Soap And Water For My Mind

It’s one thing to be clean physically, to actually feel like soap and water took off yesterday’s troubles. But when the mind keeps vomiting it back up, when it keeps telling you that yesterday is today and tomorrow will be too then is there ever hope to feel pure? Can soap and water wash off yesterday? It’ll just take a few days and we’ll be back to seeing soap and water for what it is, a way to wash the body, not the mind.

I’m hating therapy right now. We talked about how my sister use to call a child alter out that she called “Baby”. She wanted to play whatever game with that alter. She used a baby doll to bring her out. I remember watching myself from the background. I remember standing behind myself, behind “Baby.” My sister liked her.

I use to say I would tell on my sister when the mother got home but every time I tried I couldn’t recall what I wanted to tell. As soon as the mother walked past the door that separated the front part of the house from the bedrooms my mind went blank. I couldn’t remember a darn thing I wanted to tell. My mother came in the door, tossing off clothing the first step inside the door. She’d leave a trail as she headed to the back of the house and through that division.

It seemed like there were 2 worlds separated by one flimsy wooden door. I couldn’t remember the other once I passed that threshold. I couldn’t for the life of me recall it.

That house, that fourth grade house is where we lived the longest of any location. I’ve been back to visit. I looked at it from the outside. The residents came out, wondering why I was there. I told them I use to live there. Funny how it looked so much smaller, less frightening to me. The rooms seemed so tiny, non-threatening. In the course of the conversation the lady said to me, “Did this house have spirits when you lived here?” I think I turned white.

I figure that in a few days this feeling of filth will end. I figure that after a few days I’ll go back to feeling like I can get clean in the shower. It’s just that seeing a baby doll at the therapists office for the last few weeks brought back a lot of memories. And then to tell him that my sister named an alter and called her out with a baby doll just like the one at therapy seemed to take me from barely hanging on to … this. It takes a few days to get past flashbacks but I figure they’ll leave like they always do. Then I can take a shower and feel clean again. I can see soap and water for what it is, to clean the body and not the mind. A shower will just be a shower in a few days.