by Tina McCartney

Created on: April 29, 2008

Thinking Outside the Box -

It is common to smell a scent, hear a song or see an image that immediately takes you back to a childhood memory. Usually something you haven't thought about in years. Or maybe haven't wanted to think about.

When my sister and I were clearing out my mother's house recently in preparation for her (long-awaited) move to a skilled nursing facility, I opened her front hall closet and was hit with a familiar smell, nothing unusual - musty, dusty old clothes and shoes.

What occurred to me was: sitting on the floor of a closet for any length of time is not only uncomfortable, it's creepy. I knew that because suddenly I remembered being in my bedroom closet, at five or six years old, scrunched down on the floor in the back corner, trying to disappear. In this recollection, I could hear my parents downstairs, screaming at each other, my father hitting my mother, she taunting him. I would shake with fear, feeling the tingling you hear so much about running up and down my body. I was sure that my father wouldn't stop hitting until he killed my mother, then he would come after my sisters and me. (He never did hit us, but I always believed that he would someday.) I never even knew where my sisters hid; we never talked about it. I suppose they hid in their own closets.

It's funny to me as an adult that for some reason, I have no recollection of either going into or leaving the closet. I only remember once I am in there, how it felt facing two of my biggest fears: darkness and spiders. I was petrified of both, but obviously I preferred facing them to staying out of the closet, unprotected and helpless. I can vividly recall the suffocating sensation of breathing in dusty, stale air, the feel of the spider webs brushing against my arms and legs, the smelly, muddy sneakers I sat on. (I must have believed that sitting on the bare floor would have put me that much closer to the spiders.)

I am pretty sure that it was during those times when I began cultivating the art of dissociation - transporting myself in my mind to a better reality than the one I was stuck in. I would always picture my favorite place - the beach. I would be standing on the sand, alone, watching the waves roar in. The water would be a deep, bluish-grey color, except the crests of the waves were white and bubbly. They would be noisy too, as though announcing themselves with each crash. The waves were violent, dangerous and mesmerizing. But I would be safe, watching them from my place on the beach, just feet away from the rage. From there no harm could come to me.

The thought of it would make me smile, right there in the closet.

Learn more about this author, Tina McCartney.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.