[This really did start as a gentle metaphor about the unreliability of memory, and then turned into an unabashed piece about recent recurrence of another purge in a fandom community, and if it’s triggery for me, it might be triggery for you. Triggers? The Satanic Ritual Abuse of the 1980s, sexual trauma, and the fear that we’re not only forgetting some of the useful knowledge of history, but actively unlearning it.
This is about something I have known and lived through, both as hunter and hunted: sexual ‘predator’ purges: their roles, their goals, their possible bad outcomes for all involved. This has nothing to do with any other current events. This is more than enough.]
The un-spider
travels close behind you,
unweaving your memories.
It’s not age,
not in and of itself,
it’s the way we remember things.
memory
is more a construct
than a library,
more a rendering,
a dynamic generation,
than an exactitude.
here is a way to make a memory:
have something happen,
remember it.
here is a way to make a memory:
have someone tell you something happened,
remember it.
here is a way to make a memory:
reconsider something that happened,
remember it.
here is a way the body removes trauma:
we forget.
here is a way the body deals with trauma:
we process.
here is a way the body creates trauma:
we focus on how traumatizing
a thing was, or is, or is and was and still is,
anything.
that’s not to say that we make trauma,
or that we are to “blame” for it.
it is, however, to say that
if you want to build trauma
into someone,
enforce,
as hard as you can,
how traumatic something must have been.
call them brave for enduring it,
call them strong for living through it,
and maybe you mean it,
and maybe they are,
but I had a friend once
who had to inject her grandmother with insulin
every day,
and my friend hated needles,
and we were basically kids,
and I asked,
“How do you deal with
knowing that you’ll
have to do this
every day
and every day
and every day,
or else your grandmother
will die,
and the only way it stops is
if your grandmother does die,
and ‘Nita rounded on me and shouted,
“I don’t think about it,
I don’t think about it,
and I don’t want to think about it,
so drop it,”
and I did.
(did I mention
we were children?
It was a thoughtless thing to ask,
at best,
and I’d like to erase the memory,
and I could.
I could visualize her being grateful that
I asked,
that I cared,
think of a story,
tell it to myself,
you know,
not a lie,
just storytelling,
papering it over,
it was a long time ago,
maybe she just shrugged.
I can remember
a time she smiled;
what if the smile
was that time?
In my youth,
the same youth, actually,
or just shortly before,
we’d just finished a dark time,
a strange time,
in our history,
when therapists began uncovering
the worst possible abuse
you could imagine
in lots and lots of small kids,
whose parents had done unspeakable
things
in Satanic rituals,
things so horrifying
and insane
that they only made sense,
if they were intentionally
as horrifying
and insane
as possible,
if they were offerings
of the worship
of madness
and evil.
if you look it up,
you will see a lot of things.
false memories
implanted memories
dissociative disorders
and, in rare cases,
environments where
children suddenly realized
they had power over adults
if they said certain things.
I’m sorry;
this tale is stuck inside me,
and needs to get halfway out,
needs to get out far enough
to be told,
and then
it sinks deep
into me again,
I recently saw
another community
purged of all of its
abusive monsters,
and I wish I had the ignorance
to think that the people it caught
were monsters,
that they were the only monsters,
that the techniques of belief and hope
were not, at any time,
used by the small population of monsters
to divert attention away from themselves,
and I wish,
I wish to believe
that this is the end
of trauma
for those who hurt,
and not
the beginning
of an endless cycle
of new fears
and new traumas
as new monsters
are found everywhere.
and I’m sorry,
little spider
who unwinds memories;
this was supposed to be a poem
about you,
perhaps a sweet poem,
perhaps a gentle poem,
but then there was screaming,
so much screaming,
and I forgot to remember
you, and forgot to forget
the hurt.
