Conversations With My Younger Self
The Conclusion to The Only Way Out is Through
Younger Juhi and I have been talking incessantly. I am documenting our conversations in no particular order. Even though she was holding the anger for many of my 10 year old selves (there were many other dissociations who were born in that month), she does not wish to be referred to as Angry Juhi. These are conversations between us. Jk and kJ (kid Juhi) talking together.
*For my readers: The reason I am writing in such detail is so that perhaps the reader will see what they were doing on any of the corresponding days, and how significant their own experiences were. Because it is easy to do things habitually. Also it helps me to remember, and makes my memory contiguous.
Day 6 Thursday Valentine’s Day
The last two days have run into each other, dual acrylics pouring onto the canvas of my mind and time, just like Tuesday and Wednesday had melded into each other. I went back on all my medications on Thursday, with appropriately smaller doses of insulin. Emptied the sink, washed dishes, cleaned the kitchen. She became very tired so I asked her to sleep while I kept my appointment at the hospital to get a bone density test for Valentine’s Day, answering Cupid’s call to love myself. Returning home earlier than I had expected to, I dashed off I Hate February uncensored, submitted it to P.S. I Love You because anger to write it was suddenly available to me. Also, I thought Kay might like it as the anti-Valentine rant for What’s Love Got to do With it. Revised #SurvivorLoveLetter from last year’s project of the same name, submitted it to P.S. I Love You. Both got published the same day. Thank you for reading them.
I lit candles on Thursday afternoon, as I am wont to do, for the people who have been on my mind this week. A few minutes later I heard a loud POP! A single 3-wick candle had exploded, scattering glass and wax on the table and the floor. Before I could return with ways to remove it safely, there was a louder CRACK! The glass topped table, where I have been lighting candles for months without incident, had shattered. The candle that caused this commotion was the one for KAV. Perhaps his heart is not ready to accept the goodwill my heart sends out. Perhaps his spirit read I Hate February and reacted, because it had not even been published yet. Ahh, the ways of the Universe are an enigma.
My nose ran with clear liquid all through Thursday, and has been sporadically bleeding since Thursday night. This does not alarm me. I have learned in the past, with great support from my second great therapist and the books I have read at his recommendation, that this purging is one of the ways the body brings itself to stasis and that it is a sign that physical healing is taking place with the healing of the mind and heart.
Day 7 Friday
I walk into the bathroom in the morning and see myself in the mirror. That is, I see all of me. Throw kisses at myself, and as I have been saying to my little Juhi, I say to the woman in the mirror I love you, Juhi. I smile, and she smiles back…all of Juhi. I stand in the shower pumping my fist in the air good job! Good Job!! GOOD JOB!!! I open the shower curtain and the dogs are doing their happy dance hearing me singing. I stay up all Friday night writing The Only Way Out is Through and submit it to Stephen M. Tomic at The Junction on Saturday morning.
*Dear Reader, even if you like and have eaten Indian food in restaurants, these are family recipes from my childhood, and you will not be able to find them replicated elsewhere*.
Jk and kJ
We stand in the kitchen on Valentine’s Day brunch time. “What do you feel like eating?” No answer. I open the refrigerator, standing in front of the two open doors. I know some integration has occurred because it is the first time she is able to see to the top shelf of the fridge. I sense confusion? hesitation? consternation? Then tears ensue. She doesn’t recognize anything that she understands as food she has eaten. She has never had an in-home refrigerator. She has never eaten outside her home, except at homes of relatives. I puchkaro her (console with tut tut sounds and kisses). All food related conversations were in Hindi but I have translated them for easy reading.
Jk: It’s okay. You tell me what you want to eat. I’ll make it for you. Do you want puris?
kJ: Parantha? Aloo ka? (Flatbread? Stuffed with potatoes?)
Jk: Very good. Okay.
I put the potatoes to boil and pull out the whole wheat flour to knead. Add salt and oregano.
kJ: And meetha parantha. (Sugar stuffed flatbread).
This means making two separate doughs, and it is already close to eleven o’clock. No problem, this is what she wants, this is what she shall have.
Jk: I’m going to make you an omelet with it.
kJ: No omelet. GM likes omelet.
GM is the uncle who has been part of her assault in her present, in her just now, and for her that was just moments ago.
Jk: But GM doesn’t have the right to all omelets. You can have one if you like.
kJ: I like it, but I only had it with him.
Jk: It’s okay. Now you can have it just for you.
kJ: No onion.
Jk: I will chop it for you so small, you won’t even see it. But it will taste good.
kJ: Okay. Omelet and aloo parantha. Like Uma Masi’s. Khoob bharkey!
Uma was my mother’s younger sister, Masi means mother’s sister. Make it very stuffed, like Uma Aunty does. I believe that my aunt and I had a special connection when I was a child. Perhaps she was a CSA survivor as well. There is no way to confirm this, but given the history of my families on both sides of my parental pool, the chances are rather high. She has been dead for over twenty years, but there was no reason to share that with young Juhi today.
We’re making a single egg omelet. The onion and serrano have to go in the beaten egg, not the pan to sauté first, as I do. Cilantro too. Beat the egg with a fork, in a baby bowl, not in the mixie (mini blender).
kJ: Don’t add so much milk to the egg, it won’t get crisp edges.
Jk: Okay, next time I will add less milk.
kJ: Next time you add water. The edge wasn’t crisp enough this time.
Jk: Okay. You were right!
kJ: Paneer ka rasa? No mattur! Papa likes mattur.
Paneer with gravy? No peas!
She has seen the paneer (Indian farm cheese) in the fridge. Next only to tandoori chicken, mattur (peas) paneer is the most ordered dish in Indian restaurants outside India. Our father loved peas, and I have relearned to eat them, but I’m not going to force them on her today. So I begin the slow process of making paneer in tomato gravy from scratch, but it goes quickly with modern cooking methods. As the gravy is simmering she picks up the crushed fennel and throws it into the pot. This is not part of the family recipe, but I don’t object. Then with gay abandon she adds other spices which have not traditionally been a part of this dish. There is a smile on her face as she is doing this, so I trust her taste and her competence. I pick up the bottle of cayenne pepper, she stops my hand.
kJ: No mirch. No red pepper.
Jk: Okay. Garam masala?
Garam masala is the strongly aromatic mixture of 5–7 spices made in many regions of India, all differing by state and family. I make my own at home, it does not follow my mother’s recipe. This batch is fairly recent. She nods assent. By noon we have the meal prepared and I serve very small portions in a lunch plate (10 inches across) at her direction. We settle in to eat.
kJ: Meetha parantha? (Sweet bread?)
Jk: See if you still want it when this food is finished. I will make it for you. You might get full.
kJ: I have a separate stomach for meetha! (sweets) Big smile.
When I was a child I used to actually say that often but I have neither said nor thought it in decades. I smile back. She used to also say I love (anything) from my tummy to my back. Basically, I love it from all of me. But I also recognize that as a child, like most children, I had object permanence with my body, and young Juhi recognized it as the measure of her love.
These adventures in the kitchen went on throughout Thursday and Friday, with repeated and fresh preparations of paneer with gravy for four meals, even when having macaroni and cheese! We managed to finish the entire 8-oz packet of paneer. She added spices into my chai that I don’t use for myself, only for others. It was delicious, just like her version of paneer in gravy.
NB: I am sorry I do not have pictures of the food. I hardly had the phone on me the entire week, and taking pictures was out of the question while my hands were full in the kitchen and with getting kJ situated into her new life.
kJ: Don’t call me Guddu, that is what papa calls me.
I called her Guddu once, a pet name that I believed everyone called her. Guddu is short for gudiya, not really a name but the Hindi word for doll. I have known many girls called gudiya in my extended family, now all old women. This knowledge takes on ominous overtones. So I don’t call her Guddu again. The next day I go into all my old accounts and take out guddu from all the passwords, even though those accounts have long been inactive or defunct. There will be no more guddus in this home.
kJ: Are you sleepy?
Jk: Are you sleepy? Will you sleep if I have to work?
kJ: I want you to sleep with me.
Jk: Okay.
So we cuddle together and take afternoon naps. Then I stay up all night and write a 2500 word essay.
She has not mentioned the assault she has just experienced in her own time. Following her example, neither have I. There are many paths to healing. Tracy, something you asked me about once.
There was talk about desserts, and the sweet things in the snack cabinet. Sometime in January I had found cookies at a local Indian store that looked identical to ones from my childhood. I bought an entire box of 4 pounds! They reminded me pleasantly of being a child, when I was sent out with all the ingredients in a metal box too heavy for me to carry, to have them baked at the local bakery. I thought I was enjoying them. They are papa cookies. Young Juhi doesn’t want papa cookies. I don’t even want to capitalize the word for him, much less use his name. That’s okay, healing is a long journey. Pamela, I thought of you many times during these 2 days of cooking, and what food means in trauma and for healing.
Jk: I’m going to add a little cinnamon to your dessert.
kJ: I don’t like cinnamon. Ewww…
Cinnamon is good for my diabetes and I’m trying to slip it in unobtrusively with this growing sugar intake. I look in all the places it should be, but cannot locate it. She is grinning and clapping her hands at my failed attempts. I find it on a shelf it has no business being on, and there is a tiny pout on her face.
I don’t know if she or I have concealed that small jar of cinnamon, and when we might have done it. I do know that at least twice I have had blood-work done during a dissociation and the results have come back radically different (better) than is the norm for me. Once in 2008 when KAV was still around, I saw clearly without my glasses for an entire day. We went out that Sunday and he kept pointing to things near and far, billboards and such, and I could read them all! So she knows more than I do. Of course she does, the little minx!
One night I offered her a tiny Kit Kat mini candy. I know there are memories about Cadbury chocolates hidden within, some I feel but do not know.
kJ: Chocolate?
Jk: Yes, would you like some?
kJ: GM brought chocolates every time he came home on furlough. Chitranjan chacha and CM nana, too. (My father’s cousin, my mother’s elderly uncle)
Jk: You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to. But no one will hurt you if you eat it. You decide.
She takes it from my hand and gingerly slips it into her mouth. It takes her a long time to swallow the small piece of chocolate, wired with such memories. Now I wonder how many uncles paid for her little body in chocolates. Whether they were working on their own or if my father had a cabal. Somethings are too sharp to picture yet, it’s good I don’t have imagination.
Dal moth, the savory snack that I love the best, and a small sweetmeat called petha for which I go through periods of intense craving, both originated in Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, the city where my mother was visiting with all my sisters, the June that my father had me alone. I am beginning to gather that eating those snacks is my child’s way of waiting for her mother to protect her. She has eaten small portions of the petha twice, cut into very small pieces, but I have spoken to her about them and told her that Mummy is not coming. I am your Mummy. I feel that she understands, is saddened by this information, but reassured that I am strong enough to protect her. I have felt my mother’s spirit around me and others for six months now. On the 6th Day, Friday, she appeared in my kitchen, could see my little 10-year-old cooking with me, and my mother has cried. This woman who I have only seen cry twice in my entire life when she was alive. She has seen how Juhi got hurt, and Juhi has to figure out how not to wait for her mother anymore. So do I.
Jk: All of me. I am still eating small amounts in small dishes twice a day, using dessert spoons for everything. I have lost 4 pounds, but at 5' 1/2" and 224 lbs, it’s hardly noticeable. Everything tastes over salted and I don’t know which part of me is making that determination. But my cardiologist will, no doubt, be very happy to hear that I have reduced my salt intake even further. There are hours of medical dramas, sitcoms, late night talk shows recorded on my DVR waiting to be watched but it feels like I have lost the tastebuds of my mind or the shows have lost the flavor they once had. I wonder how long this after effect will last. Because those shows will not watch themselves!
Aside: A friend from Medium, with whom I also communicate off-site, wrote in anxious concern: See a doctor! Four days is too long. Stay hydrated. Memory or no memory! It’ll exhaust you. Feel better. Gatorade is recommended by my kids! Ummm… what’s CBD??
Hmmm…I think I’ll let them do a Google search to find out.
It is not easy to explain to anyone not fully on their own healing journey how to learn to trust themselves, and once they are on the journey, the need for an explanation ceases to exist.
There have been other manifestations with significant physical pain and other symptoms in the past. Once the entire right side of the body was paralyzed for several days. Once the ocular socket behind the right eye throbbed for days and slow tears of blood leaked from it. In 2010 bruises that would have happened during and after the assault that I am currently integrating, appeared on the right shoulder, staying unchanged for seven months, and faded within 4 days of filing for divorce. Although the two relationships (my father and my ex-partner) were not connected, the body recognizes only the trauma and the healing. So I know of pain. Healing can also be experienced in a physical way. This time the sensation has been like being covered in a net of thousands of twinkling lights, all lighting the way to greater understanding.
My body is the bridge between my past and my present, between my childhood and my current senior status. I am the amalgam of all my past experiences, my body holds these truths whether my mind is able to recall them or not. With every integration I have been gifted with unimagined treasures, one of them being the recent and very slight ability for imagination. With every healing step taken, free floating anxiety diminishes, specific fears disappear, the sense of impending doom and unnamed terrors vanishes. Physical changes for better health manifest, confounding the doctors who are in charge of my body’s health. The vehicle of this change is in allowing the mind to wrap around the facts of the past. These truths often rain upon me like torrential storms, or sometimes like the curly wisps of a smoke cloud rising out of my brain. With past integrations I have gained my internal chronometer that coincides with the Earth’s clock, my spatial grounding has flourished, my eyesight has dramatically improved. My sense of well-being and the ability to find joy in everyday actions increases. I am exhilarated by the anticipation of what this beautiful 10 year old Juhi’s sharing will add to my repertoire.
The first change that has happened is that I have become a member of the Medium Partner Program. Ask me for a friend link to any locked story in the comments or by private message if you’re not a member.
