitchen, I remember the tabletop taller than me, and I'd just dropped a crayon, and I was left-handed, very left-hand dominant, but my left arm was in a sling, and it apparently never occurred to me to just pick up the crayon with my right hand, because what I remember is reaching over with my right hand, pulling the sling off my elbow, reaching down and picking up the crayon and standing back up, and then crying because my arm hurt. That's the shoulder, it's never been right, always too loose, prone to popping out of place, weird-feeling, just not right, but not cold and hot and vibrating with the sound of that small snap that wasn't even that loud. That feeling was that one night, and after all these years I know where I am when I'm not here, and it's such a relief to finally know, even thought it hasn't made it stop happening.
