Freshwater Literary Journal 2021

Victoria Orifice Closeted Skeletons Still Collect Dust Here is a secret that no one knows: When I was in high school we had an assignment—write about a moment that transformed us. I had a growing list of traumas and failures, only some of which I felt comfortable addressing with my therapist at the time. I went with the moment I found out about my parents’ divorce, the lead-up, the emotional labor I put in as a child of only nine years to get these grown-ass adults to get their shit together.

That part isn’t the secret.

The secret is how my parents reacted.

I never could have imagined the outrage. It was like I’d been arrested, expelled from school, gotten pregnant, even murdered someone. For parents who told me they’d love me no matter what, there was this sense of betrayal behind me doing something as innocent as telling my story, outlining my experiences to a teacher and mentor. Like somehow they’d get in trouble for the unexpectedly quiet conversation on the edge of their bed, for the anxieties spinning circles in my brain.

And yet, this simple high school English class essay seemed to them like I was outing their dirty laundry to the entire world. Like it was going to be published in the newspaper or they were going to end up trending on Twitter— which didn’t even mean anything at that time. It took me a long time to understand that their reaction was born of deep embarrassment, of fear of retribution, an instinctive response to knowing they handled a situation poorly and hurt someone they loved in the process. And, unfortunately, their response was to unknowingly fall in line with the choreographed pattern like a marching band.

I wonder, sometimes, if my teacher had known the emotional fallout, whether he would regret assigning it in the first place.

The ensuing panic attack was not one of my finer moments, but I have the wisdom now to realize it wasn’t my fault. I’ve realized a lot of things weren’t my fault as time has passed, and the journey towards self-compassion is easier some days than others. It’s been a long seven years since that essay was written and finding it again while working on college applications was a punch to the gut.

There was the burst of memories from reading my description of the wallpaper—“rows of flowers like prison bars”—and the fear of my parents hurting each other, not from any experience, but from shows like NCIS and Law and Order: SVU which made entertainment out of domestic violence. Perhaps the first time I realized how important representation is because I had no context at the time for divorce being anything but a messy, loud, and painful affair.

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