Memories of my teen years are memories of fire and darkness, of the pain of shattered glass. I speak in metaphor here. I was troubled, depressed, unhappy, suicidal, love-starved, risk-taking, self-destructive. I was desperate; I was a mess; I was ashamed. I got drunk for the first time at 12, on a summer afternoon when my mother was at work. I drank scotch straight from the bottle, enough to make me loopy and exhilarated, and then staggeringly, deathly sick until finally I blacked out. I vaguely remember surfacing from my stupor to the sight of my step father leaning over my bedside in my dark bedroom, breathing in my boozy breath, and telling me I could have killed myself.
This makes me realize I should add vomiting to my list of teen memories, vomiting after drinking. Head in the toilet, toilet seat falling down on my head (that actually happened at a family event, and my mother and aunt stood in the bathroom doorway laughing at me while I struggled to get the toilet seat off from around my neck), and, if at a party, crouched over the toilet with a loyal girl friend behind me holding back my hair from the mess. We did that for each other, we girls. Someone always came with us when we puked, so we could hold back each other's hair. Because I was certainly not the only one who drank. Drinking was what we did, every party, and puking was part of the deal. Also once we could drive, we drove drunk. I remember slamming my hand in a car door while drunk and not feeling it. We are all lucky we are still alive, when I consider what we did in cars while drunk, deleriously, wildly drunk.
Anyway, I looked okay on the outside, as has always been true for me. People knew little of what a burning wasteland existed inside me, a place of toxic waste emitting vile gas. Skilled observers in the form of certain teachers responded to the girl in pain. These were my angels then, English teachers for the most part, who read my poetry and other writing and responded to me--saw me. Saw. Me.
(Then there were the ones who did not see. At 16, I asked to be able to see the school psychologist. I knew how suicidal I was. The day after I had asked, I was called down to the office during the morning announcements. I was met there by Mr. Fischer, the man who headed up the Audio-Visual Department. He beckoned me to follow him. We went down the hall past the trophy cases and turned left into the nurse's office. Once inside, he led me into the room where the hearing tests were administered. He told me to sit. He shut the door. He sat across from me at the table. He looked at me for a moment before asking, 'What does Rozenkraai, who plays field hockey and writes poetry, want with the school psychologist?"
This was the 1970s. Obviously I wasn't enough of a mess to qualify for the services of Dr. Gold. Very affirming!
And so, wondering just what the hell Mr. Fischer had to do with this anyway, I told him I was suicidal. We left it at that. Next thing I know, I am placed in the group therapy led by a social worker. I am there with all the druggies and burnouts, and they are talking about the different grades and types of pot and their differing effects. I never, ever went back, and I never, ever asked for help at the school again.)
But the writing! The writing was a green shoot of life inside me, a growing vine. In the writing was the presence of God. It kept me alive, it gave me hope, it was fueled by love. It helped me then, as now, to transform ugliness and pain into something beautiful. It helped me make sense of it all, and it gave voice to feelings that were tidal in their immensity. It also gave me a sense of accomplishment and nurtured the tiniest flame of self esteem that somehow managed to glow valiantly inside me, small, but present nonetheless. This flame was a legacy of the love I had faithfully received along the way, from all my angels, all the spirits who surrounded me and nurtured me along. For I know in truth that God is love, and in all acts of love, God is there.
And it would be through the writing of one poet in particular, later on in college, that my heart and my mind would open to matters of the soul and of the spiritual immensity of the cosmos. I would then begin to consciously seek, so as to truly know, God-- a journey I have been on ever since. But that is another story.
Until then, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai
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