Dissociation

 

It is hot, so hot a person can’t think straight because the constant awareness of being moist everywhere lays like Mom’s sweaty hand on your neck when you are misbehaving. Heavy, suffocating. The sun shines right in her face, there is no escape. The plastic of the chair touches the thin line of skin left peeking out under her long khaki shorts, leading sweat to pool behind her pudgy knees and roll down her calves to her sweaty sock encased feet.

Down on the baseball field in front of her, a tiny man performs some indistinguishable action which results in sweaty half hearted clapping from the few people grouped together up in the cheap seats where she finds herself. The buckle of her belt jabs into her 12 year old roll of below the belly button flab as she sits, longing with every ounce of her being to be elsewhere. When will it be over?

“Sarah!” Her gut turns over. What did she do? She squints in the direction of her father, beckoning to her from two rows away. He sits by a group of other adults, a hum of conversation so uninteresting to Sarah’s mind that she can’t even bring herself to attempt to grab at their words through the rippling waves of heat. She heaves her body out of the chair, the world spinning and dots popping in and out of her vision as she tries her best to squeeze something useful to continued existence, like oxygen, out of the filthy sludge of hot air around her. Her long sleeved arms do their best to covertly pinch the shorts stuck to her sweaty crotch away to hang straight over her thick thighs. Her vision clears as her father hollers her name again, impatiently, making a sharp gesture with his hand that says, “get yourself over here now or you’ll regret it”.

She hustles through the watery air to his area. Before she arrives, she already feels her chest begin to burn. She sucks her gut in and plucks the shirt meant for an autumn day off of her moist summer abdomen and stands up straight, trying to present herself from the front, not the side view.

“So I just got a trash bag and scooped all that up and put it out in the garbage where it belonged. Then we took a trip to the store to pick out something that can be worn somewhere other than a barn! See, doesn’t she look nice?”

Many murmurs of approval come from the blob of adults and her father carries on recounting his adventures of parenting to the enraptured crowd.

She stands, stiff as a board, for about 30 more seconds with a flat noncommittal grin on her face, then begins her slow slide back to her previous location. Surely there had to be some shade? She does not ask when they will be leaving. When Dad was ready, that’s when. She wonders if the trash had been put out to the curb yet. Maybe there would still be an opportunity to go back and retrieve her safety net of baggy tie-dyed t-shirts. Her place of hidden retreat. If not, then she would find a way to forget about this stupid body with these stupid clothes and this stupid sweaty flab. She would find a way. No one could stop her and no one would know anyway.

She takes a deep breath and intentionally stills her body. She can feel her heart beat slowing. Her body is so still, she can’t distinguish its individual parts anymore. She stares straight ahead but sees nothing in her physical space. Her soul is free, it wanders hand in hand with her mind, powered by her imagination, far from this place. Far from her sweat, her father’s expectations and the unseeing and uncaring faces of her reality.

 Hello Freedom, there is power here.