God Bless This Mess(74)

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in all of my slowing down is that the only way to be better rather than bitter is to extend the same grace to others that God extends to us. Which is why today I’m doing my best to forgive everyone who hurt me—and asking for their forgiveness, too.





Chapter 23


New Beginnings


I continued my therapy after moving to LA full-time.

One day my therapist asked me to dig deep into my past, and to open up about something I hadn’t been able to talk about before then.

I wrote in my journal:

I was talking to my therapist this week and she gave me a task, or an “encouraging nudge,” to journal about something I’ve been terrified to do. I guess today is the day. Not because I want to, but I’ve realized I can’t move forward and continue to write this book if I don’t continue to explore this scar that was slit back open this week. We were going through my family history, my relationship with my mom and my dad, how we communicate (or how we don’t communicate), and some defining moments of my childhood naturally began to pour out.

Including this one . . .

The idea of writing down what happened to my aunt and cousins was terrifying to me. Writing it down felt like I was making it real. Permanent. But I knew I needed to do it.

I had stuffed so many of those memories down and never talked about them, I wasn’t even sure what to write. I couldn’t remember at first whether my father was home when he told me he couldn’t come to my recital. Or did he call?

I called my mom to ask her matter-of-factly about a few things in our family history. And when I brought up Aunt Leelee, and Trent and Robin, she had trouble remembering some of the details, too.

“Hold on. Let me ask Dad,” she said.

And before I could finish saying, “No, no! That’s okay. You don’t need to—,” she put the phone on speaker, and my dad was right there.

I didn’t want to talk about it, especially with him. We never talked about it. After the funeral we just stuffed it all away somewhere.

I assumed asking about the murder would lead to a fight, to something uncomfortable, something awful—but it didn’t. I’m so glad my mom got him on the phone, because that was the first time my mom and dad talked to me, and listened to me, about the pain and the hurt that murder caused all of us.

For the very first time, we talked about what they remembered, and I asked them questions I had always been scared to ask them before. I asked Mom what she remembered about how I handled it as a kid. She said that, much like now, when it comes to conflict or hurt in our family, I become the peacemaker. I just wanted to smooth things over and be a “good little girl.”

She said other than my paranoia and fear of strangers and bedtime, she couldn’t really see any signs of me grieving. She said I was very blank and emotionless about it as a girl. I basically blocked it out.

My parents reminded me that the four of us went to Aunt LeeLee’s house at one point after the killing, to help clean it out. As my parents went about emptying closets and moving furniture out onto a truck, my brother and I were told to pick out things that we might want to keep for ourselves, to remember our cousins. The thing I remember most is not wanting anything. I didn’t want the toys Robin could no longer play with. I didn’t want the clothes that Robin could no longer wear. My parents insisted I take something, and in the end I took some artwork and schoolwork of Robin’s. Maybe because it was something she had created, something she had put into the world that she no longer inhabited, something that I feared would get thrown out. Maybe because it was art, which I loved, and which I had only recently given up on. I don’t know. But we still have all of that artwork and schoolwork to this day, in a closet at my parents’ house.

I didn’t hang it up in my room.

I never wanted it to be taken out of the closet. Ever.

My brother was so young, he didn’t feel the same attachment I did to the items they left behind. He decided he wanted Trent’s Lego box, and he was so excited to have so many Legos. I thought it was awful. I remember that big box vividly, and when we would play at home, I would get so mad if Patrick tried to pull that box out. I hated the smell when he opened the box, because it smelled just like them.

I never said anything about it. I just would not play with him if the box was around.

I’m not sure if Patrick ever put two and two together; if he realized that the reason his big sister wouldn’t play Legos with him was because of the box, not him.

Like I said, the trauma affected everything. Everything changed because of it.

Since that talk with my parents (and the talks we’ve had since), the suppressed memories of it all have flooded back in. And just talking about them has been healing. Sharing them has been healing. I want people to know. It explains so much about why I am the way I am, and why I react the way I do, and how I’ve handled other traumas and issues my entire life.

Talking about trauma matters. Talking about trauma heals.

I suppose one of the biggest takeaways from the whole experience for me was realizing that I had learned an extremely unhealthy but useful defense mechanism: suppressing all memories, thoughts, and feelings of anything bad that ever happened. In my family, I learned that we do not open this feelings box. We do not speak of it. To open it, to me, would be like opening the box of Legos. The smell of it all would be too overwhelming. It was easier to just walk away.