I was a poster child for PTSD

What’s your image of a child who’s living with sexual abuse? When you can’t run and you can’t flee, you freeze. It’s what all mammals do. Would you have recognized my frozen state?

My parents thought I was a very calm child.

“Mary Kay’s not afraid of anything,” they would boast.

Little did they realize that at the slightest hint of danger I jumped inside myself where nothing could get to me and where I wouldn’t even know what was happening. Of course I didn’t squeal or tremble. I was frozen. Somehow their parental eyes did not recognize the signs of trauma.

I still have a photograph of myself at about seven years of age, shopping in Toronto with my mother and sister. In the forties when not everyone owned a camera, street photographers made a living snapping pictures of passersby. Once they developed the pictures they mailed them to their subjects. My mother must have agreed to pay because there we are, my mother, my sister and I walking along Bloor Street. In the picture my mother and sister are striding along, oblivious to the photographer’s presence. My mother is wearing a tall hat that no doubt is meant to add stature to her five feet. Two fox skins, complete with little heads, hang around her neck to her waist, their glassy eyes staring at the sidewalk.

As for me I am the poster child of post traumatic stress disorder. My neck is pulled down into my torso. My left hand is making its way to my frightened face. My eyes are wide with terror, expecting something awful to happen. The photographer has caught me at the very moment I am disappearing inside myself.