A snap shot in the life of a tortured child (An excerpt from the book "Diana's Beauty")

I was thinking of my sister as my eyes suddenly opened wide on the crisp scenery of my familiar surroundings. I’d been walking this route for years. Every fence, every rock, every crack in the side walk that promised to break my mother’s back was etched into my memory like the image of my own face. In this instant it was just as familiar, but in a different place, it seemed. It was as if the entirety of my world
was in a new place. It was all the same, only different. I couldn’t explain how. It was beyond my scope of comprehension to identify the subtle difference, but it scared me, such a contrast in the familiar angry feelings I had developed.

Had I been unwittingly transported to a place that was so similar to my world that I could scarcely notice the transition or had my whole world been transported and I only sensed it, because the light cast just a slightly different hue on objects in the new place? Most importantly, did anyone else notice? I began to long for company in that frightful reality.

As I stopped that day on the front lawn of a random house along my route home from school to have a break, reflect on the image in my mind of my sister's beautiful, carefree smile that I was anxious to see and prolong my arrival to an angry home, I felt or saw this difference. I couldn’t be sure which. I examined it for I don’t know how long, until I broke the long silence that hung between me and my childhood friend and fellow rebel Diane. She was eleven and I was ten. I was afraid of this shift in my awareness, but I decided that if something had changed, she might have noticed as well and maybe she could help me solve the mystery of what this shift meant.

My heart was pounding, the part of my brain in my forehead was tingling and I was terrified of every word I might speak. Perhaps the change might prove to be grander and affected by the words I chose if I spoke now. I felt myself on a roller coaster building and building towards the top most peak on the horizon and as the peak grew closer my anticipation grew with it, for I was quite certain when the car of the roller coaster reached the top all of existence would explode in one giant blast. I think I remember being aware of a tingling in my hands and feet, I couldn’t remember why I was there or how to get home.

I needed to find answers fast. Since I was the one that seemed to possess this frightful insight then, perhaps, I must be the one to stop it. Did this idea seem rational? I couldn’t tell, I had no experience to draw on, I was only ten. I hungrily searched my immediate surroundings in shear panic for more significant signs of what could be occurring. Were the blades of grass giving away any secrets, is the fence secretly revealing the answers? I can’t quite remember, was that ominous bush always half hiding the window of the blue house? Oh boy…something was shifting, but I couldn’t quite find it or stop it.

It seemed like hours had gone by since we left school that afternoon. Since the awareness of doom began, I hadn't paid attention to Diane’s presence until just then. I took some deep breaths and tried to sound as normal as I possibly could because as my eyes bravely searched out Diane’s, she seemed completely comfortable. Did she not sense the pending doom as I did, was there something wrong with her? How could she appear so content? Perhaps there was something wrong with me, in which case I needed to appear as fresh as her. After all, those insights could indicate complete insanity. I couldn’t bear being taken from my family and locked up in an institution, especially since now I had an urgent need to be in their company to seek solace in thier depressive dynamics with which I had come to reconcile myself. I had to be comforted by the discovery that they were unchanged and unharmed.

I screwed up all of the courage my little ten year old soul could muster and took a chance that 

alone Diane could not possibly have the power to have me put away.

“Hey Diane…Do you ever look at stuff and see it differently than you did before?”…my voice as nonchalant as any other day that we moseyed home from school.

“Huh?” She looked at me with all of the confusion and confirmation I needed…she had no clue what I was describing and asking and I had clearly ripped her from her musings of how far she could stretch her foot across the sidewalk without actually moving the rest of her body.

“Holy Moly! This must be the onset of insanity” I threatened myself, screaming inside my head. Diane was acting just as she always did. My heart was pounding so hard that I considered that it was to blame for the strange vibrating feeling in my forehead. Maybe it’s not the whole world that was about to explode but just me. I had heard of spontaneous combustion. I forced myself to look out beyond our little circle and found folks in the neighbourhood going about their business as usual. “Just blend in” I commanded myself. “Try to watch yourself from the outside to be sure you’re acting just as always. You almost blew it saying something to Diane. Thank God she didn’t seem to notice how crazy you are acting”.

“I gotta go”. I blurted to Diane as I jumped up and headed home trying not to run, but counting on my shaking body to just instinctively carry me in the right direction. I thought about how desperately I wanted to be with my mom if I was about to com-bust.

This was the earliest experience of this kind that I can remember, but it was a glimpse of the new torturous journey that lay ahead for me. Periodic end of the world, severe panic would continue to follow me, hunt me down and attack whenever and wherever I might be. My every attention over the next years turned to finding safe havens from the insanity or dark monsters that were attacking me. These episodes became so frequent, but unpredictable that shear survival rested on my creativity to produce safety zones, thus, a whole new trigger for rebellion was born, but at least life at home didn't feel so bad anymore.