dissociating on the couch; when your body literally Cries for Help

i type the title.  delete it.  type it.  search the definition.  i have to be sure. 

define:dissociating dis·so·ci·ate
​Disconnection and lack of continuity between thoughts, memories, surroundings, actions, and identity.

i am correct in my usage, but now displeased because the definition is much too simplistic.  the definition doesn't give you understanding of the fear, the terror, the confusion.
maybe i am incorrect in my usage after all, if it doesn't match.
maybe definitions are merely frameworks.

---

last week, we drove up north
​to the place that is referred to
when others ask us where we're from.
"home" in the
"are you going home for the holidays?"
​
we drove to rural southern maryland,
although less rural than the days we left it.
it is not my home.  it is merely where home once was.
(i moved around a lot as a kid.  i've moved around a bit as an adult.
home is wherever you decide it to be.)

we weren't there for the holidays, either.
i mean, we were, in that it is holiday season,
but that's not why we went.

we went "home" because
"back home" is where everyone's parents still live.
lol.
my mom, my best friend's parents, my other best friend's parents.
they live there, and so the kids, now adults, flock back periodically throughout the year.
most predictably at holidays.

and so when Cait tells me she will be flying in from Canada,
I make plans.  
and when Katie and I realize we will both be in Maryland at the same time,
Katie living in the Florida Keys, an eighteen hour drive from "back home,"
we shriek in delight and make plans as well.

i am not going home for the holidays,
i laugh when people ask.
oh no, we spend christmas actually home.
Christmas is for the three of us, our little family unit.
it's nice.  it's quiet.  it's calm,
and it's ours.

---

Cait is one of my childhood best friends.  I don't know how or when we met.  I moved to Maryland in sixth grade, so we have a general timeframe; but mostly, she's just always been there.  We've grown older and apart and come together again in the ebb and flow in life; the one that all of my friends and I agree upon now as being a pretty normal thing to friendship, but in our twenties it was so... personal.  
i wish we were more graceful when we were younger.  in ten years, i will likely wish the same thing upon my thirty-year-old being.

........
this isn't where i was going to go with this post, but i have to highlight this part here
because i just made reference to the future.  the future in a large chunk of time.
and that is big for me.
i am not ready to write about that, not here and not now and maybe not for awhile because that is too much for my fragile mind to consider right now, but 
i let it slip
to myself
and to you
that there is 
some small
thin
layer of hope in me

in ten years,
suggests that some part of me...
believes i will survive another ten years.

(teach me how to be hopeful.)

---

Mama Lorraine and Papa Joe have three children of their own; Cait is their eldest.

Gage moved to Florida from Maryland when we were in high school.  The two of us did not start dating until after he had moved.  Eight months into our long-distance relationship (which is a thousand lifetimes when you are a highs school student), Gage saved enough money to fly back and visit me.
My parents would not let him stay at our house.
.... part of me gets it, i guess.  in a really archaic, distrustful way.
My parents have a large house.  The one my mom still lives in.  The one we sleep in when we visit "back home" is my teenage bedroom.  It was a four bedroom house.  Five now, they finished the basement.  I have one sibling.
They would not let a sixteen year old child who flew from Florida to Maryland, by himself, stay overnight in their house because he had the audacity to have a penis!  SCREAM.
PS nothing will stop horny teenagers
PPS i'm queer and a lot of my friends are queer and we touched a LOT of boobs during girls-only sleepovers, back before we all realized how very gay we are but i digress

It was Mama Lorraine and Papa Joe who invited Gage to stay with them.  They had more children and less rooms.  Less stigma and more compassion, too.
We stop by to see them whenever we can, whenever we are in town.  They remind us we don't need a holiday to come visit.  That Cait doesn't need to be in town for us to be welcome there.  

When you walk into their home, you can feel it.
Its one of those magical places that is always warm, bursting with love.  It has Good Energy.  passes the vibe check.  etc.  lol.

Good Omens, Season 1, Episode 2

It is real, it is lived in.  it is home the second i step in.  I know where the mugs are,  I drop my phone and cardigan where they may lay, I make myself a coffee and make myself at home.  Cake takes off for hours, fully enamored with Aunt Krissy and Uncle Bren and their collector's pieces they wince at while she squeals over Sailor Moon figures and Pokemon plushies and she heckles Kristen the entire evening about keeping her beloved Lugia stuffy.  At some point I have to remind both Cake and Kristen that Cake does not get to lay ownership over everything she likes just because Kristen adores spoiling her; Cake's face falls slightly, Kristen looks relieved.  I adore them.

​We'd made the plans to spend the night there.  My mom's house is only twenty minutes down the road (country backroads.. take me home.. through the woods.. the drive is loongg..) but it'll be fun to have a sleepover, to not have to rush goodbyes because the sky grows dark, to enjoy drinking into befuddlement, to let the kid crash on the couch after a feast of a dinner, to wake up and drink copious amounts of coffee ground fresh that morning by Mama L or by Cait or by any of the family really because their Love Language is Coffee.  Gage and I also speak this love language.

Lo, this gorgeous Southern Maryland delicacy: a crab-shaped bread absolutely crusted in Old Bay, which was then sliced and slathered in crab dip.

It was an incredible evening, a full house.  Because of the pandemic, and health, I haven't seen Cait in person in three or so years, I don't remember.  It is the first time I've met her husband, Ryan.  He is amazing; he seems soft and sweet, gentle and funny and kind.  The Good Things you hope to see your best friend share in. 
"Do we like him?" Mama L whispers, smiling at me over coffee.
"We love him," I agree, grinning, hugging her.

I had explained to Cake many times in advance that Aunt Caitlin is called this because she is my best friend, and we may choose our families, and Cait and I love each other like sisters and she loves Cake like her Niece, so she is Aunt Cait.  Marriage makes Ryan "Uncle Ryan," but she's never met him before and she may call him Mister Ryan if she prefers to get to know him and she may decide when or if she calls him Uncle. 
​Cake takes to Uncle Ryan immediately.  ​

"One last time," Ryan wheezes. "One thousand more times!" Cake counters in delight. I have to remind her she cannot play airplane if she kills her uncle.

I am telling you these details because I need you to know,
I need you to know how good things were,
how perfect and filled with happiness and love and joy i was filled with

.... i still don't think i'm conveying enough, i don't know that i can.
my mind, and my body,
are dark, and depressed, and in pain,
so much excruciating pain,
so much of the time.
and it left me.  the mental anguish.
Mama L and Papa Joe, their house is peace to me.

but there is no break from the physical.
and the trip beforehand was long
the week beforehand was long
the month of december has been
just so
long

and i think really maybe thats why
when i was at peace

​my mind left.

---

 there was a point in the night where i just... lost focus.
i don't know how to explain it, other than sometimes my brain just gets... disoriented.
dis·so·ci·ate
i don't know if it's the cancer, or the treatment, or the cPTSD.  if it's just sheer exhaustion piling up, if it is compounded by ADHD.  if it's everything rolled into one.  i don't know.  i just know that sometimes, i lose time.  it's terrifying, disorienting, confusing.
​
it's scary.

i am on the couch.  we have all decided we are going to play a game in the living room while we wait for dinner.
i don't know where this context comes from.  i don't know how i got on the couch, because last I remember, i thought...
.... last I remember ...i thought..?
i was in the dining room?
picking at cookies?
​but now i am sitting on the couch and gage has his arm wrapped around me and he and everyone is typing animatedly on their phones
and i have my phone in my hand too
and i have a website pulled up and it matches the screen on the tv
what are we doing? i am asking, maybe outloud, although now i don't remember
it must have been, because somehow i knew we were playing a game, so someone must have answered me.
and we are supposed to read the prompts and fill in our answers
and then we will all vote on the funniest answers
it is like ad libs and cards against humanity

and that makes sense,
or it would if the words on the phone made sense
there are words, and i can read the words, but they don't make sense.
they are shaped like a sentence but they do not read like a sentence

i type something to make the prompt go away
and another pops up
and it also doesn't make sense
it is also words shaped like a sentence with no sense in it at all
and there is a timer on the screen
and i don't understand what we are doing
i dont know how i got here
and i dont know how my phone is in my hand 
and i can't read words anymore which is cool

and i begin to cry.
just crying.  on the couch. 
in my best-friend's parent's home.
and i am trying to make the tears stop
because to cry is to draw attention to the fact that i am broken
but it is too late,
they have seen me
and that makes me cry harder
and now i am sobbing
on the couch
while everyone stares at me oh god
like a lost child 
who cannot find their mother
who has wandered too far in the mall
it is overwhelming and too much and i cry
this is not how adults behave
this is not how you act around others
this is not how christmas works

the guilt that comes with illness
because Gage is squeezing me tight, reminding me it's okay, i am okay,
everyone here loves you it is okay
as I choke out I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I don't know what's wrong I just don't know what is happening--
and Mama L sits on the other side of me and holds my hand
and Cait is before me
and their soft soothing voices are salve to my mind
and they whisper that
they forget too
they forget things and places and names and words
and concepts

and i squawk at them between the tears that they absolutely must listen to Neil Gaiman's reading of The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury, it's really apt, it's an ode to Ray Bradbury but it's a piece about losing your memory and --

this is who i am.  i am sobbing hysterically on the couch because i am so fucking lost and confused that the only response my body could think up was literally Cry For Help, and my outward response is to recommend readings that really highlight the conversation at hand.
I cannot remember how i got here, to being a sobbing lump ruining dinner, but I can remember  that Neil Gaiman put into words what I'm feeling much better than I can right now, crying on your couch Mama L.

... that's it.  The memory ends there, with Cait and Mama L speaking their melodic voices, with Mama L and Gage rubbing me comfortingly until the tears and the shivering and apologies somehow come to an end.

---

later in the evening--i only know it is later because i know i was sitting on the opposing couch--Mama Lorraine and I are snuggling.  My brain lumps this memory in with the one just before, insists they go together.  I know they do not, but I am beginning to see why my brain insists they are connected.

because they are, in emotion,
not time.
in safety.
the feeling of safety as I snuggled against this woman who has invited me into her home over the last fifteen plus years
who does not have to love me but gives it
freely,
so abundant and overwhelmingly free,
who has loved my husband and welcomed him into their home before she even truly knew who he was, other than a friend in the group who had moved away and come back for a week,
who has cherished Cake and her milestones as one of  her own grandchildren,
who has shared woes of mothering with me, her own acquired nuggets of wisdom, her triumphs and failures and heartaches and struggles
who has opened up her heart to me of our shared traumas
and navigating through
painful
mothers
​
who are loving grandmothers
who are loving mothers
who are harmful who are immigrants who are products of their violent pasts who are broken and jagged but still smooth and polished and beautiful and will cut you and then scorn you for touching the edge that was wielded against you in the first place---

the safety that has been built up over the years
the love and empathy and compassion
the free, untethered love that does not come with clauses or conditions
or wane like the tides and the face of the moon

Mama Lorraine strokes my cheek and whispers "beautiful girl," so soft, and i wonder if the words are really meant for me.  she repeats them, rhythmically, petting me--loving me, i realize, and i can feel my body relax.  i did not know i was tense, i did not know I was withholding my weight from her body, did not notice that although I slouched on the couch I still sat upright just enough; this tension melts away.  I sink into her, the couch and our bodies shift slightly as I lean my head into her hand and close my eyes and let her lull me in and out of consciousness.

i consider the feeling of safety.
time is weird.
i am not sure how long we sat there.
not sure how the night moved from there; I believe it was just the after-dinner lull and I know we stayed up much later.
but long enough for my brain to connect these memories
to take note of the moments as Important
to keep bringing them back up to me,
asking me to Think About It.

i love Thinking About It.
i love Thinking About Everything.
i love Thinking.

as i had felt my body relax
my brain made sure to tell me
my normal response to touch
is to flinch

draw away
pull back
don't let them get close
don't let them near

this is also funny and ironic because Gage can absolutely tell you I am a leech, suckered onto him, needing to be reminded that i am needed.
i like touch. 
I like platonically holding my friend's hands, and hugging them often and a lot and leaning on each other, resting chins on shoulders
and plopping butts in laps when there are plenty of open chairs available

so perhaps my "normal response" isn't to draw away at all.
maybe drawing away
or the wall of tension put up prior
has been built up over time.

and as Mama L drew me in, never needing an explanation, never demanding a reason as to why i dissociated in her house in the first place, never accused me--of what, i am not sure, but the fear of accusation, it is there and it is real, i have been taught to feel guilty, i have been taught i will be punished for outwardly showing anything other than overt happiness--
as she brushed my cheek, she brushed away the wall, let it crumble as though it was nothing but dust in the first place. 

Papa Joe was so delighted that we obliterated the first crab, he went out and got another one when we came back the next day.

---

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