Write It Out of Your Body

[Content warning: child abuse]

The pen is my magic wand. It is the instrument of choice in healing. 

Story is the method. Poetry is the method.

We tell stories to remember. 

We tell stories to release. 

We tell stories to heal.

Sometimes telling those stories breaks a forbidden silence.

Sometimes keeping the silence is more painful than the consequences of punishment.

*

On Friday night, April 23rd, a 61-year-old Asian man was attacked in Harlem. Knocked down from behind and head stomped on, repeatedly.

How much more must we endure before we take down the system? Burn it to the ground? How much hurt? How much trauma?

*

I don’t remember much of my childhood. I thought this was normal. Until, as an adult, I noticed that my friends could recall many stories and events from their own childhood. 

Maybe I just have a bad memory, I thought.

Then recently, I learned that having little to no memory of one’s childhood is often a sign of trauma.

But my childhood wasn’t so bad, I thought. I didn’t grow up in an abusive home, I thought. What trauma could I have experienced?

Of course, we don’t know what we don’t know.

Until we do.

I have recently returned from a deep healing retreat in the jungle. While there, some long-repressed memories from early childhood surfaced.

Fragments of memory.

*

What do you do when you don’t belong anywhere? When you are told that you don’t belong? Not even in your own home? You hide. You learn how to be invisible.

*

Growing up, both of my parents worked. And they worked hard. Immigrants trying to prove themselves, to show that they belong.

When I was little, around 4- or 5-years-old, my mom would leave me with a babysitter. I would hug her leg, clutch it hard, refusing to let go. I cried and cried. Don’t leave me, I wailed. The babysitter would have to peel me off of her, my arms stretched out, trying to reach any part of her, dressed in her nurse’s whites.

After she had gone, I would cry for hours, curled up on the floor, until finally I cried myself to sleep.

Later, she would recall my behavior to friends and laugh with them, shaming me for my dramatic behavior. Sobra naman, she would say. I was too much.

*

When I was six, we moved out of an apartment and into our first house. It was a big deal for my parents. Ownership in America. And now, my grandparents could live with us. No more babysitters.

One day, after watching “E.T.” in the theater, I jammed all of my stuffed animals into the farthest corner of the closet, arranging them just so. I created a hiding place, just like E.T. did. Anytime I got in trouble, I hopped in there.

Sometimes I didn’t have time to crawl back there, so I’d hide under my bed, too. Sliding on the mauve carpet was faster than sliding a closet door open and climbing behind the stuffed animals.

So what on earth did the 6-year-old Me do that I fled in terror?

My dad’s wrath was not to be messed with. And I do not exaggerate when I use the word “wrath”. His fuse was short, so everyone walked on eggshells. 

But as a kid, what did I know? 

I just knew that my little 3-year-old brother was a pain in my butt. And I let him know it. Often.

*

I remember running to my room as fast as I could and sliding under my bed, pressing my body into the farthest corner, so I’d be safe. I remember seeing my dad’s shoes—he was so mad he hadn’t even taken them off yet and that’s saying a lot in an Asian home—and holding my breath, tears streaming down my face, terror in my veins. 

Then, suddenly, I feel myself getting dragged out by the ankles from under the bed so fast that I don’t see anything. I just feel myself pulled out of darkness into bright light, airborne, and then thrown onto my bed.

Then the belt came. The lash. The whip.

I curl up into a ball. Bite my lip. I try so hard to hold it in. The cries that want to come out. If he hears, he’ll whip harder.

But the pressure inside me builds so much that I can’t hold it in anymore. I open my mouth and release the wails out into the air, a sharp song of pain.

No one will come rescue me. My little brother is hiding. My mom is afraid of him. My grandparents think I deserve to be punished.

No one will stop this. I can only wait for his rage to subside.

And eventually it does.

The number of whips depended on his mood, on his level of anger. It was usually one or two. Three was pretty bad. But the number doesn’t matter. It’s the rage behind the whips. It’s the traumatic break of trust, the destruction of safety that a child assumes of their caretakers, of their parents.

I was six years old. The last time I got whipped was when I was twelve.

Of course, one could argue that this was the customary method of punishment during that time. That I wasn’t the only one who was treated this way. 

It still doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make it hurt any less. It doesn’t undo the trauma that’s been inflicted.

What on earth did I do to deserve such treatment? What great transgression was committed? I was just being a kid. One whose parents neglected her. Whose parents’ love was conditional. A kid who just wanted to be held and seen and loved.

*

When I got older, some Filipino friends would share that they too got the belt. Or, alternately, a milder version: the palo from our mom’s tsinelas. And we’d shrug it off, maybe laugh about the old ways. We thought it was normal. This was how kids got punished for bad behavior. We never thought about the trauma. Or the messages of unworthiness we received.

What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, right?

*

These days, I think about my dad and what traumas he must have endured to enact this level of punishment on his kids. Well, at least on me, his first-born. I can’t speak for my brother’s experiences, but my sister, the youngest, never got the belt.

What kind of life did he live as the first-born son of eight kids whose father was a survivor of the Bataan Death March in World War II? How did his father, my lolo, treat him? And what about martial law? What was it like to live under siege? To have to flee your home and your homeland for a foreign country, knowing that you might not ever be able to return?

What kind of pain must he be carrying? A pain that he’s not even aware of.

This is the kind of pain that, if not expressed in healthy ways, can explode into causing harm upon others. The kind that looks like a man stomping on the head of another.

*

My pen is my magic wand. And with this, I release the heaviness of this trauma. I speak the truth into the ether and let it go. Let the healing continue.

*

This is part of the Maverick Monday series, where I talk about healing trauma (micro and macro) through the lens of a woman writer of color (that’s me!). Each week, I’ll share a personal story from my healing journey in the hopes that others will find comfort in knowing that they are not alone. I hope that by doing this, you can see that YES! Healing—true, lasting, deep healing--- IS possible and that you can thrive in your life, living as your most authentic self without shrinking from the world. If you’re interested in making healing magic with your own pen, checkout my workshop Write to Heal for more details. It’s NEXT WEEK! Tuesday, May 4th!