I’ve decided it would be best to break down the telling of this section of my life into parts; for ease of reading, and for ease of my mental state. I’ve spent the past week thinking, reflecting, processing (with my therapist and by myself), grieving, crying, feeling every emotion, and feeling completely numb. I locked away this part of my life for so long that dusting it off and leafing through the decayed pages has been more therapeutic then I could have ever imagined. It’s a journey I didn’t know I needed.

My parents got divorced when I was 6 years old. I haven’t seen or had contact with my biological father since then. Every once in a while I try to find out if he’s still alive, and if he is, where he lives, so I can decide if I want to attempt to contact him. That is another tale for another post. Last week in my search for my bio father, I went down a rabbit hole where I discovered the address for the home my mother and stepfather lived from the time they got married (when I was 7) until I was 10 years old. I had remembered the name of the street, but not the house number. I did not live with my mother and stepfather all the time. During the school year I lived with my grandmother and her husband during the week and then stayed with my mother and her husband the rest of the time. This was because my grandmother lived in a good neighborhood with a good school district, whereas my stepfather’s home was in a bad neighborhood with a worse school district. That was the reasoning I was given, anyway. The only thing 7 year old me knew was I was being abandoned by my mother on a regular basis to live in a house of nightmares while she lived her life with her new husband, who clearly didn’t want me around. Add that with feeling abandoned by my biological father, and the foundation for attachment issues, relationship issues, and trust issues was set.

The neighborhood my mother and stepfather lived in from 1987-1990 was already on the decline; there was a boarded up house down the street, and my mother’s car had a few bullet holes in it. My stepfather had been shot in the arm during an attempted car jacking in front of his house a few years before he met my mother. Still, for whatever reason, I loved the house, its structure, its aesthetic beauty that my child brain enjoyed. It was small, built in 1939, with 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom. There was an apple tree in the back yard, and I remember the flowers on that tree blossoming in the spring, then eating the apples that grew. My mother and I would bury pomegranate seeds under the apple tree after rituals, and toward the end of winter and summer. I had my first pet cat after leaving our cats behind when my mother took me and left my father when I was five and a half years old.

Not too long after my mother remarried, the arguments started. I remember hot summer nights, lying in my bed shaking from fear while I heard my mother and stepfather scream at each other for hours late into the night and early morning. There were broken objects and holes in the walls from their arguments. Sometimes the fights were physical, but the police never showed up because they were busy with worse crimes that were a constant in the area. During the day, my stepfather was always angry about something, and I was usually the target of his anger; my grades weren’t good enough, my room wasn’t clean enough, I wasn’t helping enough around the house, I was too fat and not active enough, etc. Most nights I went to sleep hoping I wouldn’t wake up the next morning. But things didn’t get really bad with him and my mother until after we moved into a different home in a different city in 1990. Every Sunday when my mother took me back to my grandmother’s house for the school week, I would sob and beg for her to stay, or to take me back with her; I hated that she left me, hated that she kept abandoning me and let her husband reject me, hated that she left me with people she knew were abusive. My life was a living hell.

Since I had an exact address for the house, I decided I would google it to see what I could find out about it. The first site that appeared was from a realtor company. I clicked in and saw the house. It was boarded up, a blue tarp on the roof, abandoned, fallen into disrepair. The apple tree was gone. I felt a knot in my stomach. My heart stopped. I couldn’t breathe. I scrolled further down the page. The house was sold in 2012 for $100. A tear slipped from my eye. I wanted to know what the house looked like now. Maybe someone fixed it, restored it, made it livable again. I opened up google maps, entered the address, and clicked on street view.

The house was gone.

It was a vacant lot, overgrown with vegetation from the neighbor, a patch of dirt. My house was gone. I went numb. Time passed. I’m fairly certain I dissociated. All of the previously mentioned memories (and many others from those times) flooded my mind and I blinked out.

Dissociation is a common symptom of PTSD and C-PTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), and is something I’ve experienced most of my life. I was first diagnosed with PTSD when I was 28 years old, which was the first time I saw a psychiatrist to try medication because my depression had become unbearable. I was told the disorder had probably existed for a long time given my trauma history. Last year I was officially diagnosed with C-PTSD and have been working through the major traumas I’ve endured, but I hadn’t begun to process the other things. I realized this house, this time in my life had more of an impact on me than I ever knew.

The physical representations of that house: abandoned, decaying, rejected, and eventually non-existent are such a parallel to my time there. I felt abandoned, my sense of self worth, safety, security, and attachment were decaying. It had been condemned, as I had been condemned to a childhood full of cruelty. The vacant lot was emptiness, loss. I was initially sad to discover the house had become another statistic of the city, but now my mind and soul feel less burdened. The dark tendrils of pain that wrapped themselves around me are being cut away, and I am thankful. The trapped ghosts of past pain can be released.

I never spoke about this part of my life before this week because I always thought it was so small and insignificant compared to the Trauma (with a capital “T”) I endured while living with my grandmother and other things that happened when I was older. Those times were traumatic as well, and was the mortar that held the big bricks of trauma together. Working through this is part of my healing, I just hadn’t realized it until recently. All of the boxes I shoved away in the vault of my mind have to be dusted off, opened, unpacked, sorted through. It’s the only way I can ever fully heal, the only way I can truly become a better person, the only way I can truly be free.