For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Annabel Lee – Edgar Allen Poe
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Sometime within the past six months my therapist began an exercise with me to piece out, name and validate my various parts. Although it sounds rather ‘multiple personality disorder-ish’ it’s been interesting. At the beginning I had only two parts. I saw myself as one half stable-and-healthy and the other half a screeching scorch-Earth demon. Light and dark, life and death. These halves of myself battling for dominance in times when life became too challenging.
As this exercise progressed, other parts of myself have appeared. I now have 6 that are named and pieced out. This is helpful when facing a dilemma in life. It is helpful when discussing past traumas. It is helpful when picturing in the future doing something that scares me or will be difficult in some way. Each have their strengths, each have their stories. Each has a place in my life.
More on how parts play into therapy situations in later writings. This is the story of Annabel Lee, my reader and writer.
My first memories in life are the overcast, grey skies of Europe. Our family was small then and we were able to see a great many things during this time. Castles, viking ships that had been pulled from the depths of the ocean, ancient tombs inside elaborate cathedrals, large and frightening sculptures of giant vikings and insidious serpents under the water. I remember wearing a traditional German dirndl, leaving wooden clogs out for St. Nicholas and seeing children running down our street in mock terror of a switch-wielding Krampus.
These early memories suited me. They matched my frequency, even as a very young child. The dark myths, the haunting nature of buildings and sculptures that took form centuries before my life began, the legends, the traditions of a more primitive time. We all feel the things that match us. The overcast skies of Europe, the physical remnants of World War 2 on the angry North Sea, they matched who I was, and even then I knew it.
Around age 8 I started journaling. I’ve always been a weak speller. I believe it is from learning to write by spelling words phonetically. The English language is not at all very phonetic. There I began to put my thoughts and words to paper. My penchant for the dark continued to grow during this time. I was an 8-10 year old who loved to watch movies and shows about Dracula and the Headless Horseman.
I became a pretty voracious reader around age 11. More and more I would find myself wandering over to the adult section of the library. The bigger the read, the better. I read Gone With The Wind by age 12. I remember reading Shogun and North and South as well. The library was, then and now, a place of comfort to me. The books were safe places I could go, the characters becoming people I knew well. My father wrote of me as a young child “Kayla is a very serious child and will read anything she can get her hands on.” This was true on both counts.
The trials and dramas of my time as a teenager made their way into a little orange diary that I hid between my mattress and box spring. Despite being both a reader and writer, my physical self was helplessly mute. This has been an issue I have struggled with throughout my life. I felt only able to write my feelings down. I was unable to speak them, where they might result in getting some help. The words and feelings I pushed down, the things I was unable to say, the ways I was unable to express my anger (even when it was appropriate) became a toxic lump inside of me. The conflict between what I felt people expected of me and what I felt inside was a constant source of anxiety. I developed an eating disorder at this age, bulimia. I became compulsively locked in to this very literal (and patently unsuccessful) attempt to throw up the words, feelings and conflict trapped inside me.
The diary filled with my bare teenage feelings was accessed, read without permission. There were long lasting consequences for the words it held. While my 50 year old self would say – well, if you didn’t want to know how I really feel you shouldn’t have read how I really feel. My 14 year old self, though, took this as a condemnation of spirit. Confirmation that my spirit was both dangerous and unacceptable. Due to the beliefs I already carried for myself, this message was internalized. It became a stark message to me, my feelings and words truly aren’t safe anywhere outside my body. They weren’t safe inside my body either. But at least with them inside I avoided the risk of how others reacted to them. There is too much feeling comfortable being uncomfortable in life. It at least is what you already know. The outlet of my writing was removed in the fear of this happening again. I became a better pretender, a better wisher that I was different. A better compartmentalizer, a better bargainer, a better internalizer. I became a better bulimic.
I still had my reading, though. It became my main source of escapism. I began reading Steven King at a pretty young age. He had already written a great many books by the end of the 80’s and I made my way through them all. I can no longer claim that, but he remains my favorite author.
My writing was confined to poems and pieces of short prose,. I still possess these, in Rubbermaid containers which hold the memories of my life. I didn’t journal again until I was nearly 20. Since then my journals have been ongoing. When I look through the first two I filled, I see the falseness of them. I see the fear that they would be read. I see myself talking around my issues problems in such a way that I knew what I was talking about but nobody else would be able to decipher the same.
My journals didn’t get “real” again until I hit 21. 21 wasn’t my first broken heart, but it was the one that changed everything. I was unable to be polite or talk around it. The grief and horror I faced during this time was overwhelming, uncontrollable and dire. Many people tried to help me, but my journal was the only thing that was available to me 24/7. It never tired of listening to me say the same things each day, recounting the latest harm I now had to absorb on top of the mountain of harm I was already tasked to absorb. I came across this journal earlier this year. I could not bear to read more than a couple of pages of it. My grief for my younger self, the words laid bare were still far too real for me.
My writing has always been my way to vent my pain, darkness and troubles. I now have 30 years of journals. At this point in my life, it is impossible to not recognize the part they play in my life. I didn’t write when things were going really well for me or when I was in the middle of a happy life event. Any tragedy would be compulsively laid out and dissected, though. Sometimes writing almost the exact same thing as the entry before. Then a huge gap in dates. Before I became wife and mother I would fill a journal birthday to birthday. I have one journal in my possession now that spans 10 years. Years of the busyness of being a mother to small children, years void of medical issues, years of having a large social circle with friends to discuss my problems or frustrations with. Years after the internet began, when I became active in forums and was able to write my tragedies and triumphs for real time feedback.
Annabel Lee became rather lost along the way. I would only feel her in October as the leaves on the trees changed and dropped, as it became Spooky Season, as I participated in the many events of Alton, a city who celebrated it’s darkness.
I’ve struggled with trying to become a reader again. I lost my ability, it seems, during my season of motherhood. My focus wasn’t sharp enough. I preferred the quick hit of TV shows or checking social media.
I have celebrated my return to writing, though. This blog. I consider myself a very funny person. I have no issues putting myself out there for a joke, I delight in self-depreciating humor. My social media pages are quick witted and full of interesting events. These things are not the source of either my reading or writing. I am able to write comedy, but for someone who considers themselves funny, it is extremely difficult. See last week – this was the only time since I started blogging that I published late. This was due to how much of a struggle it was for me. I became frustrated beyond belief. Annabel Lee, my muse, my eloquence, my words, is not funny. She is mystic and darkness. She is a song written in a minor key, she is the one who walks through old graveyards. She places her hands on the oldest walls she can find, they comfort her. She feels those that came before her, can sense them around her. She prefers to live in old homes because of this. She writes the stories of those long dead. She portrays women who knew hardship and tragedy but had the strength to persevere and do good anyway. She sees it in them because it is my own story. She is the scribe and the truth bearer of it.
