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I went into one of my favorite little thrift stores the other day and found myself overcome with emotion at the sight of a set of dishes. My Oma had these in her house in New England—the house I grew up in.
The house where some of my best and worst memories were made.
That house caught on fire when I was seven. I was the one who called the police, alone with my eighty-five-year-old great-grandmother. She couldn’t walk, so EMS had to carry her out. My mother abandoned me in that house many times, long before the fire.
There were countless sleepovers with friends, and even more fights and mischief with cousins. I cried in the dusty, creepy basement when the dryer died because I thought it was a living thing. I ate blackberries and dandelions that grew wild in the yard. We buried pets in the “pet cemetery” at the back right corner of the property where Oma would leave pretty rocks as headstones. It scared me at night.
In the summer, the willow tree was a cool place to escape the heat and read. In the winter, it became an ice fortress where my cousins and I played.
I was once asked to stand for a photograph in the dining room with the man who would later assault me. As far as I know, that photograph still exists somewhere in that house.
The dishes were used for Christmas dinner, but Oma would let me play with them sometimes—if I was careful.
Standing in the thrift store, holding them, I felt split open. Grief and tenderness, dread and longing. I bought them anyway.
Was I trying to punish myself by inviting painful memories back into my life? Or was I trying to reconcile something—to place a good memory into my present as proof that I was once a child who could see wonder in something small and fragile?
I don't know what possessed me, but I bought those damn dishes.
#Trauma #ComplexPosttraumaticStressDisorder #PostTraumaticStressDisorder #PTSD #MentalHealth #Depression #Anxiety #Autism #MightyTogether
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