“Imprinted in the amygdala are memories of how you responded to fear and other perceived threats since infancy. These emotional memories help you detect dangers that you have learned from previous experience, both as a species (don’t step over the edge of a cliff) and individually (don’t go near Uncle Charlie).”
- Susan Anderson, The Journey from Abandonment to Healing
“I’ve been abandoned out here
under the dry stars
with no shoes, no belt
and I’ve called Rescue Inc. -
that old fashioned hot line -
no voice.
Left to my own lips, touch them,
my own dumb eyes, touch them
It makes me laugh
to see a woman in this condition
It makes me laugh for America and New York City
when your hands are cut off
and no one answers the phone”
- From Anne Sexton, The Fury of Abandonment
There is a tall, kind man who takes me out to the seashore for brunch every Sunday. The ocean is white and frosty during the drive, and he holds my hand the whole time. Every week we pick a different little diner on the coast. He orders an “Irish Farmer’s Breakfast” and talks about the Patriots with the wait-staff, who he always knows, who have accents like his. He drinks two Bloody Marys and is twice my size. My tiny hand in his reminds me of Belle caressing the Beast’s paw. It occurs to me how very far from home I am.
He always offers me a bite of his omelet, which has ham in it, and if I were the strict and insufferable type of vegetarian this might bother me, but my very presence here - not to mention in his bed last night - is proof that tastes change. I’m fond of his twinkling blue eyes, his gentle, princely masculinity, the pride he takes in his work.
Alas, although I am miles from home, at the opposite corner of the continent looking out towards the Atlantic, I have not really traversed anything. Because every night I still dream about the woman who left me. A woman who was never especially nice or giving, who seems instead to have taken everything good away. In the most recent dream, she was singing and told me, “Now I’m taking music.” Somehow over the past four years, I granted her these sorceress powers over my entire life and my experience of the world.
Even the handsome woodsman, charging through the snow to save me, cannot break her spell.
The lesbian event I went to tonight was so miserable that I found myself wishing I had stayed home and watched the “Patriots game” instead, and I don’t even know what sport that is.
When the bartender asked what I was having, I couldn’t decide between using the old Dorothy Parker barb, “not much fun,” or just being honest and asking for a glass of arsenic.
