Petra
CHAPTER ONE from CAUGHT UP Truth and Metaphor | An Imaginary Tale
Petra
1
Surrounded by boarded-up, broken-down buildings condemned long ago, out of her element, but determined, Petra lingers in a state of anxious longing. In a couple of days, she will celebrate her twenty-first birthday. Behind her, a rat peeks its inquisitive head out from the stuffing of a dilapidated couch. Icicles hang from its rusted, protruding springs, a dim reminder of local dealers lazing about last summer.
The decay, compounded wreckage from decades of neglect, is an all too familiar scene on the otherworldly landscape of Avenue D. Stomping the icy, packed earth, fragile, wounded, and enraged, she tucks her bare hands under her armpits. A futile attempt to keep warm. She is well beyond the safety of Tompkins Square Park and a stone’s throw from the infamous East River, where criminals of every caliber lay their heads to rest. It is here, beyond the borders of civilization, that disaffected youth seek and find Paradise, their refuge, a heavenly purgatory.
They do not understand who or what they are. No one has ever told them they are the ancient ones, the eternal ones hidden behind the mask of human experience. Instead, they dwell in a hostile world, corrupt and inadequate. Defiant, beaten down by repetitious cycles of abuse, they search in vain for self worth, a concept shattered long ago.
Arrayed in solid black punk regalia, she scans the dark, eerie, blustery terrain, searching for signs of life. A malevolent chill creeps into her tiny malnourished bones. Soon enough, a shot of heroin will send warmth into her body and ease the cascading terrors of her mind. Sooner than anticipated, it will drive her down into the damp, urine-soaked subway tunnels rumbling beneath her feet, the tunnels where her younger selves and all their tragic memories live. A prison where she is the warden and drugs and alcohol are the guards.
Mack the Knife, a wiry black Puerto Rican dealer who sold pills on Fourteenth Street, rounded the corner.
“¡Oye, mami! What you doin’ out here?”
“Same as you, I’m guessing.”
“You’re too early. Look at you, you’re shaking. Let Mack warm you up. — Oh, so that’s how it’s gonna be. Where’s your old man?”
“Home, I guess. He’s been shorting me.”
“Oh look, they’re dropping the bucket. Go ahead doll. First in line, that’s you.”
As soon as the dealers removed the board from a fifth-story window and the bucket began its descent, junkies appeared from nowhere and fell in line behind Petra and Mack.
“Bunch of fucking cucarachas!”
That frigid, winter morning, her soul expedited its descent, pressing her down, deeper and deeper, into the dank, dreadful caverns of despair, into the lower rungs of the underworld.
—
Petra’s addiction began organically, a natural evolution of sorts, a seamless decision conceived with such an abundance of clarity, that even a twelve-year-old mind could grasp it. Her parents were going out of town on a ten-day vacation to Europe. The standard procedure was to hire random babysitters from The Agency. Unvetted, they brought with them new and mysterious abuses. Eluding the reign of terror in her home took special skills, which she gained through repeated experimentation. She learned, early on, how to make herself invisible. If need be, she could transform into a performance artist or, even better, a stand-up comic. When all else failed, she retreated into her imagination.
Petra begged and pleaded with her parents to be left in charge of the household and her little brother. Following a prolonged deliberation, they agreed.
“Psyche!”
Within an hour of their departure, she had mixed herself a stiff cocktail and lifted a pack of smokes from the pantry.
Outside, in the warm summer breeze, she plopped down onto a rolling hill next to her favorite willow tree. Experiencing a new sense of freedom, she felt in charge of her destiny for the first time. Seeing herself as an emerging adult doing grown-up things and, in keeping with her newfound position, she contemplated her sad, stupid life. The warm glow of alcohol and the brain rush of nicotine washed over her, drowning every speck of self-hatred and worthlessness.
“Eureka!”
Here was the answer to all her problems. It was crystal clear and undeniable.
Alcohol and cigarettes contained a life-altering force that, if harnessed, could lock away the memories, the emotions and the fears that plagued her. With that in mind, she made an executive decision to forget and move on.
“No more!”
With complete abandon, she told herself, “I’m in control. It’s my life and I’m going to turn it into something I like for a change. I don’t need anybody. I don’t care what anyone thinks. I’m done with all this bullshit!”
Alcohol became her champion, her savior, her everything and, with it, she began a mutation from victim to predator. After all, didn’t anger and vengeance and oblivion feel so much better than helplessness? An intention to become an enraged nightmare for her parents brought her comfort. She would fight back and make them pay. They would never touch her again.
“You just wait and see. I’m coming for you!”
What she failed to comprehend was that in this re-invention, the complete dismissal of everything that preceded it and everyone involved, including the wounded parts of her psyche, she condemned her soul to hell, a hell of her own making, a prison deep within her.
This was Petra’s second premeditated personality split. Seven years earlier, she consigned her four-year-old self to the same fate. That part of her, paralyzed with grief, shame, survivor’s guilt, and a debilitating terror, was too much to bear. It was a part so shaken and isolated that it could not put one foot in front of the other, much less withstand parental accusations and hurling abuses. To survive, Petra, showing no mercy, confined that incapacitated part of herself to a mental dungeon.
Her inability to handle unresolved traumatic events was causing a splintering, a shattering, a loss of memory and a loss of self. She developed patterns of self-destruction, self-loathing and suicidal tendencies that ran in cycles under a veneer of self-sufficiency, defiance, and rebellion. She buried all her unpleasant memories and with them her authenticity and most of her power. They remained sealed underneath the ground, in psychic subway tunnels, where the only source of light came from the interior illumination of rattling trains, lurching and screeching forward to nowhere.
Emboldened by alcohol, Petra wrote off another chunk of her existence with relative ease. In her mind, she was cutting her losses. This part of her, who had been born out of the first re-invention, was a bit of a weakling, in her opinion. It had, without a hint of resistance, accepted a melancholy, violent world characterized by the hysterical bereavement of an enraged alcoholic mother by day, and the repeated humiliation and distorted love of a predatory father by night.
To cope, the part often retreated into her bedroom closet, a tiny walk-in alcove with a miniature four-paned window. A quiet sanctuary, hidden from view, that held a faded poster of ice skating champion Peggy Fleming—her hero—on its wall, illuminated by narrow beams of sunlight. It was a safe place to weep bitter tears, with a fist stuffed in her mouth so as not to be heard. A self-imposed asylum where frightening thoughts raged and looped through her mind.
“Who is coming for me next? Will it be with words or fists, or the other thing? ‘Our little secret’, as Daddy likes to say.”
Thoughts of impending doom morphed into self-abasing accusations.
“You know you’re no good, right?”
“You’ll never amount to anything.”
“I wish you had never been born.”
“You’re a useless waste of space."
“The wrong child died!”
"You’re sister Anne would never have disappointed me like this.”
"I wish you were dead.”
Petra decided, with the help of alcohol and nicotine, to erase it all, even if that meant erasing herself.
Secrets, so many secrets, the memories lost, but still active, running in the background, waiting for the right moment, the right trigger.
Imperceptible patterns of thought swirling on autopilot in a faraway land, their presence manifesting as unexplainable bouts of depression and anxiety, awkwardness and fear, fainting spells and panic attacks. Looming, predatory feelings that demanded more alcohol, more drugs, different drugs, stronger drugs.
She was in a constant state of flight, fleeing unconscious scenes rising into consciousness from the hidden tunnels below. In an act of desperation fueled by rage, twelve-year-old Petra crushed her memories and sent them to hell. This is how her adolescence began. This is the landscape that built an addict.
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A harrowing tale, shot through with unlikely humor and fantastical creatures.
This autofiction (autobiography and fiction) novel revolves around a lifetime spent underwater struggling to find the surface. The narrative follows the journey of an unlikely heroine from the bondage of childhood trauma to self-awareness and freedom.
It is a roller coaster ride from the depths of hell to triumphant success that finishes with a big Hollywood ending.