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Sylvia had a secret. One that rolled around in her stomach like a marble in a maze, bashing against the walls until they bruised, swirling her energy into anxiety.
Sylvia’s friend Ruth told detailed stories about how her mother psychologically abused her during her teenage years. When they were cleaning out her grandmother’s house after her death, Susan had wanted her grandmother’s wooden chest full of yarn. Her mother refused to let her have it, and, instead, gave it to Susan’s older sister who didn’t even knit. Susan wondered for decades why she wasn’t good enough to have such a treasured keepsake and why her mother had favored her sister over her. Ruth told everyone about the hurts in her background, but she still walked around like a broken doll, permanently damaged, as if nothing could ever erase the scars she had suffered.
When Ruth talked about her feelings, Sylvia flashed her own memories across her mind about how her father had favored her sister over her. “Isn’t she beautiful,” she remembered he had said. Sylvia had looked in the mirror countless times wondering why no one ever called her beautiful. She had clear skin, thick hair, blazing green eyes. Weren’t green eyes as pretty as blue ones?
Her friend Paul had told her about how his father was never around. He never played sports with him, never sat with him on the couch for a game of chess, never even got to his high-school graduation until Paul had already walked across the stage and waved to his mother who was frantically waving back with both hands, as if she was waving for two. Even today, Paul’s father didn’t act like a father, but like a distant friend who sent him an article once in awhile about a topic that never related to Paul’s life. Paul had worked hard to build self-confidence, but struggling with a narcissistic father made that an up-and-down journey.
Sylvia’s friend Jen talked about her childhood, too. She told Sylvia how a sixteen-year-old neighbor boy had raped her when she was eleven, luring her into his backyard shed one afternoon and slowly removing her clothes while he talked to her about the different birds in the garden. Jen said that it was therapeutic to talk about it after so many years of keeping it hidden. At first, she was embarrassed that it had happened to her. What did she do to encourage that boy anyway? Why did she let him get her into the shed by herself? Didn’t she know better? Sylvia didn’t see how Jen had let go of the trauma if she still had all these questions in her mind.
When Jen talked, Sylvia nodded empathetically: “It wasn’t your fault. He took advantage of you. He was stronger, and you couldn’t have stopped him.” Inside her chest, however, Sylvia carefully drew a curtain in front of her own heart, shielding it from the memory of her own secret, stopping her from the minute-by-minute re-enactment of the scene, her shame, her acquiescence, her fear of exposure.
Sylvia didn’t want her friends to know she had suffered so much, had been irreparably violated. Maybe someone would use the information about her secret as revenge if they ever got angry at her. They would expose her in front of people she didn’t trust, and she would endure more embarrassment than she could handle.
Sylvia had spent years searching for her own self-esteem, her worthiness to be loved, her value as a treasured friend, her worth as an employee, her right to be happy at all. She thought that she should go talk to someone about her secret so that she could get it off her chest. Would that even work?
Finally, she made an appointment with a female minister at a church she did not attend. She told the woman about her secret, and asked her what she should do to heal from it.
“First, ask God for forgiveness. God will forgive anyone, even if you can’t forgive. Once, you’re comfortable that God has forgiven you, then forgive yourself and anyone else involved.”
Sylvia had worked on forgiving herself and the other person involved for years. Nevertheless, the memories, surfaced again and again like a nightmare when she least expected them. Sometimes, she even invited them into her thoughts as if she could purge them out of existence by focusing on them one last final time.
Nothing stopped the nightmares. They came while she was sleeping in a vivid stream, and her fear rose incrementally during the dream until she would awaken all of a sudden, gasping for breath like she had been under water the whole time. Her forehead was drenched with sweat, her heart tight with shame.
Sylvia did feel the pain of her friends, and because she did, she could listen to their stories and offer some solace just by suffering with them. She also understood the pain that her students told her about.
Samantha was a student in Sylvia’s college composition class. Samantha’s mother had kicked her and her three-year-old daughter out of the house, and, now Samantha experienced anxiety that interfered with her performance at school. Sylvia had counseled Samantha through several episodes of anxiety, and she had passed her English class in spite of her mother.
Van suffered from post-traumatic-stress-syndrome ever since he returned from Iraq, and his significant other left him right in the middle of the semester. Since Sylvia knew what anxiety and poor self esteem felt like, she coached Van step by step until he, too, passed his writing class.
So many of her community college students needed emotional support in order to pass their classes. Owen’s father beat him. Misty lived with five family members in a noisy, two-bedroom apartment. Monica’s parents wanted her to get married like a dutiful Islam daughter and give up going to school. Randall had spent two weeks living out of his car during the semester until his uncle let him live in his garage.
Sylvia knew that if she put in more effort to help these students, they could succeed and improve their lives through education and awareness of other opportunities. Yet, sometimes, as Sylvia sat beside one student or another, she felt like a broken human being trying to help another broken soul.
Was it true that people who never felt loved died of heart attacks? Most mornings, she woke up with a tight chest. She lay in bed breathing in and out of her nose until her chest relaxed a little, but the tightness never fully went away.
Most people had a secret, didn’t they? Weren’t most people walking around, hiding their secrets underneath their shirts, their polite manners, their rudeness, their abusive characters, their anxiety, their bullying, their surrender, and their repeated attempts at survival?
Yes, they were, Sylvia knew. She was, too. She had endured so many scars and affronts to her character, yet here she was, carrying her secret around like a satchel of wisdom.
Really, she thought she deserved a medal.
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