Class journal, 1993

Entry #3

Let's move on to a more serious topic.  Last summer I knew this woman who had an extremely nasty history.  She was ritually abused, and trust me, you don't want to know the details.  As you could probably guess, even though she's a tremendous person, she still suffers major repercussions from what happened to her, and one of these is her fear of someone coming up behind her.  To accommodate for this anxiety, she always wanted to sit in the corner surrounded by walls, never with her back to the door or to anywhere else someone could creep, for that matter.  And she has these wide eyes that forever darted around the room, even though she otherwise seemed perfectly relaxed.  You had to watch her eyes to realize that she was never relaxed, since she succeeded so well at the illusion of calmness, although she did sit somewhat coiled like a snake.  She told me once that she never felt safe, never comfortable anywhere, especially since her abusers knew where she lived and probably knew that she had children.  When her grandma had caught wind of what was going on way back and temporarily rescued her from her parents, the satanic people would leave notes in the grandma's mailbox, and at night hang around the house, looking in windows, ringing doorbells...you name it.  People would say to her now, why don't you move? but she lives on a farm and you can't just pack up and take off from a farm.  Besides, she's not the type of person to complain or run away forever, and you have to wonder if she would ever feel safe anywhere.  Those of us in these types of situations have a saying when people run from place to place: they're only making geographic moves.  Your mind and your memory, unfortunately, always come with you.