Past In My Pocket

Slender figured child, dance to the music that roars over the sirens. Pose for the camera, as a marriage comes undone. Sticky spray saturates strawberry blonde hair in a dark auditorium. Others her age, nearly four, only know this world of lip gloss and pageants. She envies them, they do not live in a home where a pillow is the only way to drown out the screams and threats of the night. She is caught on the threshold between dysfunctional and traditional Americana. Appointments written in crayon: ballet recitals, swimming lessons, modeling auditions, beauty pageants, sleepless nights as heated voices shake the little dark room and mornings of broken glass on the living room floor from a recent conflict. Beer cans and marijuana joints adorn almost every room.

The descent was devastating. I was obliged to adapt to a distorted world prematurely. As Alice, I had found myself surrounded with people who I could not comprehend. Like any nightmare, everything was beyond my control. I gazed into the mirror of facades. From the exterior, I was young, innocent and attractive. Deep within, I was far from all three. I was tainted by madness and hysteria. Withered with age, my young heart acquired infinite internal scars from all the broken promises.

Crashing plates and confusion in the other room. Locked in my improvised sanctuary, others call the latrine, I confided in my sketchbook. Pens scratched lines of fury and anguish expressing distress in methods a child could not find a way to articulate. Tension and tears deluged the sketch pad, which expected to see colorful and simple drawings only a child could create. For what felt like centuries within that tiny room, I would scream into empty pages the pain that no judges, while studying my petite frame in the spotlight of the auditorium, ever noticed in these blue eyes.

These same eyes cannot recall as vividly the now yellowed mental photographs of my youth. I was a memory bank then, a simple journalist. Captured moments stayed within me until a time when they could be analyzed. All the scribbles, took a new, more sophisticated form: language. Personal and passionate poetry plunged forth and danced among the lines on the worn, dog-eared composition notebook. The abstract notion of bottled sentiments, of feelings that cannot be fully expressed, became a concrete element. It was in my hands, a collection of powerful poems that reflected all that I had ever experienced.

Tens of thousands of drawers stacked with journals and drawing pads, fifteen years later, I am in many ways still that complex woman of four. My past is a dark, heavy one that I carry in my pocket. However, my methods of communication have advanced in numerous ways. I can speak and write as a means of expressing my innermost thoughts. A sketch book is a loyal counterpart, that is no longer a necessity but my choice to have as company. The pen no longer pierces the pages for that emotional release but glides gracefully and passionately along as words flow eloquently off of a noble tongue.