The Other List


I have talked about lists before here but there is another type of list we have.
When we are abused we remember it, but not all simultaneously,  we see it like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Each piece makes a part of a whole, but each piece has its own profound significance yet the amount of feeling invested makes it too much to hold all the pieces in mind at one time.  What we do to self protect is keep a list, it's a simplified shorthand for 'shit that happened' and sometimes we look at those events and pick out the worst and use them to describe and scale the horror of the time. It is a touchstone.

Thats the list I mean

We all keep a list.
We maintain it - remember it, add to it and frequently weigh it.
It is our hoard, of sorts.

It is what validates us against the rest of 'normal'
We use it build barricades and shout from the other side - yes but...."this"
when the world comes pointing at us.

I have a huge one.
I have horded for half a century.
I have a good memory, sadly, and keep a diary these days - so I can jot down the "things," the new things I remember, because  eventually the list becomes too big to hold onto.
All of those things having to be remembered so I would have bigger and better defenses. Being more right, or less wrong, whichever is more important.

The world has been oddly silent.
It has failed to come pointing at me.
There has been little judgment, although to be fair,  I don't go shouting about myself to random strangers.
But I have shared small pieces, occasionally, with people I am close to.

But I have never shared "the whole list" Not the whole thing. Not with anyone.
It is both far far too much,and I fear it is not enough.

It worries me.

I can't see the value or weight of it - I have asked though - here and there - "On a scale of one to ten, how bad would you say this piece is?" and frequently its much much worse than I thought. So I move things around and try to use that brief glimpse of perspective to enlighten the rest of the hoard - give it a little context.
Trouble is "the hord" seems to grow itself some days.

Recently I have been thinking, "I'm going to have to drag the whole stinking thing out into daylight,"  but it would be a bit of a garage sale - because Its not a thing worth having - nor is it good enough to make a horror show. I thought I might have to therapize all of this away - like brain bleaching.
but
I am increasingly thinking:

"Its just boring.
Its just nastiness remembered - time after time.
It doesn't matter if I put it out there - no one will take it off me or gasp at the size of it,
I will not get a pat me on the back for surviving it, nor vilified for how I choose to deal with it."

The reality of this is that no one checks! No one has ever come to point - or so much as thrown an old apple core in my direction by way of judgment about this whole thing.

I have horded this mess of nastiness so that should there be a judgment I would be right on it - armed !- I would have all my justifications lined up and polished..but well..no-ones coming and the cost of the storage space its using is too high.

The time has come to use the space for something else -so I would like it to be gone.

Like all hoarders I'm tempted to go through it. Check the value and condition of everything, but ...that way it will stay, so I don't want to do that either. 

I can just mentally snap the lock shut on all this and let it sink quietly away.
It is not haunting me.
It is not some chest of demons kept in my head that will slowly destroy me from the inside out (yes I've seen that movie too)
Its whatever I want it to be, it has to be to be because what is part of me is now controlled only by me.
We had the banishment. We've done the exorcisms, and we've picked off the fleas.

I cant un-ring the bell - I can't un-be the person whos story that is, but I don't have to be only that person. That very narrow view of a person. I always have been so much more. My perspective has changed and its just - not important enough to invest time in picking at old wounds. Its time to look away and move on and not even notice it all healing over and just fading out of importance.