Sick Stuff

When I was around 5 or 6 years old, I lived in the Sears catalog. I pored through it regularly and marveled at all the stuff on offer.

I remember landing on a pretty little red dress. I still recall it vividly. It was a sheer red fabric dotted with tiny and perfectly symmetrical polka dots. It had a standup collar and short sleeves. There was a long, ribbon-like belt that tied in the back.

I lusted after that dress. Which at six years old was about all I could do. You “normal” people out there might read that and say: “Why didn’t you show it to your parents and ask them to buy it for you?” You would only ask that question if you had a “normal” upbringing. Which I did not.

I now understand the function that clunky Sears catalog played. It was an escape hatch. It was a safe place to hide from the violence and unpredictability between my parents. It helped me imagine a better life than what I was living. One where I had pretty little dresses to wear that would be cleaned, pressed, hung up in my closet and always there. Waiting for me.

The reality I lived in was that there was shit in my ballet costume. I will explain. The parents introduced my sister and I to the normal rites of passage for little girls back in the day. Ballet was one of the biggies. After a year of playing around with ballet moves in a gym at the Y, we would apply all the moves we learned at our annual end of the year recital. Boy did we get excited> excited

In preparation, Mom would take us to a local seamstress to have ballet costumes made. We were measured up and down and across and around. The seamstress would nod sagely and promise my mother a fixed pickup date. I saw the fabrics that would be used to make my ballet costume.

It was to be created out of a stretchy satin fabric and constructed like a bathing suit in a teal-like shade. Green-y-blue (or blue-y green) with alternating layers of green and blue tulle acting as the attached skirt, or tutu.

The straps were a dark green satin ribbon. At the hip, two green leaf shaped appliques were meant to accentuate that a leaf was what I was supposed to be. I nearly fainted it was so beautiful.

Being in a different dance number, my sister had a pretty little white number. It was embellished in blue sequins in two straight lines down either side of her front. White satin straps on her costume. She was a snowflake. That hasn’t changed.

Mom took great pride in spraying our little black ballet slippers silver. I wasn’t ever sure why she did that. Our black slippers seemed fine and the silver an unnecessarily gauche touch. I doubt I was so analytical back then but merely saw the silver slippers as “odd.”

As time went on and the marriage and my parents’ mental health deteriorated, our home environment similarly declined. In around this time period, a new baby sister entered the picture.

She was cute and entertaining. Couldn’t speak right to save her life. As she was learning to speak, my middle sister and I would coach her on the proper pronunciation of words. To no avail. The words would come out garbled. We thought there might be something wrong with her.

One day I started looking for my beautiful ballet dresses to dress up the baby sister. Clothes were not usually hung up or put away in our house. So I headed to the closet, opened the door and started digging through the clothes on the floor. Then I spied it. The strap or tutu or some part of it caught my eye and I pulled it out.

And my nose wrinkled. My beautiful blue-green teal ballet costume reeked. When I looked in the crotch, I saw why. Dried shit. I nearly cried.

I can’t remember now exactly how I responded. Heartsick. Confused. Aghast. How could this happen to something so beautiful? Why was my costume ruined and not someone else’s? Why weren’t my clothes put away? I had no answers.

Turns out that potty training was another victim of my parents’ neglect and addictions. The routine parents put children through to teach them how and when to use a toilet was overlooked for my sister. For quite a long time. It would appear the use of diapers was missing, too. I assume she is potty trained by now. Except her mouth retained the same problem. I only know that, at the time and in memory, I was devastated.

I know how that experience and many others manifested in me as an adult. I am a bit paranoid and hysterical about my “stuff.” I think my relationship to stuff has morphed into an addiction. In an ineffective attempt to control what I have and how much I have and keep it safe, I have gone all together too far the other way.

Amazon replaced the Sears catalog. The wound is so deep I often can’t just buy one quality item, but must buy two or three “just in case.” I am determined that no one will destroy or take my property away from me again, by God! And if they do, I have a replacement. Right here! Somewhere!

That’s turned out to be some pretty dysfunctional and irrational thinking. It hasn’t served me well. Too much stuff. They are only distractions and obstacles to what I rally want. And worse, when I am stressed, my instinct is to shop. Buy something pretty. Make the bad thing go away. Show that I am not as broke as I fear. Spend money! That’ll fix it. Sheesh.

I am on the brink of offloading much of what I accumulated to make me feel safe. Those are the keys words here. Feeling safe. That is a state of mind. It has been hard won for me.

For someone with a trauma history like mine, it was a distorted coping mechanism I am trying to stare down. I don’t feel alone with it. It is a chronic condition for many and the marketing gurus tap into and exploit that vulnerabilty. And are they ever good at that.

I must get good at ignoring them. I also have some work to do to remind myself that “stuff” is not security. Even if you have a million dollars in the bank, if the core wounds aren’t healed, the money won’t matter. I am slowly starting to get that.

But it’s tough. My trauma training started early in life. When it is all you have known in your formative years, it is hard to change tracks. But I must. As I have changed and abandoned other dysfunctional and addictive coping mechanisms – booze, cigarettes, sex, collections.

This road to “perfection” is very long and tiresome. Maybe death is the big graduation party. Who knows? I only know that I have to recommit regularly to deliberately follow a path of peace, harmony and healing.

As my Newfoundland friends are wont to say, life’s a hard pull.