Tar Babies

Wall of amnesia in place since very early childhood breaks in 1997 when I'm 44. My dissociated selves come tumbling out and it is life changing to realize I am a multiple. An early alter to reveal herself was first called Tar Baby until I learned her name. Later I realized the image I had of her coming out of the tar was her crossing over from subconscious to consciousness. I wrote this 11/04/01. Just rediscovered it today.

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Pieces of my murky past come forth
like tar oozing from the core of the earth.
Each bubble bursts open flashing a moment 
of horror in my mind.
Perhaps it connects to a previous moment...
perhaps not.
I place these moments into the jigsaw puzzle
and wait.

I can see the chasm
separating conscious from unconscious.
The dark side quakes,
forever trapped in fragments of nightmares.
To reach the safe shore of consciousness
alters must leap across that 
hell of memory of childhood
and life gone awry
by those who would justify
torture of a child
to eliminate an enemy.

Alters emerge from the slime
naked to the world cloaked only in terror.
But the courage for them to find their way out
leaves me in awe.
Were it not for the protectors
who lead the way,
I would be lost
wandering the inside of my haunted mind
as a zombie roams the earth ~
the walking dead in search of life.

I know where the life is hiding
but I must first embrace
the worst of the nightmares
to set it free.
I have never known the joy of life ~
the will of wanting to live rather than die.
I'm so close at times
but slipping back into something
that seems to hold me up just high enough
to keep my head from slipping
back into that tar pit.

I refuse to turn back.
I've known enough life now 
not to want to return;
but some days it feels so inviting
to creep back into eternal ignorance,
to pretend my life never happened.

I want to wash that shroud of blackness
off each of my selves
and let them see life
and want to take that
great leap into joy
that I've yet to know.