Repression, Remembering, Regret, and the hands that Freyja gave me

All these things are going through my head in the past week. They are all I can think of when trying to decide what to write for this week's PBP post. I don't even want to write about what I'm going through right now. It's painful, it's fucked up, and I've held it in for so long. But maybe I need to talk about this, to drain it from my psyche, so I can heal, finally. So maybe it is time to tell the story of how a beautiful, gifted child had a part of her broken so badly she could do nothing but forget it utterly. How two decades later, she started to remember. And how recent events reveal how badly a mind can be haunted by the horror of bullying.

There was a murder last month in my old neighborhood, the only home I knew from birth to age twelve. It is all anyone wants to talk about. No matter where I turn I can't escape it, the news, the talk, the gossip and whispers. A man and a woman I knew in elementary school now sit in prison on murder charges. I wouldn't call them friends back then, but I knew them well enough. Popular kids, I remember how the woman used to be the dream girl of every young boy in that school. A cheerleader, a good student, well loved. Like any other girl there, I saw her with a mixture of awe and jealousy. The man was a couple years older, and I barely knew him. I remember only his family home, and how everyone used to think it was as good as a mansion. Now two murdering drug addicts in their early thirties. Just another sad reminder of what meth has done to this place I grew up in. Another reason to lose faith in this country.

When I was growing up, there were several trailer parks a mile or so from my house, down by the river. Three of my closest friends lived there, and I often road my bike over to see them, even though the place, aptly named Tanglewoods, was about as inviting as the woods of Sleepy Hollow. Back then I found the dull fear it inspired inconsequential. I never thought that subsequent events would lead them to haunt me. When I was about eight the city found evidence that the refinery a few miles away had led to pollution in the groundwater that served the parks. They were evacuated and everyone was forced to move elsewhere. Many were so poor they had no choice but to leave behind the only home they knew. The place is as it was then, only now like a ghost town. I drove through the parks again when I was in high school, after they had been long closed. Roads to nowhere, a park full of corroding trailers devoid of life. And apparently the perfect place to dump a body, in the mind of a fried methhead.

None of this has anything to do with me, but the haunted feeling I felt then still lives on. Those woods in my mind are cursed, always have been and always will be, now that I remember.

When I was about sixteen, I was out in the backwoods far away with some friends and my boyfriend, watching the friends hippy older family members play bluegrass together. I recognized one of them, a few years older than me, as a boy I had hated in elementary, though why at the time I didn't remember. Apparently they were relations, cousins. My friend approached me later in day when I was alone, and told me that his cousin remembered me, because he felt bad about something he had done to me when I was little. I asked him what he meant, and he repeated what his cousin had said. Is it true? he asked. I quickly denied it and walked away. But what he had told me had struck me like a lightning bolt, I was dumbstruck. A repressed memory, revealed to me in all its horror the moment he spoke those words. Was it true?  Yes, it was true. So true I couldn't bear to remember.

So I simply swallowed it again, and forgot it all over afterwards. It went back to live in it's snug hole in the depths of my shadow self. Over the years I knew nothing of it, yet it silently ate away at my mind. I see that now. All the things that happened between then and now, all my struggles, my self loathing, my self induced failure at life as an adult. All of it because of the phantasm memory. But I wouldn't forget it forever.

So much has changed in my life, since I renounced Christianity with the help of Lady Freyja. It is why I can never forsake her, though other gods may call to me. None of them can compare to the gifts she gave me when I begged for a god, any god, to help me go on in my darkest moment. And like pure gold there she was, hand outstretched, feeding me the strength and the courage to move forward, to break bonds with the past, and seize all that had once been taken from me. I am hers forever, as she gave me freedom, and in her generosity gave me two souls to walk beside, so never again will I stumble and have no hand to steady me. When I walked with the Christian god, I stumbled and found but air, nothing to grasp. I hit the ground so many times. But Freyja gave me something real to hold onto.

They say that when one is safe and secure, these are the times that repressed memories surface. That when we have the support system there, our mind can finally release the pain to us, knowing that we can now face it. That is what happened to me a month ago. I remembered those dark woods. I remember the group of older boys who forced my friend to lure me there. I remember the anger and then fear as strong arms held me down. I remember all that I saw and all that was done that I cannot speak of. I remember fighting, and breaking free, and riding my bike so hard that the miles slipped past in what seemed like seconds. I remember exploding into the house, and the feeling of the hot steam of the shower cleansing me as I cried against the curtain. I remember it all. I even remember forgetting what had happened, within a few days pushing it out of my mind. I remember living the next two years without trusting anyone, and how I learned to survive with downcast eyes.

I can face the pain now. I can see how the strands of wyrd stemming from even forgotten events has guided the course of my life. What they did to me was more than an event, it was a curse. They cursed my wyrd so horribly that I couldn't even remember it to break the spell. But not now I remember, and now Freyja is with me. She has taught me much. I have broken the curse, and she gives me to strength to weave my own life from now on.

I could revenge myself upon them all now. There is a part of me which wants them to hurt as I have. There is a part of me that wants to destroy them. But I need not really. I was not the only victim of their cruelty, and when I see them now, I see what is apparent. They are aged before there time, addicted to drugs, poor and broken. Everyone of them has paid in karma. In cursing my wyrd and those of others, they corrupted their own. The gaunt, drawn faces they now possess are the greatest deterrent of revenge. I will not stoop to their level. Instead I will let them fade nameless into the past, instead I will forget them the right way.

And then I hear of this murder, reminding me of those woods and only adding to the horror they possess for me. And I can't escape it. I want to forget again, to never feel this feeling again. But if I give in, I will simply repress the memory anew, and bring me down again and again. So it seems now is the time I must face this pain each day anew. My heart is heavy, and life is hard. Yet I hold tight to the hands that Freyja gave me, and rest easy in the knowledge that they shall hold me until I can breath again.