Silent Scream - Part 1
Never saw it coming.
My therapist ushers me into her office for our weekly session. The couch is situated against a beige wall beneath a muted painting. It’s quiet, calm, and inviting.
The room says, “Relax.”
I take my usual seat at the far end of the leather couch and she wheels her chair directly in front of me.
In her calm, professional voice she asks me, “How are you?”
I look around the office with its quiet decor and I know enough not to answer, “Fine.”
We’re going to talk about the story, the story that nearly my entire adult life I never shared with anyone. Just the thought of it raises my blood pressure, increases my heart rate, and awakens every instinct within me to just run, run, run.
Her therapist gaze picks my reticence apart with her professional smile, verifying my inner terror. There’s no escape and I remind myself, “I’m paying for this self-torture.”
I answer, “Uhhh, I’m not sure?”
Her gaze never wavers, the smile never quivers. This entire session, this entire relationship is very professional. It’s all neat. It’s all tidy.
Except for the story.
The story I’m describing involves non-sexual physical abuse. It is NOT my intention to trigger anyone who reads this. If you choose to skip this part as a way of protecting yourself, please do. I fully support your decision to do so.
I’m probably newly six and my brother is not yet three. We share a bedroom in our Westchester home near LAX. There’s a vast difference between newly six and not yet three but there was one thing we both enjoyed. After the laundry was finished, my mom would bring the warm, just-dried clothes into our bedroom and pull out each dresser drawer to put the just-laundered clothes away.
The warmth emanating from the laundry basket created a puffy envelope, filling the space with a delicious cuddle of air. If we were in the room we would stop, and just savor, savor in the way a newly six and not yet three-year-old can enjoy an ASMR moment. The delicious warmth, the delicious smell were irresistible and we would catch the air, laughing as it tickled our bare arms.
But this one time, just this once, we took it a step further.
Our favorites were the diapers. The softest, whitest squares of hot-cross bun warmth were tucked with fresh snugness into the bottom middle drawer. It was all very neat. It was all very tidy.
When my mom left the room, I grabbed the drawer handle and unleashed the captive warmth. The sensory bomb put us both into euphoric hysteria. Brain stems tossed the diapers into the air and onto the bedroom carpet creating a pool of irresistible hot cloth. We dove into the diapers with sheer joy, wriggling in the warmth, squirming in the softness.
Never saw it coming.
I spent 34 years working in an oil refinery as an instrument-electrician. I’ve been bitten by AC and its more vengeful brother, DC. But neither type of electrical shock creates a pain that cauterizes the memory. Pain normally has a lingering, fading after-effect. But this pain of the beating reached an apex moment, then nothing. No lingering, no fading, no slow burn, no subsiding, no anything-- the memory just stops at the height of the drama.
My mother’s arm is extended, hanging my brother mid air by his T-shirt neck. His mouth is open so wide, I can see down his throat to his soul. The full projection of his scream is contained by the physical limits of his jaw. He is trying to scream beyond the forced air generated by panic, beyond the capacity of his lungs, beyond the length and breadth capacity of a nearly three-year-old. There is no sound. His face is purple, stretched by shock. His entire body is clenched in terror. But there’s no sound. How is it possible to scream to the point that one is unable to make a sound?
It has been fifty minutes, so our professional encounter has ended. She makes a note on the legal pad she’s been writing on.
She apologizes and sighs, “I’m sorry, but we need to stop for today. We can pick it up here next week.”
We debrief a few moments as she checks on the state of affairs of my body until we are both satisfied with my visceral regulation. I leave pondering the concept of the silent scream. She shows me to the door and we say a collective, “Next week.”
As I pass through the hallway, I break protocol and glance back . In a very untidy manner, she has left the door to her office open. In a very unprofessional manner she’s grasping the back of a chair, bending at an angle, taking deep breaths.
I am not a professional, but in that moment I realized my therapist is very human.
You captured something none of us wants to declare in our reality Steve, but we may recognize somewhere in the mire of our history or subconsciousness; whether through personal experience or holding someone else’s story. Thank you for giving voice in such a truthful, poignant way.
I wonder what the lies are that embedded themselves in those moments that take decades to uncover and write over with healing truths? I am grateful for this testimony of bravery that speaks pain and yet great courage.
Keep telling your story friend. I will hold it with you, even if there is nothing else I can do.
“Brain stems tossed the diapers into the air and onto the bedroom carpet creating a pool of irresistible hot cloth. We dove into the diapers with sheer joy, wriggling in the warmth, squirming in the softness.
Never saw it coming.” This post marks a turn from astute reflection to brilliant writing. Thank you, @TheUltraContemplative again, for your courage and your wordcraft to share insight for others in pursuit of wholeness and healing….