Laurel and Hardy
I spent eight years of my childhood at the mercy of the nuns at St.Paul’s Catholic School. They were not happy women, and they didn’t care if we were happy either. In their opinion, it was not their calling to make us happy. No, their duty was of a much higher purpose: to save our souls from eternal hellfire by educating our minds and striking fear into our hearts. They excelled at both.
We were taught that seeking happiness was a selfish and foolish endeavor. There were much greater ideals to strive for, like repentance from our sinful nature and complete obedience to God’s wishes (as interpreted by God’s representative on Earth, the Pope, who told the priests who told the nuns who were tasked with teaching them to us). Happiness would not get us closer to salvation. But brokenness and suffering, those were a one-way ticket to the skies parting and a dove descending to perch upon our shoulder.
Because happiness was so close to sitting on the same shelf as sin, we were allowed few pleasures by the nuns. There were two things we would do for fun: square dance, and watch Laurel and Hardy movies. I knew how to do-si-do before I learned how to multiply. I could take it or leave it. But when we were herded down to the big music room and I saw the old reel to reel projector set up I was giddy, at least for the first four years.
The nuns had a stash of old black and white Laurel and Hardy movies that we watched. Over and over again. Every year, the same movies. I didn’t care. I loved them. They transported me away to a life of laughter and happiness, someplace I was never allowed to go to any other time, at school or at home. Those movie days were one of the rare joys I had in my life, until about the fourth grade.
Dissociation
At the age of nine the sexual abuse I endured at home had turned very ugly. The only way my mind could find to cope was dissociation. When my abuser showed up in my bedroom I flew away into the pictures I had drawn on the bottom of my sisters bed bunked above mine. Depending on the amount of damage done by the abuse, I would return to my body later that night or sometimes not for days. Dissociation saved me. It allowed me to survive a situation that would have otherwise been unendurable.
But over time, my mind grew so adept at dissociation that I had no control over it. I would fly away whenever a switch, that I no longer had access to, flipped in my head. Although it saved me, dissociation also took from me one of my few joys in life. In exchange, it brought me even more shame and social isolation.
Starting in the fourth grade, after we were arranged in precise lines sitting cross-legged on the music room floor when the lights were switched off and the filmed images began flowing over the screen I would fly away into the movie. I became a black and white caricature of myself, laughing and playing a part in the comedy sketches alongside Laurel and Hardy. Until the lights snapped back on. Or something happened around me that caused such a ruckus that my mind called me back into my body.
That ruckus was often caused by my classmates, making fun of me. At some point, someone noticed that I dissociated during the movies. They watched my jaw go slack and my eyes glaze over. My body was completely still, lifeless without my mind occupying it.
The first time I was suddenly snapped back into my body my eyes refocused on my classmates staring at me, laughing. I was disoriented. Why were they laughing at me? My eyes settled on my cousin, sitting two rows in front of me. He was my favorite cousin, only a few months younger than me. I had always been jealous of him. He’d led such a charmed life. Cute, athletic, smart and the darling of our entire family, he was at the epicenter of popularity at school. One year his younger sister made quite the pocket full of money selling his school pictures to her female classmates.
When my eyes caught his I must have had a puzzled look on my face. Immediately he let his own jaw go slack and crossed his eyes, tilting his head to the side. The realization hit me like a literal blow. He was mocking me. They all were laughing at ME because I had flown away and left my body behind.
My eyes shot to my lap, where my hands grasped one another tightly. I had only myself to hold my hand as shame took the shape of hot tears dripping down my face. I didn’t wipe them away, hoping that in the darkness my classmates wouldn’t see them. I let the rest of the movie pass with my eyes focused on my lap. Eventually, my tears dried, but I didn’t trust myself to watch the movie again.
The next movie day I was resolved not to fly away again. I lectured my brain to behave, that happiness and pleasure were not acceptable pursuits. But once again my mind betrayed me, slipping into the familiar state of dissociation within moments of Laurel and Hardy’s arrival on the screen.
I snapped back at the noise of the laughter. This time rows and rows of students were staring at me. There, in their midst was my cousin, laughing and nudging his friends, sacrificing me to his altar of popularity.
I lost Laurel and Hardy as one of the few sources of pleasure in my life. From that point forward I hated movie days, sitting in the dark staring at my hands and humming tunes in my head to distract myself from the movie soundtrack. I had no idea why I flew away into the movies, but I hated myself for it. The dissociation had come to save me, but not without a price. It was a double-edged sword – one side slicing off my awareness of my abuse but the other side hacking away at the limited connections I had to joy and my peers. I was alive, but what life was this I was left with?
Repairing the Damage
As I grew, dissociation continued to serve me, but it also continued to cost me a price I scarcely had the resources to pay. I lost jobs, relationships, and so much time because I couldn’t stay present in my body. My thirtieth birthday passed before I finally gained the capability to stay here in this world regardless of the stresses and triggers that came my way.
It’s been another two decades of repairing the damage caused by my abuse and dissociation and building a life for myself that I enjoy living. I am thankful that dissociation was available to me as a means of coping with my abuse. I still mourn the loss of those precious hours of freedom with Laurel and Hardy when I could laugh and play without worrying that my abuser would steal my space and claim possession of my body.
When I close my eyes, I can still see that little black and white caricature of myself, blissfully free and full of joy. That little me, she deserved so much more. I let her play and laugh anytime she wants now, without the boundaries of shame or abuse. It won’t make up for what she lost. Nothing can. The pain of our past is easier to bear now that we are in control – not our abuser or the double-edged sword of dissociation.
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