Category: Memoir

  • February 3, 2011

    Detail of a 2011 Blogger template by Skincorner, featuring artwork by Amai, from the header of my blog at the time.

    “I’m determined to salvage the comfortingly wonderful customs from my heritage while, for lack of a better term, “taking out the trash,” so to speak. Example: Karo syrup makes a really good, easy topping for breads when mashed up with butter on a fork. Fantastic taste to that. However, eat too much of it, and I know I’ll have a heart attack. It’s all in the moderation. I have bipolar disorder and PTSD and I struggle with massive doses of anxiety. Generally, though, I am a pretty happy person. Except when I’m not. :) It’s pretty much just like that. And then I feel like the world is caving in. But the good news for you is that if you know me, unless you spend a lot of time and I really let you in, you won’t have to deal with any of it. Because I put on a really good cover and generally don’t let many people close. I’m slow to trust people right now. Otherwise, I’m mommy to two really funny little boys. They keep Jared and me really busy. My living room is overrun with matchbox cars and little boy-sized desks and chairs.”

    This was the “about” box on my very first blog.

    I finally got up the courage to go scouting through archive.org to look at old blog posts that are now defunct. I pulled this “about” quote from my blog as it was on February 3, 2011.

    And I can unpack quite a lot that goes unsaid between the lines now, 15 years later.

    And it is still, indeed true, 15 years later, that despite living what appears to be a fairly transparent existence online, it is true that I let remarkably few people close (pretty much 1 to be exact), especially in person, and I have learned indeed to put on a really, really great cover.

    In that paragraph, I hear the angst in my writing. I hear the quiet despondency and horror of having had my social sphere knocked out from under me just the year prior.

    On February 3, 2011, Porter would have been four and a half and Liam would have been not quite three. We were indeed in the thick of it with two very funny little boys. I was in no way prepared to give them the attention they deserved.

    In 2011, the world was falling apart in just about every way possible.

    And so, in 2011, the boys went to daycare despite me not working.

    Jared kept all of us going, day and night.

    I had visions of a “Mommy Blog,” and was not-so-quietly desperate to get back to some semblance of a professional life.

    And for sure, whatever beginnings of a social life we’d had the year prior was long gone. Church was kind but most people were distant.

    I was taking on the full identity of “sick Caroline.” And, quietly dying, horrified and terror-filled, inside.

    And in that paragraph above, I was trying to not betray that any one bit of that was actually happening.

    Over the next little while, I’m going to revisit some of those old posts, with updated commentary.

    February of 2011 was the quiet beginning of a new sort of lifestyle: a different kind of childhood for my boys than I imagined, a different sort of marriage dynamic than I’d imagined.

    A different kind of life than I’d grown up dreaming about.

    And it’s been beautiful in its own way. Arguably, my boys had a more present mother because of that season of life.

    And if I could go back and tell the girl, who probably drafted that “about” paragraph in between sobbing episodes, anything at all, it would be this:

    Those two little boys that you worry about: they will grow up to be stellarly wonderful men in spite of whatever shortcomings you have. That man you married, that man that you feel growing ever distant with the stress of life right now: this marriage that is being tested is going to find its own comfortable peace and that man is your safe haven. And the career days may very well be done, and that will always hurt. And you, dear girl, your tears are not in vain. There’s a beauty in the growth going on right now. Do not lose hope.

    That is what I would tell my 15 years’ younger self today. Because it is the same thing I can tell myself today, in 2026.

  • The Girl in the Basement Apartment

    25 years ago today, I survived psychological torture and likely real physical danger.

    And the particulars don’t matter anymore; I am safe in February 10, 2026, not February 10, 2001.

    But I have to wonder what my neighbors of the time thought. They had to hear the screams; I screamed for my life that night. No one responded. It was a 55+ community probably not used to domestic violence issues.

    I don’t have to wonder about why it took that precise incident for me to decide to have the boyfriend of the time move out. It took precisely that sequence of events to upend our lives like that.

    And I don’t have to wonder because I know: I reclaimed his old room as my own, and rechristened the energy of that space the very day my Mommy came to clean up the trashed apartment he left in his wake on the last day of February when he moved out. 

    My Mommy brought my baby cat Cricket to live with me that day, and Cricket and I went on to live there a good while longer.

    And that day, that lowest of lows, was a turning point. It was the day I decided no man was worth my safety. No man, no matter how long I’d known him, was worth giving up my self-respect.

    I was done settling after that night.

    Thankfully, mostly good men followed that purging of my life.

    I am so grateful that I got to marry the best one.

    Jared is the one who has tolerated living in the light 24 hours a day for years on end.

    Jared is the one who answers the ghosts that aren’t there when I hear noises in the night.

    And Jared is the one who wants nothing from me other than my happiness. He doesn’t ask me to be anything other than real, he doesn’t ask me to perform for him. 

    He only asks me to accept his love as a gift. And that it is: a gift.

    And 25 years on: I know for a fact karma is real, as sad as that is to say in this particular instance.

    Tonight I will go to bed safe, having worked on a new jute bag for most of the day.

    And I will go to bed grateful for the new lease on life I got in 2001.

  • Mom Confession

    I have a confession to make:

    For most of the past 19 years or so, I have low-key resented all the boy blankets in the house.

    They messed with my decor sensibilities. Themed blankets that made little boys so very happy: Mario Bros., Spider-Man, Batman, Superman….. those blanket don’t very well go with a well-put together house.

    Still, little boys love that sort of thing, so I said not. a. single. word.

    But when given options for blankets in the main parts of the house, I’d choose other blankets every. last. time. for family activities, for pictures, for anything else that I could possibly think of an excuse for.

    Themed little boy blankets were for boys’ beds. That was pretty much it. Or if they dragged them to the main living areas themselves for some reason.

    But now, our boys don’t have themed blankets on their beds anymore. They prefer dark, stripes or basic slight plaid patterns.

    They prefer big boy bedding these days.

    So now, we have a supply of Spiderman and Mario Bros. blankets that don’t see a lot of love.

    Except when Jared ends up on the couch to sleep, which is often for reasons not related to our marriage one little bit.

    And Jared goes for the Mario Bros. blanket. Or the Spiderman blanket.

    And I’m not sure if he does it because it’s on the top of the pile, or if he does it because it reminds him of the little arms that used to reach up for him to pick up.

    And more and more lately, he leaves blankets, like this bunched up Mario Bros. Blanket in the photo, on the couch, for Abby or Trixie to lay on, saying “they were so comfy.”

    These blankets in no way, shape, or form fit to my decor sensibilities anymore in 2026 than they did in 2012.

    But you know what? I more and more say not one word about the out-of-place blankets left around.

    In fact, my very own pile of 5-6 blankets that I pile on top of my self in bed every night currently includes a Spiderman comforter.

    Because you know why? I’m aware that the little boy years are gone.

    Those years are gone, forever, for the Price household.

    And I am grateful for what brilliant, kind, hilarious, and gentle young men my children are growing up into.

    But now, keeping these blankets– using them while they are still fit to use– reminds me that those frantic, stressful, hilarious, fun, sleepy, beautiful years– those years mattered. Deeply.

    And I don’t know about Jared, but for myself– I sleep a little more soundly right now when a Spiderman blanket is keeping me warm.

  • The Body Keeps Score

    Trigger Warning: effects of extreme domestic violence discussed

    You know, it’s only been in about the last year and a half that I realized that that version of me, in that picture below, had actually saved someone’s life, in realtime, about a year and a half or so prior to this photograph.

    Just like November’s are hard, February’s are hard for an entirely different reason.

    I had an awful dream last night. I dreamed that someone I love very much wanted to kill me, and had already killed someone else I love. I spent a good deal of that dream attempting to hide, always to be found. I woke up before anything actually happened to me.

    And I thought it was an odd dream to have, and then I realized that today is February 2.

    The body keeps score. My subconscious knew exactly what time of year this is.

    And the reality is, I lead a remarkably privileged life. We have a nice home, we can pay our bills, Jared has a phenomenal job, my children are getting world-class educations. I have great friends and even as an adult I am still spoiled rotten by my family.

    And still….. the body keeps score.

    Tomorrow February 3, will be the 25th anniversary of one of the most horrific days of my life.

    In the journal in the photo below, there is a gap between January 4, 2001 and March 26, 2001.

    I’m sure I didn’t think much about why I wasn’t writing at the time.

    And it wasn’t until about a year ago that I really started to shuffle through that old journal of mine with a different kind of analysis than I’d ever done before, to see exactly what was going through my mind, looking at my brain as a young 20-something through the eyes of my mid-40’s self.

    I bought that journal with the boyfriend of the time’s encouragement. He knew I had kept journals throughout my childhood and into high school, and he took me to Borders and probably paid for it.

    There are only 2-3 entries before that January to March gap.

    But, those entries held just enough information to tell him, when he probably read it, exactly where he was standing in my headspace despite the fact that we lived together at the time.

    I’ve always been a very transparent writer. It’s just who I am; it’s how I process the world.

    And so, when I decided I wanted to go out on a date with someone else on February 3, 2001, I knew for a fact it was going to be a messy thing. I knew the man I lived with— the man who had claimed me as his own for six years at that point— the man who had known all along that I’d long been involved with some guy who was now an attorney in another state for over two years at that point— I knew he wouldn’t take it well; I knew that I was beholden to him for half the rent of our two-bedroom apartment in a very nice neighborhood in Toco Hills.

    I knew I had to break up with him for the millionth time.

    I had zero, zero idea that the breakup would stick this go-round for very different reasons than it ever had before.

    As traumatic as my college years were on a variety of fronts, there is only one week to which I am aware of in which my actual life was in danger, and that was the week between Saturday, February 3, 2001 and Saturday, February 10, 2001: the week between a blade and a door locked in the dark.

    And the police were involved, and the officer told the boyfriend that no judge would take my word for anything if the other party decided to press charges against the boyfriend.

    Which is why, when something arguably more sinister— a psychiatrist called it psychological torture in 2022— when something more sinister happened a week later, it didn’t even occur to me to contact the authorities. I was sure I was going to die that night of February 10, 2001, but the gravity of what exactly occurred didn’t occur to me at all until years and years later.

    I just called my parents the next day, while the boyfriend was at work, and told them I needed the rest of the rent money; that I wanted to see other people and the boyfriend was being “unreasonable.”

    So yeah, that dream from last night didn’t make a great deal of sense until I stopped to really think, and remembered, “oh yes, it is February.”

    The body keeps score. My brain— this brain of mine that ruminates so very much, still processing probably three lifetime’s worth of trauma, keeps score.

    And I write. To this day; I am terrified of this individual. Much like another individual I faced in the last year, I faced this person in person first probably 13 or so years ago as a tolerance exercise. I have solid reasons to know in my brain I am likely safe from him for a variety of reasons due to his likely current circumstances. But on some level I am always afraid he’ll show up at my house. I sleep with the lights off out of a type of forced exposure therapy now but for so much of our married lives, Jared and I have slept with the lights on such that our children grew up sleeping with the lights on even. He is not the only reason I am afraid of every man I meet, but he’s one of the bigger reasons.

    And today, my puppy Abby is getting her mouth, probably long overdue, seen about. And Jared, upon hearing what anniversary it is, and, taking pity on me for my poor toe that seems to not want to heal yet, came home in the middle of this morning to take the trash to the street for me.

    And I dragged my camera out of my bag— this camera I have been avoiding for weeks because I do that when I am hiding, and I found the photo of myself from probably late 2002, taken probably by this really great guy I dated for a while before Jared came along. And I found the journal only for the photo but this is not the time of year for dissecting it, just now.

    And today’s agenda is to work on the jute bag I started, and to hold my camera even though I don’t feel much like taking pictures, and to remember that today is 2026, not 2001.

  • Facing a Fear: I Did It

    I do not like dealing with my toenails. At all.

    When I was a little girl, my Mama had to hold me down to let them cut my toenails.

    It was bad. Really.

    The issue is compounded by the fact that with the scoliosis and spinal fusion, I actually can’t get to my toes super well at all. I can cut my own toenails as an adult, but it is not the easiest thing in the world.

    So when my big left toenail became fungal three years ago, I was filled with a sort of existential dread.

    And immediately, within the month, I went to a podiatrist, who promptly told me it didn’t look like a typical fungus and that I should come back in a year if it was giving me trouble.

    Three years later, it had mostly stopped growing the entirety of those three years and it was clear it was indeed a fungal infection.

    So last September, I faced it and went to the podiatrist, sure they would remove it that very day.

    Turns out podiatrist offices don’t work that way.

    She gave me some ketoconazole and told me to use it and Vicks and she didn’t know how long it would take to clear up; when I mentioned removal she said it was an option.

    Then in December when I mentioned the whole episode to my dermatologist at my appointment there, she said that the ketoconazole was going to do nothing, and gave me some weird enamel paint stuff that made my nail hard and told me to file it weekly.

    That stuff took away permanently any hope of actually cutting my toenails, and actually, for some reason the toenail started growing into the base of my toenail bed, backwards.

    And the backwards growth was what promptly sent me back to the podiatrist last week, begging to have the whole thing just taken off permanently.

    Which is no small thing, because of that whole fear of people messing with my toenails.

    And in fact, the fear is so bad that one of my greatest all-time primal fears ever has ever been someone prying off my toenails.

    So yesterday, as I sat just after having my left big toe injected with local anesthetic to deaden it, I posted this on Facebook:

    “So one of my most primal fears is having my toenails, specifically my big toenails, pried off. No joke, in the midst of the only time I had to be restrained due to psychiatric reasons, the delusion of the day was that they were restraining me to pry my big toenails off.

    So what am I sitting in the podiatrist’s chair waiting on? To have my left big toenail removed, permanently.

    It’s been fungal for at least 3 years but it has given me trouble with ingrown issues since I was a child.

    I am ecastatic it will be gone permanently, and not worried about the cosmetics, and I guess technically today is an achievement and exercise in facing one of my worst fears, all by myself since Jared is at work.

    And the dr says I made it through the worst part, which was the deadening injections.

    And I can go shopping for stuff for the weekend’s weather, too.

    I don’t normally keep my phone with me during Dr appts but she said it was fine for distracting myself.”

    The doctor said afterward, with my having told her about the fear, and told her nurse about the fear, beforehand, that she’d made sure she deadened it well and made sure to let it sit long enough to for sure be effective because she really didn’t want to have to come back in and poke me with a needle again after having hurt me with the procedure.

    But sure enough, the procedure itself took like 5 minutes, maybe 10 max, and it was not bad at all. I took a photo I will spare the world after, in fact– you know, with photography being my coping mechanism for everything and all– of the exposed toe bed before it got wrapped up in the bandage post procedure. I’d taken a photo of it before the procedure started, too, for posterity.

    And pretty much the rest of my whole morning and yesterday during the day was set up for success, because I’d done the very thing I was afraid of most as a child, probably. And that’s saying something considering they cut me open on front and back and messed with my innards in a very dramatic fashion for that scoliosis surgery.