Having taken a break from storytelling, I've asked the storyteller, who resides inside my head, to refresh our memories by repeating a portion of FIRST KISS Part 5 before we advance to Part 6, and so, without further ado, let’s see what she has to say—
With time spent in reflection, I’ve come to see that certain details, necessary to fleshing out our current story, remained unprocessed until March of 2019, suggesting that my objectivity concerning Annie's first kiss may still be somewhat fuzzy. So in hopes of portraying moments of emotional reactivity between Annie and Joseph with a greater sense of clarity, let's imagine ourselves in the lobby of the theater of life about to re-enter a real auditorium once a 15 minute intermission has passed so as to reclaim our seats just before the lights dim and the curtain rises revealing grown up Annie (namely me) perching on a rafter on one side of the stage (like the narrator in Our Town), looking pensive as though reminding my current self to remember that at the age of twelve, the conscious portion of my brain had no clue that one day I’d feel need to muster a whale of courage to identify yesteryear’s most fearsome experiences (most of which still remain repressed within a tumultuous state of subconscious turmoil to this very day), and while the narrator of this specific story reflects over the fact that a detailed account of moments spent alone with a pedophile will remain buried alive within my brain's innermost sanctum where secrets too terrifying to reveal to myself have been deeply compressed within a tightly locked state of hair triggered, subconscious anxiety, I can see why Mother Nature saw fit to fortify my twelve year old processor’s hold onto sanity by erecting a wall of denial that served as a mental block, severing the conscious portion of my memory from recalling even one detail of a series of pain wracked experiences that proved so emotionally wounding as to have offered my fight, freeze or flee instincts sound reason to become hypersensitive to any hint of Stranger Danger closing in on me before I’d begun to meet Joseph on a daily basis, and as long as the entirety of this mental block remains impenetrable, Annie’s pre-teen nervous system will feel need to stand guard as though to protect her body and the wounded portion of her psyche from re-experiencing anything that might be perceived as a physical assault or emotional attack.
(Oh wait—I need to interrupt the narrator to bring this vital detail to your attention—each time grown up Annie (speaking from the rafters above the stage) begins to address the audience, prebuescent Annie, Joseph, Pixie and King will be seen on center stage, flash frozen into a statue-like state of suspended animation—for example, if, at this moment in time, the spotlight turns toward Joseph, we’ll see a tall, blond, blue eyed twelve year old boy standing quite still with one arm raised, his open palm positioned to stroke Annie’s lustrous dark hair ... and now, having set the scene in which a pair of inexperienced hearts are wholly locked within young love's magic spell for the very first time, let’s swing the spotlight away from the leads in this play up toward the rafters above the stage where adult Annie’s reflective tone of voice has readied itself to project hindsight’s deeply profound sense of insight-driven clarity throughout the auditorium—inclusive of the very last row—as every ear in attendance awaits a detailed account of whatever our narrator’s memory, empowered by intuition, feels need to reveal as she reflects more deeply into junior high and beyond—)
During sixth grade, I'd invited Scarlett and Rhett to snuggle under the covers with me where each stage of their torrid love affair introduced my preteen psyche to the persistence of unrequited passions, and as Margaret Mitchell's command of the written word suffused each chapter of this page turner, concerning lives affected by The Civil War, with vivid descriptions of emotional fireworks bursting with life, my chest would contract with bated breath whenever detailed descriptions of lust seeking satisfaction challenged my chastity to maintain a subconscious cap on my libido, which, though deeply repressed from conscious awareness, couldn't help but feel utterly rapt each time Scarlett and Rhett's impassioned reactions to each other set my head to spinning until, finally, the sandman would tiptoe into my room, sprinkling my mind with dreams of love and romance, which were not theirs but mine. And each night, as my eyelids grew heavy, my soul, having been tucked safely into my solitary twin bed, felt reason to smile at seeing my conscious self drift into dreamland where visions of romance filtered into my personal fantasies so naturally as to taste as tantalizing as sugar plums dangling just beyond my reach, showcasing Joseph holding me in his arms as he and I dance the hours away at a sock hop where, drawn toward the shadowy corner of the gym, we experience the magical sparks of love’s first kiss ...
When my absorption of pages of love scenes whet the appetite of a young girl's heartfelt longing to engage in a romance of her own, every fiber of my being, yearning to emulate Scarlett’s impassioned, academy-award winning emotional interactions with Rhett on the silver screen, saw me attending the film, GONE WITH THE WIND, not once. Not twice—but more than a handful of times as if I'd chosen to purchase a ticket to ride in their emotional roller coaster within a darkened theater every time the timeless nature of their star crossed love story rolled back into town.
By the time I was a high school senior, my processor had absorbed every chapter of their story (which never got old) so many times that the unlikely friendship, which drew Scarlett’s fiery spirit and Melanie’s soulful gentleness together as though blending their opposing traits into one complicated human being, had soaked so deeply within my subconscious as to represent both sides of my conflicting character traits, and though both sides of human nature vied for dominance deep inside, my well practiced line of self control kept Scarlett's impassioned nature so well hidden within the wings of my mind that the conscious portion of my awareness acknowledged only Melanie's selfless, sweetly generous spirit emanating from within my depths while Scarlett’s naturally impassioned need to emerge and star on center stage was denied for decades to come. And just as love scenes on the silver screen, during the late fifties, faded to dark just before the impetuous nature of sexual tension had fully unleashed impassioned reactivity between he and she, anything that had so much as hinted at a boy’s experimental attempts to go beyond first base with me stimulated the darkly traumatized portion of my processor to wave red flags of spiking anxiety igniting sparks of emotional static to race through my processor, which, likened to red hot electrodes probing hotly into emotional wounds repressed within my subconscious, had spontaneously shocked male interest to back defensively away after kissing me ...
On the other hand, as soon as lights dimmed during Saturday matinees, my psyche felt free to release deeply repressed, impassioned emotions to surge naturally throughout every hyper-alert nerve in my body. I'd cringed to see Judd Fry grasp Laurie's innocence into his lustful arms in the darkened smoke house on Aunt Eller's Oklahoma farm, scaring her half to death. On the other hand, when clean cut Curly pulled Laurie in for her first impassioned kiss, my eyes closed while imagining myself swept naturally into Joseph's embrace, claiming my first taste of his lips. When it came time to leap out of the surrey with the fringe on top and ride the carousel, I cried my eyes out to see Billy Bigalow fall on that knife, leaving his newly impregnated bride, Julie, walking alone through a storm with her head held high suffering in silence as this devastated young widow, now a social outcast, births her dead sweetheart's daughter, no loving arm around her waist pulling her close so as to ease the depths of her pain—which Julie represses behind her sweet nature upon being abandoned by friends and neighbors, because her heart knows that her precious child's spirit is in need of her mother's smile to shine forth reassuringly while rocking her baby safely to sleep in an unfriended cottage. OH! Cruel! Cruel World!
While June was busting out all over, I was growing accustomed to accepting the restraints of my first 'training' bra straps which the boys in my class were seen testily snapping, left and right. We even had a math teacher, whose surges of unbridled testosterone spewed lewd comments while casting lecherous eyes pointedly at the chests of classmates who'd suffered the embarrassment of having been prematurely stacked until his creepy advances, reported to the principal, saw him sacked.
Though the subconscious portion of my processor was busily absorbing all of that ‘folderol’ springing up around me—anything that hinted of sexual interest directed at me boomeranged off of my brain's defensive wall of denial, suggesting that not one conscious train of thought concerning my budding sensuality (much less sexuality) made its way through the mental fog surrounding the cocoon that protected the traumatized portion of my processor from anything resembling clarity. I'm not kidding.
As a matter of fact, I've learned that the traumatized portion of a child's psyche will remain stuck in the dark at whatever stage of life a pedophile's touch had stimulated the defense system of the inexperienced brain to signal the frontal lobe to flick its switch from on to off, freeing the limbic system to usurp control and reign supreme until the terrifying presence (or specter) of Stranger Danger has past—and as not one conscious memory of those mind-blowing experiences had imprinted into the frontal lobe of my brain, everything that had boggled my mental connection to clarity transferred into subconscious memory, and that's no joke.
Upon reflecting over that last scientific fact, concerning scary secrets we keep from ourselves once the brain’s limbic system switches the conscious portion of our processors to off, we can see why, while watching my seventh grade friends swoon over The King of Rock and Roll’s swiveling hips, my defense system, standing at high alert, denies my brain any conscious clue as to what Elvis's body language is conveying to his audience. As long as my defense system acts like a trampoline deflecting any thought of sex away from my processor's conscious sense of awareness, I am left to perceive of the emotional reactions of teen aged girls as being every bit as nuts as I think is true of The King's singing style, which looks so silly to me as to be comedic. Then upon arriving home, still feeling confused about my friends' emotionality, I'd encountered my mother and grandma's interchange of frowning remarks concerning this rock star's outrageous gyrations. However, as their huffy rebuffs concerning his improper hip swiveling maneuvers never referred to sex, their reactions left me as much in the dark as was true of the natural reactions of my friends. Seriously, throughout puberty, I'd had no more clue as to why Elvis (or the Beatles) made my friends feel weak in the knees than I'd understood parental reactions, directing my friends to switch their TVs to another channel.
Emotional complexity, based in the processor's subconscious absorption of deeply buried trauma, is one reason why contrasting character traits develop. And so we come to see why I'd longed to experience romance while defensively deleting the very existence of impassioned sexuality from my processor's conscious awareness.
If you still entertain the notion that ‘puppy love’ suggests preteens adoring each other dispassionately then hopefully, you won't take offense at my suggestion that the conscious portion of your processor may not have a clue as to when (or why) your defense system fools with your sense of clarity as is still true of mine, from time to time. In short, denial comes and goes. At times, our processors switch tracks from conscious clarity to subconscious anxiety spiking so quickly that we lose all track of what has just been said or what we were about to reply in response.
So anyway, one day at twilight, a pair of tightly knit friends are seen moseying down the alley, side by side, both seemingly relaxed while chatting, back and forth, about this and that when suddenly he stops walking, so she follows suit. As Joseph turns toward me, I—feeling sparks of tension begin to crackle—stand statue-like while we, both holding leashes, stare into each other's blue eyes until much to my befuddled amazement, Joseph’s free hand rises as though in slo-mo until his open palm hovers momentarily so close to my head that you could have knocked me over with a feather when, while stroking my hair, which is seen flowing freely past my shoulders, I hear him say: Gosh, it's even softer than I'd thought—and next thing I know he—
Come on! You know I'm not going to spoil FIRST KISS Part 6 by completing that sentence, right now—I mean think about it—he and I were just kids walking our dogs—right?
So what might this boy's brain feel stimulated to do with a girl like me who (perceiving myself as much too unattractive to draw a popular guy's heart to melt into mine) has taken little note of this reality: Over the past several months, my body has been in the process of shaping up—for the better ...
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