Delirium

Summary

The text is a reflective narrative exploring the author's complex relationship with the night, trauma, and the coping mechanisms developed from childhood to adulthood.

Abstract

The author delves into a personal struggle with the night, which serves as a metaphor for the haunting presence of trauma. Recalling an art teacher who once styled hair for the deceased, the narrative weaves through the experiences of growing up with secondhand accounts of death, the impact of trauma on a child's mind, and the adult coping strategies developed to mitigate the fears instilled by these early exposures. The author contrasts the innocence of childhood imagination with the harsh realities of violence and death, and how these experiences shape one's perception of mortality and the afterlife. The text also touches on the author's hope for future generations to be spared from such traumas until they are mature enough to grasp the concept of death. The narrative concludes with the author's current state of vigilance and the desire for peace and love over the lingering memories of pain and terror.

Opinions

The author has a nuanced view of trauma, acknowledging its long-lasting effects while also recognizing the potential for healing and hope.
There is a critique of societal perceptions, particularly in the misinterpretation of a child's trauma as defiance, rather than recognizing the need for understanding and support.
The author values the sanctuary of light and familiar routines as a means to combat the fears that arise in the darkness of night.
The text suggests a belief in an afterlife where individuals are freed from the grotesque aspects of death, reflecting a spiritual or religious perspective.
The author expresses a yearning for a love that is genuine and healing, contrasting it with past experiences tainted by deception and emotional distance.
There is an appreciation for the simplicity of happiness and the protective comfort of love, which the author aspires to experience fully.
The recommendation of an AI service at the end of the text implies a belief in the utility and potential therapeutic benefits of such technology in managing personal struggles.

Delirium

I’ve been like this for a minute now: deep into a love-hate relationship with the hours of the night. Art class in elementary school, my teacher used to be a hairdresser for the dead. Updos with bullets in their heads. And I know that as a child, I halfway took for granted the blessing of only seeing death from secondhand accounts. Thermal images of the brain can show us what trauma can do to the mind of a child, growing up in a loving home might dull the noise but can’t snuff out what it is to hear a body hit the ground. This powerpoint’s alright but I’ve seen this more clearly before, behind the eyes of friends I’ve grown to love, students who were definitely too young to go outside, death at their doorstep, death inside. Is it his melanin that makes you blind to the fact that he’s not defiant? Miss ma’m, the boy is traumatized.

Freeform rhymes in the middle of the night. The roar of the things that terrified us as children never goes away, white noise in my adulthood but because of what happened in the subsequent chapters of becoming a woman, I sleep with the light on. An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but a lightbulb at night does more for my restless mind than letters after anybody’s name.

A clock decorated with crayon drawings tick, tock, tick, tock, tick talks to me as I count the alligators on the everglades poster on my closet door. Then later, a digital clock to replace the idle chit-chat of the analog. I was scared of the noise in the dark and batteries, or the absence of them, really, were the difference between when the world was turning and when, all of a sudden, it stopped. Patterns on patterns on patterns in the numbers that glowed in the relative darkness, at least when the hallway light was on. We choose familiar devils and I’d rather do math and not sleep than give into the web of dreams my mind was spinning just in time for when that light was gone.

I guess I’ll never know if what I saw in my unconscious displays of moving pictures had much of anything to do with what my art teacher actually saw. It’s a little different when we only have exposure to the things that frighten us through the eyes of another. I’m not naïve but I can hope my children don’t have to contend with much beyond the fear of their own imagination, at least until they’re old enough to understand that death, while sometimes grotesque, is not…permanent. If it was the Lord’s will, the woman riddled with bullets and the man who screamed on the long way down to the pavement before he breathed his last both have new bodies and walk the streets of a place that radiates holiness. One can hope. That’s my name, so I suppose I will.

I sit up at night sometimes, my phone somewhere in my nest of blankets and the King James Version by my side, watching something far beyond the light that’s most definitely on, hoping that maybe tonight, a lamp is just enough to overpower sensations so uncomfortable, so violating that I struggle to forget them. Maybe. I guess we’ll see. Right now I’m not taking chances on anyone, not even me, guess that’s why I’m up writing when I really should be asleep.

It’s probably true that making love is nice, my body says yes but my mind isn’t quite sure if it’s ready for something it’s only ever seen through the eyes of other people in my life. It’s safe to say that making love was not his style. How could it be when in the place where love should be is nothing but a web of lies? I can choose not to give life to the memories, to the pain, to the terror, but I know those ‘stranger than fiction’ stories live inside me. Honestly, right now, my once married but now unmarried self would rather be asleep.

High-maintenance, maybe, but it’s not hard to make me happy. It’ll be such a blessing to be wrapped in love through the night instead of recording my middle-of-the-night musings. A time and a season for everything, God says, and this is true. Wrap myself in your winter coat when I sleep at night, even when I’m not cold. I’m learning to be patient. Distance between us because the rule is that I have to love God more than I love you.