She cried without making a sound

How do you acknowledge stifled cries? Or emotions long since hid? How do you get in touch with the pain, agony and torment that you shoved and denied deep inside? Even today, when I cry, I often don't make a sound. Making noise was one of those heinous childhood crimes I committed until I learned to silence myself. I'd hate to think what it would sound like, if I went to that place in my head, where I hid all the cries and screams. Making noise, crying out loud, acknowledging pain and discomfort, was frowned upon, not tolerated well by the parents. Oh, they could yell and scream and cry, throw things, break chairs, but the children, No, the children must remain silent and stoic.  God, I deserve some medal and reward for living through such a mess, not more pain and suffering.





 Suffer not the little children. Didn't some famous Bible guy write that? Yet, it was just the opposite in my family's home. It was acceptable for the children to starve, be without hot water or heat or clean clothes, even underwear and socks. Yeah, try living with the degregation of having to go to school without underwear and wearing your dads socks. Mom and dad thought this was acceptable. It was okay with them if dad sodomized and molested, raped children. It was okay for mom to slap faces, cover up bruises with make-up and "paddle" kids with brushes, spatulas and hands. It was perfectly okay to spend thirty minutes to an hour standing in a corner, being ostracized and shunned, not knowing if someone was going to smack you from behind. It was encouraged that the children scrap and taunt each other, because it was funny and name calling was just sticks and stones.
Nothing about growing up with those people was right, or healthy.
I learned really well, how to make myself sick, swallowing the poisons of secrets, emotion, how I felt and what I wished I could say.
 I wasn't allowed to say, Stop hurting me or That hurts me. I wasn't allowed to stop mom or dad from hitting the other kids, either. Feels guilty, the thinking, better him than me...but I was just a kid who wanted to avoid any more pain.
 I was definitely a sickly child. Omg, I remember the strep sore throats, the debilitating migraines, the hoarse bronchitis, stomach aches...I was frequently sick. I wish I could just let this go. That it would just all magically disappear from my head. That what happened to me, didn't happen. That what I saw happen to others, didn't. It's a lot to live with and try and reckon, figure out.
 The experts say, once you start writing and talking about the memories we hide, after we connect the memory to the emotion and actually express aloud our truth....that the once hid memory fades, no longer overpowering or having a grip on us....and then the memory just becomes something that happened....it loses it's power over us. It gets more and more okay to write and talk about the stuff I had to hide.
 See, I'm under here, somewhere. Under the shame, guilt, secrets, emotions surpressed.  I have been working for years.
 Silent cries