FEELS LIKE THE FIRST TIME

by Scott Hildreth

  “Ripp, leave it alone. Just let them do their tests, and I’ll be out of here in the afternoon tomorrow. It’s not a huge deal. I guarantee you it’s nothing else. He’s signing a release for me to fight,” I assured him.

  “Well, that’s the biggest thing. I don’t want you lying to me, you fucker. Having a fucking brain hemorrhage or something and telling me it’s a hemorrhoid,” he laughed.

  “Not gonna happen, bro,” I said.

  Kace turned my direction, squeezed my hand, and smiled. I couldn’t ask for a better woman than her. Finding someone who was more devoted to me, supportive of my career and generally concerned for my well-being would be impossible. Kace was a beautiful woman in her appearance as well as in her being. I squeezed her hand and smiled in return.

  “Well, what about training?” Ripp asked as he paced back and forth across the floor.

  “Ripp it’s fine. Jesus, go home. I’ll be back in training in the next day or so. There’s nothing to worry about. Just go home and get some sleep. You two need to go eat anyway. And I’m beat, I need to get some sleep,’ I said in an effort to convince him to leave and relax.

  “Yeah, I imagine you are tired, with all those tests they ran on ya. Fuckin’ idiots. I’m hungrier than a motherfucker. What time is it?” Ripp asked.

  “Ten after eight,” Kace responded.

  “Yeah, maybe we ought to let the man sleep. How you gonna get out of here tomorrow?” Ripp asked.

  “Well, one of you two can come get me. She has to work in the morning, so I imagine it’ll be you,” I said as I smiled at Kace.

  She scowled at me and squeezed my hand in an exaggerated fashion.

  “Oh, shit that hurts,” I joked as I pulled my hand away from her grasp.

  “You’re gonna think hurt. I’m going to come when he gets you,” Kace said as she slapped my shoulder.

  “We’ll both come and get him, Shorty. I’ll come get you, and we’ll both come up here. How’s that?” Ripp asked.

  “Sounds good,” Kace responded.

  “Well, if you’re sure you’ll be alright, we’ll get out of here,” Ripp said.

  “Yeah. I’ll be fine, and we’ll all go out tomorrow and eat or something, I just need to sleep,” I said as I held my hand to my mouth to cover a fake yawn.

  Kace stood from the edge of the bed and leaned over to kiss me, “I’m sorry, all of this just scared me. I’ll see you tomorrow, Shane.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine,” I responded.

  “Love ya, bro,” Ripp said as he held his fist over the bed.

  I clenched my hand into a fist and pounded it against Ripp’s hand. He pounded against mine in return.

  “Alright, let’s do this,” Ripp said as he put his arm around Kace.

  “Take care of her, Ripp,” I said as they faced the door.

  Ripp turned his head, looked over his shoulder and said what I expected him to.

  “I got this,” he smiled.

  I got this.

  Ripp was better at being a friend than most people were at being family. We are stuck with our family; we don’t get to choose them. We choose our friends, and I was certainly glad I chose Ripp. As I lay in bed, I wish I could have chosen my family. I reached up to my neck to make sure my dog tags were gone.

  I never wanted to see them again.

  The doctor ran every type of test he could to determine if there was brain damage. After all of the tests results came in with the same result - negative, I told the truth about what I knew regarding my collapse. I didn’t know what caused it, but I knew to some degree what I felt immediately before it had happened. Additionally, I could clearly see the differences in myself afterward.

  Some strange combination of Kace seeing her mother, the crying, and emotion triggered a nightmare while I was asleep in the living room. When Kace and I walked into the bedroom, I felt strange. When she opened the footlocker, something inside of me snapped. My head filled with the memories of my childhood, depicted as a dozen little movies all trying to play inside my head at once.

  It was more than I could make sense of, but any fool would have been able to understand the content of the memories. They were all the same.

  My father was beating my mother.

  I’m not certain if I chose at some point in time in my life to rid myself of those memories, or if my brain naturally did it to try and let me live in some form of peace. I know for my entire adult life I have not been able to recollect any memories of my childhood. I had always attributed the lack of memory to the fact we shuffled around from house to house when I was a child.

  I now knew the memory loss had nothing to do with moving from home to home. Now, as I lay in the hospital bed, I was beginning to recall memories of my entire childhood.

  And I didn’t like any of it.

  My father was a savage.

  My mother left when I was a child. Now, I knew why. I had spent my late teens and entire adult life standing up for every woman who had been abused and now I had a clear understanding why I felt such a desire to assist them. I wanted to vomit. As I tried to make sense of what was developing in my head, the door opened the door.

  “Dekkar? Shane Dekkar?” the doctor asked.

  I sat up in bed, “Yes sir.”

  “How are you feeling?” he asked as he approached the bed.

  “Fine sir. I’m a little confused. I have new memories running around in my head and it’s strange, really strange. Hard to explain,” I said as I rubbed my temples with both hands.

  “The human mind is a fabulously complex piece of equipment,” he stated as he leaned closer to me and looked into my eyes with a light.

  “Well, I have a thousand questions,” I said as I tossed my legs over the bed.

  “I’m afraid I probably won’t have any of the answers you’re looking for. I’m a family practice doctor. You’re going to need to talk to a psychiatrist. We’re going to want to keep you here until tomorrow, if that’s alright with you. I think it will be best,” he said as he leaned away from the bed.

  “Well, I have some questions about not so much why this happened, but what to do now?” I asked.

  “Again, I’m not going to be a big help. Actually, I really won’t be any help at all. There are considerable improvements a psychiatrist can make, I’m sure. He can address everything tomorrow. Get some sleep and we’ll talk in the morning,” he said as he approached the foot of the bed.

  “Improvements? I don’t want improvements. I need this to stop,” I pleaded.

  “Again, I can’t do anything for you right now. I can get you something to help you sleep, but that’s about it,” he responded in a matter-of-fact tone.

  I shook my head. Drugs were the last thing I wanted, “No, I’ll be fine. Tomorrow it is.”

  He nodded his head and walked out.

  I raised my legs up onto the bed and relaxed. As I looked at the ceiling, it wasn’t what I necessarily wanted to admit, but any recovery from the memories was going to be on my own. There wasn’t a doctor, psychiatrist or psychologist who was going to cure me.

  Without a doubt, they would all tell me the same thing.

  You’ll need to just accept it. The sooner you do, the sooner you’ll start healing.

  I closed my eyes and attempted to come to terms with the fact my father was a man I would beat the absolute hell out of if I was given a chance.

  Chapter 19

  SHANE. “Yes, as a matter of fact, he was a Marine,” I answered in response to the doctor’s question regarding my father’s military background.

  “Well, the human mind is difficult to understand. We all deal with stress, memories, and the repression of memories differently. Our mind often, as a survival skill of sorts, places memories on a back shelf. Over time, we forget they even exist. In our conscious mind they aren’t a memory. Like a deleted movie scene, if that makes sense,” the doctor paused and tapped his pen on the desk.

  “Look at it this way. You have a favorite movie. It r
esembles many other movies by the same director with the same cast. You watch it one time, just once. You recall a fondness for the movie a few years later, and decide to watch it again. You place the DVD in the player, but there’s something different. One short movie scene has been deleted – completely eliminated. And you rewind the movie and watch it again - but the scene is gone. You begin to wonder if it was ever there at all. You rewind the movie again, and watch it entirely. Nothing. You’re now convinced the scene was never there at all. Over years of recollections regarding the movie, your new memory never includes the deleted scene,” he stopped tapping his pen and smiled, convinced he made his point about repressed memories.

  “I suspect this,” he continued as he touched his finger to his lip, obviously thinking.

  “I suspect the small chest or foot locker at your girlfriend’s house had something in it which reminded you of your fathers military foot locker. Probably an odor,” he paused again and looked at me as if waiting for an answer.

  “Well, it smelled really strong when she opened it. Kind of musty,” I recalled.

  “And you said earlier you used to cover your face with your blanket as a child? When you would hide in your room?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I admitted, remembering years of hiding under the blanket as a small child.

  “It was your safe place?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I responded, somewhat frustrated he wanted to rehash what we had already spoken of.

  He tapped his finger on his lip.

  “You lived in Los Angeles?” he asked.

  “Oceanside at the time, by the military base. Say, closer to San Diego,” I responded.

  “A very warm climate none the less,” he stated.

  I nodded, “Yes sir.”

  “Did you have the same bedding for the summer and winter? Not that there’s much of a winter in San Diego,” he asked.

  I slumped into the comfort of the couch cushion. I pulled my hood from behind my shoulders, and onto my head. I looked up at the ceiling and thought. The summers in Oceanside were very hot, and I spent a lot of time at the beach. When it was winter, it was warm, but not hot. At night, it would get cold. When it was cold, I had my blanket that had the fighter jets on it. We kept that blanket in…

  “My father kept the blankets in a foot locker, in the garage. We would get them out in the fall,” I blurted as soon as I recalled the memory of it.

  “Mothballs,” he stated.

  “Excuse me?” I asked, confused at his statement.

  I sat up from my seated position and pulled my hood from my head.

  “Mothballs. It’s very common for people in warmer climates to use mothballs when storing clothes and fabrics in a chest or locker. It prevents moths from eating the fabric in the off season. Your childhood blanket you covered your face with – the one you used as protection - it probably smelled of mothballs. Yesterday, when the chest at the foot of the bed was opened, the odor of mothballs resurrected the memories your mind had repressed for two decades. Odor is a strong trigger,” he said as he dropped the pen onto his desk.

  I sat and thought about what he had said. I didn’t immediately feel better knowing why I had recalled the memories, but it was reassuring to know what had happened.

  Mothballs.

  “If I may, let’s take this a step further,” he said as he picked his pen up from the desk.

  “Your hooded sweatshirt. You wear it at all times. At least during all seasons. I do realize you remove it,” he chuckled.

  “The hooded sweatshirt has become your safety blanket - the one from childhood. You wear it to hide from what it is you’re uncertain of. Maybe what you want to protect yourself from. You wear it as superman wears his cape. It’s a conscious decision you make with subconscious benefits. The hooded sweatshirt, in a sense, has assisted you in the repression of those memories. Have you been wearing hooded sweatshirts for a long time?” he stopped tapping his pen and waited for a response.

  I thought again about California, my father, and my grandfather. I didn’t remember wearing a hoodie in Oceanside. When I moved to Compton, I always had one. When we moved to Escondido for a while I had one, after mom was gone. From as best I could recall, I wore one from when we lived in Escondido until present time.

  “I think I started wearing one when we lived in Escondido. I was around ten years old, I think – maybe eleven,” I responded, finding his entire routine interesting.

  “Was your mother in Escondido, or was she already gone?” he asked.

  “Gone,” I responded.

  “Do you remember sleeping in a hooded sweatshirt?” he asked.

  I scrunched my brow, finding this question odd. I thought about it as I sat up in the couch.

  Is this asshole a doctor or a fucking detective?

  “Yes, I guess so. I remember sleeping in it at my grandfather’s house. And now that I’m thinking about it, I remember wearing a hoodie at the house that had the orange trees, and that was in Escondido, by the highway,” I responded.

  “Your hooded sweatshirt replaced your childhood blanket. You more than likely associated the blanket with your father’s abuse of your mother. When your mother left and you moved to a new house, your means of protection changed. You began to hide inside your hood, not the blanket. You consciously gave up the blanket, and your subconscious received the eventual benefit,” he smiled again.

  This guy was good.

  Putting all of the pieces together was a huge help, and I began to feel much better knowing what happened and why. It didn’t change my anger toward my father for the abuse of my mother, but I felt it helped me tremendously.

  “I suppose you’re right, this is interesting,” I said as I leaned back into the seat and crossed my legs.

  “You mentioned your grandfather earlier, but you did not mention a grandmother. Was your grandmother around during your childhood?” he leaned back into his chair and placed his hands behind his head.

  “No, they were divorced,” I responded.

  Silence.

  No, surely not. My grandfather was one of the best men who ever existed. He was a saint. He was like a father to me. He taught me how to box, how to fight, how to channel my anger away from the streets and into the ring. He was a boxer. He was just like me, he was…

  “If I may,” he said after a few moments silence.

  I uncrossed my legs, and crossed my arms in front of my chest. I nodded my head.

  “When did you start boxing? Training to box?” he asked.

  “When I was eleven, give or take,” I responded.

  “And you said earlier that your grandfather was your trainer and manager – until he died, correct?” he remained leaning back in his chair.

  I nodded, “Yes sir.”

  “I believe you channeled your anger toward your father through the boxing. Your anger at the entire situation. Your mother leaving, your exposure to her beatings, your developed hatred toward abusers of women,” he said calmly.

  “I believe so, yes. I’ve always said I have demons inside of me. I suppose all of what we’re talking about now is what has fueled me for years,” I admitted.

  “So, boxing allowed you to repress the memories of your mother, your father and the situation? To channel the anger and hatred elsewhere?” he asked softly.

  His voice was nice and calm. I found him very easy to talk to.

  “Yes sir,” I responded.

  “And when your father came home from the war, you were happy to see him? You had no recollection of the beatings or abuse after you started boxing?” he asked.

  “Yes, I was happy to see him. And no, I had no recollection of any abuse or beatings,” I responded.

  “Now, your grandfather. I imagine if he trained you, if he was your trainer and your manager, he must have had experience?” he asked, still leaning back in his chair.

  “Yes, he was a champion. He won several titles,” I responded quickly. I was proud of my grandfather.

  He pause
d.

  Silence.

  “Wait a fucking minute, doc. What are you saying?” I snarled as I sat up in my seat.

  He leaned forward and picked up his pen. “I’m not saying anything. What are you thinking, Shane?”

  “Well, you stopped talking. I’m not stupid. You stop talking when you want me to think,” I frowned back at him.

  “And what, Shane, did you think?” he asked.

  “Well, I think you wanted me to think my grandfather abused my grandmother,” I said angrily.

  “I didn’t want you to think anything, Shane. I gave you time to think whatever it is your mind developed as a thought or series of thoughts,” he said quietly.

  “I don’t like this game,” I said as I pulled my hood onto my head.

  “It’s not a game. I’m trying to help you. I’m trying to help you in regard to your father. Anger can destroy you. I’m trying to help you understand some things,” he looked at his watch.

  “We’re about finished for the day, may I continue?” he asked.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Sure,” I sighed.

  “Your grandfather’s era. They rarely got divorced. Married couples in those days typically worked through any and all problems. It was perceived, back then, as being far more sacred and far more of a commitment. Considering all things, I suspect your father abused your mother. Now, your grandfather being a boxer, and the fact he was divorced,” he paused and picked up the pen from the desk.

  “He may have abused your grandmother,” he held his hand in the air to prevent me from speaking and took a breath.

  “I say this for one reason only. To give your father a reason for being the way he was. It wasn’t necessarily his fault he acted the way that he did. When children are exposed to abuse, they either become abusers or they’re like you – one hundred percent opposed to it. It’s anyone’s guess where people land. It’s like the son or daughter of a raging alcoholic. Some become alcoholic, and some are so opposed to the thought of drinking they abstain from it for a life time,” he paused and lowered his hand.