Mysterious Skin.

Mysterious Skin
by Scott Heim

has been one of my latest reads this month and was doozy of a read. Hauntingly, the novel seemed to linger in my mind for quite some time after having completed it. I had learned of the book by listening to an interview of the author on National Public Radio & consequently ordered the book from the Library.

It begins with the following Sentence:

" The Summer I was eight years old, five hours disappeared from my life"

It is a very poetic book about the sexual abuse of boys by their baseball coach. Specifically 2 boys and how later in life they experience memory, One thinking that he has been abducted by aliens and the other with memory but with a life out of control with teenage prostitution .

This a work of Fiction and yet I felt that the author very eloquently portrayed the process of
memory especially trauma very well.

the book made me re-look at my process of memory. Memory for me came first in Levels of the severity of abuse. for example: I always had the memories of Domestic Violence in the House and of being molested by my father. By the time that I realized that I had significant holes of lost time in my life, old memories s seemed burst open in a flood of waves.

It wasn't until the early 1990's that I began to work on any Ritualistic Abuse Issues-

One boy in the movie thinks that he was abducted by aliens.. some may think that strange but in actuality when one remembers abuse it is stored as memory of the individual at the developmental/ cognitive age the abuse(s) took place .

1965 or 1966 at 6 yrs old
.
In my own experiences of memory. I first began to remember crawling up the out side cement stairs up from under the basement of the Apartment block that we used to live in up into the play area in the back area. It's a fragment of memory that doesn't last long but is so crystal clear as if I can touch the the green fir trees standing protectivly around the steps. Wet earthy pine smells.There is a surealistic quality to it.Next were the memories of the Janitor giving me candy and various incidences of feeling very fearful of him. My mother discovering me with a pair of scissors after literally chopping off some hair. A play area- the thrill of moving up up away like a kite flying up while on the see-saw and arriving back on the ground only to pull myself back upwards into the sky.
Remembering where the Janitor kept his stash of liquor and lastly the memory of waking up downstairs in the basement in an empty old room lying down on my back looking up at the ceiling, not knowing how I got there.

The very last segment of memory is hazy as if there was a dense smoke or fog and i am moving
myself through it out towards the side door towards the outdoors. I am focused on the door and the light of a sunny day and am not sure if I am walking or crawling.

I believe that is fair to say that I had been sexually abused by the Janitor but I still do not remember exactly what took place down in the room in the basement nor how long that he kept me there.

My memories are experential and sensory as I don't remember any words.

In addition:
and in my opinion all memories of trauma will not be rememebered like regular memory, because it is traumatic nature.

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