Kaleidoscope (22 page)

November 19

Today, I remembered it all.

There's nothing more than that to say here unless I wanted to write an entire novel, so I'll just say that I'm sitting here at the bus stop by Austin's house, waiting to go home. I've been lost for so long, trying to figure out where things started getting mixed up and why I haven't been able to remember things, and now the pieces are finally falling together. I just wonder if I'm strong enough to handle it this time. Is it possible to forget everything not once, but twice? I don't know.

I also wonder if Austin is going to stick by me through this. I could never blame him for deciding not to—in fact, I'd be downright surprised if he went along with this bag of crazy. I keep thinking about our paintings...I still haven't seen them up on the wall. I wonder if I'll get to see them side by side, sitting so well together...I wonder if Austin will be standing there right with me looking at them. I really hope so. I've never felt like this about anyone in my life...and I can't imagine what I would have done without him today.

The bus ground to a halt in front of me, shrouding the street behind it in a lump of exhaust and steam in the frigid air. I could barely feel my fingers at all, and as a result my writing looked suitably awful on the large lines that present in my small, black book. I rose, climbed onto the half-full bus, finding a seat near the back, and continued writing.

I have to talk to Mom about all this...first I have to tell her what happened with Ms. Orowitz. I almost forgot about that note she left me this morning, but I know she won't let it go. And I know I have to apologize to Ms. Orowitz, because I'm not going to be able to do this by myself. I hate having to act like a grown-up sometimes...this is just so much to take in all at once. I feel like my mind is going to implode and that the blast will be enough to make a black hole into its own universe.

And Mom...how is she going to handle it? How am I going to handle talking to her, even if Ms. Orowitz somehow agrees to sit with me and help me out? What am I going to say? All the words I can think of for her right now are just angry...angry and sad. How could Mom not know what was happening? How could she just decide to have these strange, disgusting men LIVE in our house with us, just because she's been inconsolably lonely and looking for a mate since my father left her? Or us, I guess. She's the only family I have...she's supposed to protect me.

I paused for a moment to wipe at the hot tears welling in the corners of my eyes as they threatened to escape. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath—I'd just gotten it together, and I wasn't about to stop now. I only had one more stop to go, and I still had so much I needed to think about.

Deep inside, I know I shouldn't be angry. I can't be angry, not at her. I should have said something when I had the chance...if I should be mad at someone, it's only myself. It would figure that forgiveness is way harder to do for yourself than for other people. I hope Mom is able to forgive herself, too. Thinking of how this is going to hurt her breaks my heart so much and holds me back more than anything else from moving past this.

This time, I couldn't stop the tears from descending down my cheeks. I held the corner of my coat sleeve to my eyes, burying my head towards the cold, frosty window. I knew no one would care if I cried, or even if I existed on this bus, but I still didn't want to face the prospect of even one curious face coming up to ask me if I was alright. I stowed the journal away in my back pocket.

I sighed as the bus finally came to my stop just a quarter mile away from my house, I and shuffled down its steps onto the empty sidewalk. I strode home slowly with my head bent down. Today, I would be a zombie too, just like the ones I left behind on the midday bus ride.

I was exhausted and completely numb—not just my fingertips, but everything inside of me felt like cold. I teetered between having too many emotions and hiding in the wasteland devoid of emotions that I was used to. Even that felt different, though. A wall of intentional numbness used as a shield against the world felt nothing like the emotional coma brought on from feeling too much at one time.

In the past 24 hours, I'd felt more anger than I could ever remember, experienced more love and passion than I knew was possible, and cried more tears than I'd believed my body was capable of.

I ambled along, lost in my thoughts. My feet anchored to the ground like lead blocks as my house veered into sight, just around a small curve in the familiar road. Mom's car wasn't in the driveway yet, meaning she was still at work, but this did very little to stifle the feeling of impending doom that loomed with each step  closer to the front door.

Finally, I stood just outside on the small concrete patio at the front of the door, sheltered by the small awning that had always been there. The sight of home should be comforting to me by now, but it was still so new—at least it was to me, since the memories I'd cultivated within it were still just bits and pieces of a broken picture.
They'll come in time...I know they will.

I fumbled for my keys in the front pocket of my coat, then jammed them forcefully into the door. I pushed the door open, and it creaked gently as I stepped inside and veered towards the dining room, where I would sit and wait for Mom to come home.

For years, my only way of coping had been to live inside my head and forget the world around me, but I didn't want it anymore. I wanted to be free from the confines of my mind. I wanted to be strong, and I wanted to find new ways to be okay.
I would be okay, right?

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

December 30

I dreamed last night that I was walking through a beautiful field in a valley surrounded by mountains, dappled with dandelions and all sorts of trees. As I stood on a small hill, overlooking the meadow-like scenery shining in the golden sun of the late afternoon, I couldn't help but feel the urge to run. So I tried, but I found that behind me, my arms and ankles were entangled in vines and weeds.

I trudged along for a while, hoping maybe I could break them with sheer physical force, but it was useless. I was just about to give up, when a beautiful blue monarch butterfly fluttered before me, the remnants of a time that seems so long behind me. I watched its glittering wings as it landed on my shoulder like a guardian angel. I put my finger to it, and it crawled onto my hand for a minute before flying into the sun...it was a free spirit.

I wanted to be a free spirit, too...I tore away from the vines behind me, and my bare feet flew across the golden grass with a speed and agility that I know I don't have in real life. But I was free. I laughed and looked behind me to see a pair of beautiful green eyes laughing right back at me—Austin's eyes. Then I woke up.

Did you know (still don't know why I'm talking to a book here) that a group of butterflies can be called a kaleidoscope? I'm guessing that it's because their wings all fluttering together look like shards of glass and light. Fractals of living beauty all fly together with a purpose and a destination. The group looks chaotic, but it's designed just as intended.

I took a moment to stretch the muscles in my hand, glancing out past Phillip the gnome in the windowsill to look at the blankets of snow that continued to accumulate in large, heavy flakes across the scenery. Leftover Christmas lights from some of the neighboring houses danced through the falling snow this evening in a variety of colors. It was peaceful and serene, and though there were no tigers lurking faithfully in this blizzard, I felt calm. Calmer than I had in a very long time.

This is going to be a long journal entry, but that's okay because I got my own journal for Christmas—it doesn't agitate me with its stupid size, and it's big enough that it'll take me a while to fill. Plus, I figured I'd used enough of Ms. Orowitz's materials as it was. I apologized to her sometime after Thanksgiving—wouldn't you know, she was forgiving and just as psychic as ever, anticipating I would see the error of my ways and talk to her.

I kept seeing her for a couple more sessions, but now that the puzzle pieces are falling into place and we know the real reason why I started having memory problems, she's referred me to a sexual trauma specialist to help me move past everything.

I made a painting for her for Christmas that she hung right above that insufferable armchair. I couldn't help myself...I painted a field mouse for her in a bush of red berries. She doesn't have to get the irony, but I bet other people will! I made a painting for Mom, too. She's doing therapy now too, just to cope for a while.

Sitting down with her and Ms. Orowitz together in a room and telling them exactly what had happened was, by far, the most painful thing I've ever had to do in my life. It'll be hard to forget...she sobbed and crumpled to the floor, and she apologized over and over...we had to call an ambulance because we were afraid she was actually going into shock. It was absolutely terrifying. We ended up going home though after they gave her some medication—you know how Mom is about doctors. She refused to stay for observation and insisted she'd be fine.

It's been a little over a month now since then, and I think things are going to be okay. It's a new year (almost), and it's time to start a new chapter in life—a better chapter. For the first time since I can remember, it really feels like things are looking up.

P.S.: Going back to paintings real quick...I finally went to the recreation center a little over a week ago and saw mine and Austin's paintings. I've never felt so accomplished with my art in my entire life.

I closed the colorful green and blue polkadot journal before stowing it on my nightstand to join the two smaller ones that had taken up residence there. I laid on my bed, staring once again at the patterns in the paint on my ceiling. The shapes within them shifted and moved in the dazzling Christmas lights that surrounded my own bedroom window.

Tomorrow would be New Year's Eve, and next month would bring my eighteenth birthday. It was hard to believe.

I closed my eyes against the twinkling lights, and I thought back to the day of December 31, the New Year's Eve before my thirteenth birthday, and I remembered how exciting it had felt to finally become a real teenager. At the time, it was my life's dream to become a teenager. As I continued immersing myself in my memory, I recalled the office party Mom brought me to that year. She didn't want to leave me home alone and lacked a babysitter, so I'd sat with all of the other adults as the only kid in the room. That year was the first time I had ever been allowed to try champagne, and I remembered how fizzy it was, and how it didn't taste nearly as good as I thought it would.
I remembered.

I never used to understand why people would look forward to the new year so much. It's as if people believed that by having to buy a new calendar, all the problems they had over the previous year would just disappear. People seemed to think that a new year also meant they would become new people—people who would achieve all the grandiose goals they'd had in mind for the next 365 days. They would be nothing like the previous version of themselves who had managed to gain five pounds instead of lose ten, or who had lost love instead of found it. Those people were in the same place as they were the year before, when they'd been just as excited for time to plow forward as they were right now. This New Year's Eve would be different, they all told themselves. It had to be.

This New Year's Eve
was
different though. The snow coating the sidewalks and trees outside looked the same as it had always been this time of year, and the festivity that always accompanied another year's passing was nothing new. The difference was that this year, I understood how those people felt. I knew that the calendar ticking forward into a new year wouldn't magically change who I was, but I was aware I'd already changed in ways. Even Mom said she could see something in the way I walked—I don't quite know what she meant.

“You just stand up straighter,” she murmured to me one day as we drove home from our therapy sessions. “And you even let Murray into your room now.”

“Yeah, well...he just wants love and approval like everyone else, I guess,” I had replied with a slight smile.

Our sessions took place in the same building, just with different people. Ms. Orowitz said it was a “conflict of interest” to treat Mom, though she made the request because she just loved what she was able to do for me. I was a successful experiment for Ms. Orowitz after all, I suppose. The place we now went to was a little further away, and we had to go on weekends, but the experience wasn't too terrible, really. It was actually kind of nice being able to spend some time with my mom, even if that time was just riding to and from the shrink's office together.

I knew I had a long way to go before I could live a “normal” life. It would be stupid to let myself believe I was already there, even though things felt 300 percent better than they had before. The panic attacks would take some time to control, especially without the medication. My abuse counselor, Dr. Fitz—I upgraded to a real doctor now—prescribed me some clonazepam to steady my nerves, but I had a funny feeling about taking pills, now that I
knew
. I just didn't trust them.

“You have them if you need them,” Mom had reminded me.

I knew my anxiety would improve once I was able to deal with the flashbacks, but those would take even more to control. They'd take everything I had in me. Without the wall of confusion that had kept my memories shattered for so long, pieces of my past were coming at me with gale force and in startling numbers.

Certain pieces of information was more persistent and tough to handle than others.
I shuddered at those thoughts and convinced myself that everything would be alright one day. I just had to keep going.

I guess I did feel different though—in a good way. It was impossible to feel as innocent and in awe of the world as I did when I was a child, as I hoped I would one day feel once I became more “normal.” I realize now that innocence is one of those things you can take away, but that can't be replenished. People get older, they learn more, and their innocence is replaced with knowledge and wisdom. I'd settle for a nice mix of both if I had a choice.

I felt different in a good way as I dozed off in my bed and thought about the plans Austin and I had made for New Year's Eve to go ice skating with his family down in town. Mom was even thinking about going too—it would be some kind of miracle to finally get her out of the house to do something. I coaxed her towards the idea by telling her about the fireworks show that would be done right off of the ice, right overhead as we skated. Fireworks exploded in my mind just thinking about it. I would kiss Austin at the stroke of midnight, just like they did in every cheesy romance movie ever created. If we're being honest here, I'll enjoy every second of it.

I felt different in a good way as a quiet ease settled over my mind. The relief I felt from the constant confusion, which bored upon me like a soul-crushing weight, lifted a bit more each day as I continued my therapy. I was learning ways to manage the new library of memories in my head, even the bad ones. Even the terrible ones.

I felt different in a good way knowing I had the strength to confront even the most horrifying vestiges of my past, when I'd never believed myself to be even remotely capable. It felt different and exciting to be able to look forward to the future instead of dwelling fearfully on the dark spaces in my brain, peeking around hidden doors to discover its unknown mysteries.

I sighed and felt my consciousness slip. Curling into a comfortable ball on my side, I faced away from the festively lit window whose light shone through the cracks of the blinds. I felt different because for the first time in a very long time, I finally felt like there was hope after all.  Maybe there was a place for me somewhere in this world where I could belong. I might never be a perfect fit, but...

It was a work in progress.

The End.

About the Author:

Tracy Campbell is a young up-and-coming author from Colorado. Growing up in the mountains as an only child, she ended up...a little weird. She loves cats, video games, cheesy television sit-coms, and a variety of other tasks that will never include sports.

In addition to writing, she enjoys many other art forms as a way of life. She is pursuing a degree in graphic design and also enjoys a full-time career as a tattoo artist. Her first published work "How to Become a Tattoo Artist" was written to help others who were passionate about this career path to break into it successfully and professionally.

[email protected]

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