It’s not easy writing this. And not for reasons you might think. First, my wrists are cable tied to the ceiling. Second, a band (as in rubber band, head band, etc.) is just a disc with a big hole in the middle (I’ll get to that second thing latter).
Have you ever tried typing with your hands tied to the ceiling? The keyboard is on the desk in front of you, you’re in a standing position, and your arms are stretched far above your head. If all they saw was your silhouette, people might think you were being held at gunpoint.
Fortunately, the immediately practical implications of ‘down’ are arbitrary where I am: I’m in orbit. There is no ‘down’, except where to get to. So, my immediate problem normally would be that, in typing a few words, the keyboard would be pushed away from the ceiling where my hands are. Under those conditions, I would just have to keep pushing the desk ‘up’ to the ceiling with my feet to provide mass against which to type. But, this is not your normal weightless condition. It’s weightlessness plus a gale force leak a dozen feet away where the airlock used to be.
So, the desk and I are being sucked/blown toward the opening, and the keyboard is lucky enough to be on the desk opposite the opening. It’s actually quite windy in here, and I dare not try to get the keyboard between my feet, lest I lose it, along with the desk, in the one chance I would have to actually get it as the desk itself moves beyond my reach. In fact, I’m wearing moon boots, literally, and they aren’t as prehensile even as my butt. So, I’m forced to just keep pulling the desk to the ‘ceiling’ with my feet, type a few words, and rest my stomach as I’m pulled back to that ‘held at gunpoint’ position, while the desk-and-keyboard move back toward where it normally would be on Earth. Fortunately, the desk has ten times as much mass as me, so the leak pulls it much slower than the leak pulls me.
Now, my impromptu ‘space station’ is a four-thousand-foot diameter donut—or torus, for you geometry-snobs. There’s one main wall inside, near where the airlock used to be, and the wall has a door which has remained closed since I’ve been tied here. On the opposite side of the wall are the air-making machines, which seem to be cranked to full since the wind hasn’t lessened since I began writing. Those machines are the only things keeping this place from turning into a giant hollow Krispy Cream out of which some even bigger space monster has taken a bite.
So, my mission, should I not ‘choose’ to ignore it, is to get your attention to all this, and keep your attention long enough to get you to untie me before the air runs out. It could run out in an hour, a year, or in ten years; I have no way of knowing. And, I’m not taking the vague word of those who put me in orbit, tied me here, and hastily left by smashing through the airlock. It’s an odd reason to be writing, I know.
But, at this point, you may be wondering where the confessions come in. You may even be wondering what sort of confessions all this could possibly lead up to.
Well, ok. This is the Confessions of a person.
That’s what I said: a person. The confessions all are about my having had less-than-no-clue that I had any option, from the point of view of others, not to be put into this predicament. They say you shouldn’t make yourself out the victim when you write Confessions. Confessions are supposed to be touching and inspiring, not ugly rants or pity parties.
But, I’m the sort of person who is nothing more than a person. I’m not even my own person—that’s how ‘nothing more’ I am. In the presence of others who are their own persons, I’m pretty much as good as dead. That’s no exaggeration. I can’t so much as begin to maintain myself, to live as my own person, disabilities and all, when my basic means of so living are being occupied by others.
So, I don’t get to be even the sort of person who knows what a normal confession is. Not from my point of view, anyway. I’m pre-victim, that’s how much I’m only a person.
Still, I do feel victim whenever I am victim, often including when I know I’m soon to be victim again. There once was a space of years when, at the end of each day, I was able happily to forget that I was going to be made victim the next day. I even could forget it at various times that next day, even during some of the most damaging treatment. This was because my abusers easily were happy so long as I acted happy and didn’t complain of a need to relieve my very disabled, inflamed bowels. And, I acted happy only so long as I could keep my endorphins flowing by working myself half to death. My health so suffered that I was pushed to a point where I could no longer forget it. I could no longer feel hopeful about my future by sheer gusto of work and, after work each day, writing. I could no longer sense that my future could easily turn for the better, that my greedy and egotistical, but otherwise friendly, oppressors would finally actually help me in life. I no longer could make myself feel happy by working myself half to death each day. I had become a thousand layers of burnout, and that many more of PTSD.
Thanks to some very much other people, and to some social service agencies, I now am just happy to be me, pulling this desk to the ceiling to type a few more words. I don’t even hope someone will untie my hands from the ceiling.
Until, that is, some vicariously friendly space monster smashes another hole through my donut. So, don't be surprised if the Greek world for donut is 'torus.'
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