re: Today I rent a car and sit alone in it 3 hours 21 minutes

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All things German are trash

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I do agree

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I am sitting in the streetcar headed downtown to fulfill my annual tradition. Each year on October 18, I rent or borrow a car. I drive it to the same, exact spot. I park and move to the backseat. There, I curl up in a ball behind the driver’s side and sit alone in the still of quiet in the dark for 3 hours and 21 minutes. I’ve done this every year since I’ve been able to drive.

When I was six years old, Mother and my father divorced. My father left Mother for another woman. When he was granted custody of my sibling and me for each weekend, my father thought it a good idea to introduce us to this woman. The first time was October 18 nearly 30 years ago.

I was six and already had a strong will. I refused to get into my father’s BMW 7 series, a disgustingly bourgeoise foreign trap — all things German are trash. But I was six and at that age little effort is needed to lift one against his will and force him into a car. Thus I ended up in that backseat behind the passenger seat.

We pulled up to the house, which has since been torn down after flooding in Katrina, and my father parked. It still remember the clock reading 6:33.

My sibling got out the car with my father. I refused. There was no way that I would, by my own volition, be party to an act of disobedience to God and disloyalty to Mother. Verbally I refused at first. Then I could feel the clutch of my father’s large hands take my diminutive deltoids and begin to lift me. In an act of violence, which I now regret, I kicked him in the mouth, causing his lip to bleed.

It worked. He threw me back to my crouched spot, yelled at me, and walked briskly into the house with my sibling. That began a long night which has left scars in me which have yet to heal. I then joined in what powerless people have done to protest injustice — I sat. Though just six, I feel I experienced something similar to what St John of the Cross experienced in his Dark Night of the Soul.

Can a person become dehydrated from crying? I must have been close. The 200 minutes were filled with more tears than I’ve spilled in all my cumulative years since. I felt the whole weight of betrayal that night. I can only imagine what Christ felt on the Cross. But at that young age I feel as though I caught a glimpse. Perhaps that is why the Cross makes such sense to me and needs little explanation. The mystery of the Cross is logical to those who have gone through undeserved suffering. Perhaps I did deserve it though. But what did I do to cause that? Psychologists, all of whom have discharged me as a patient, have said I blame myself. But part of me knows I did nothing to cause this. Or did I?

That night was so dark. So filled with silence. So impactful. Its imprint on me so deep I never escape the feeling of inadequacy and failure and rejection. Far deeper was that night’s impact on me than a physical scar. I cannot trust — the one time I did after that night I was again betrayed. I may not even be able to truly love.

The car started again and the clock read 9:54. I was a new being by then. Gone were my innocence and trust in one you need to trust. How much must orphans and those who never knew their fathers hurt and ache, deeply yearning to be held and cherished by the one who gave them life.

Thus began nearly a year of weekly night protests on that street under the same live oak in that same disgusting car. The tears certainly became fewer as my heart became more hardened. I created in that dark silence in the backseat a new family in my mind who on Friday nights loved me. An adjustment certainly pathologic yet certainly understandable given the circumstances.

Tonight I will repeat, perhaps unnecessarily, that trauma, hoping for healing. I think I return for healing or the hope that maybe the hands of time will unwind and my father will embrace me and hold me with love.

I am at my stop. Those who are married, please consider how your actions impact your children. Those considering affairs, please don’t.

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You do realize that the reason your parents divorced is because you touch yourself at night?

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