"Fractured Memory" by Grace Katich
“Fractured Memory” by Grace Katich is the runner-up of the 2022 Debut Prize in Nonfiction for Emerging Writers. Here’s what Touchstone’s Editor-In-Chief, Achilles Fergus Seastrom, had to say about the essay:
“‘Fractured Memory’ is an essay that recognizes that experience and understanding are not the same ordeal. Katich deftly guides her audience through the emotional depth of formational life experiences, through the difficult growth of processing, and finally to the peace and clarity of realization. Though deeply personal, ‘Fractured Memory’ is also deeply understandable as a series of events we’ll all recognize: experiencing first and understanding after.”
Accompanying “Fractured Memory” is an original broadside art piece influenced by the essay, created by Paige Rickman.
“Fractured Memory” by Paige Rickman. This original piece was inspired by Grace Katich’s prize-winning essay.
When two souls go through something traumatic together, they become intertwined, bound and bonded to the feeling of safety they experimented with. This relationship manifests itself into a deep, emotional attachment that can often be misconstrued as love. The relationship is akin to an explosion, erupting with each word spoken, being taken to extreme lengths. One of the problems with trauma is when it's so bad the body tries to protect itself by burying these memories. That’s what happened when I met him. The little moments in my head became stored away, lost…and randomly, when my body remembers these moments, intense panic erupts. It starts at my chest and grows heavy as if a dumbbell is sitting on my heart. Air becomes hard to swallow. Then comes my heart—it beats so fast banging over and over. Then comes my breath—the concept of breathing becomes a foreign memory making the tempo of living incredibly difficult to find. It feels like death is approaching, taking over my body, consuming organs. The panic erupts in my own brain, telling me it’s the end. It doesn’t matter how young, slim, and beautiful I am at that moment. It feels as if it is my time to die, in a slow painful way, straining to feel the blessing of oxygen. The anxiety in my life becomes a crutch. Then, when it all stops, my mind keeps going, and once I remember, all I want to do is forget.
At the moment I didn’t realize this mechanism of anxiety was a trauma response—I felt I was going crazy, a common term that men love to throw around at women. However, I formed a trauma bond with an abuser as a response, seeking that comfort even if it hurts. Then comes the concept of repressed memories. This is when memories associated with said abuser become blurry almost akin to looking at them through a cracked mirror, pieces and bits of them are missing and lost inside one's own head. My mind becomes at battle with itself. I used to think I was going clinically insane, feeling as if I was losing my mind and forgetting parts and wholes of my relationship with this man. But now I know there is a science to it. Some memories are unreliable. Abuse can cause the central nervous system to overwhelm itself. The term abuse can get thrown around, but emotional abuse still causes immense trauma. We sometimes split off a painful memory from conscious awareness and maintain this psychological defense mechanism known as dissociative amnesia. I have become at constant war with my own memory and all I can do is write to put together the pieces.
August
There was a pounding on the door, a firm fist meeting the wood. The pounding caused the room to vibrate and the hearts inside it to drum.
“This is the campus police. You must open the door,” a firm, husky voice ordered. Suddenly, like clockwork, bottles were hidden, stuffed under the bed. Drugs were dispersed throughout the room; the various substances found their hiding places in the small dormitory.
“We’re fucked,” Duke said, looking me directly in the eyes. I could see the fear that lay behind the false purity in those blue eyes. He looked as if, at any minute, he was ready to burst.
“It’s going to be okay,” I told him, throwing aside my crippling anxiety for just a moment.
Ryan’s palms met the door and, with one twist to the right, the five of us were met face-to-face with two armed officers. The guns strapped to their hips shared hyperbolic, threatening silence. The two men looked middle-aged, maybe just shy of 50 years old. One man had a smug face. His brow was furrowed as if, within one second of approaching us, he was already disappointed in our life choices. The other man wore a small smile like he was trying to ensure our honesty by hiding behind kindness. I guess this is where the good cop/bad cop came into play.
“We know there is marijuana in this room. We can smell it,” the “bad cop” stated, not hesitating at all. The room grew quiet; the silence weighing down upon each and every one of us.
“No one is smoking in here officer,” Nick opened his mouth and then clamped it shut immediately. The alcohol on his breath lingered in the room.
The cops told us that they were going to search the property and, without much warning, they ordered us to remove ourselves from the premises. We sat outside the room—me, Duke, Ryan, Nick, and Sophie. The suspense felt nauseating. The ruder officer knelt in front of Duke and began to ask him questions, holding a gram of weed that he found on Duke’s side of the room. Duke began to shake, his leg moving up and down in a fast motion, his words trembling. He reached for my hand to steady him. Our skin made contact and suddenly we both grew calm.
“Everything is going to be okay,” I assured him. Our eyes met, and we left reality for a moment as our hands stayed together for a second longer before departing.
“Then comes my heart—it beats so fast banging over and over.”
“Margaux, you're up,” the kinder officer instructed me. I flashed Duke a scared but gentle smile and followed them into the room. The cop held up a wallet that happened to belong to me. Fuck.
He told me I must remove all the contents. I dug through the wallet, my hands trembling. I removed the birth control pack and captured some wide eyes in the room until they were met with my fake ID. Bingo there's one charge for me. The officer collected the ID, shaking his head in looming disappointment.
I returned outside, looking down the hallway, realizing we had attracted a show. Tens of kids watching the search from down the hallway thinking thank God it wasn’t me.
As we waited out the prolonged search, the nice cop asked us about our majors and lives, trying to calm us. However, that calm suddenly erupted when I was summoned back into the room. Since the dorm didn’t belong to me, I was confused and scared, yet I rose and obliged.
“Your eyes are red, you are high,” The officer turned his assumption into a statement. My mouth hung open.
“Officer, I don’t smoke. I got my lashes done right before this and the glue has traveled into my eye. It happens every time,” I paused and he looked as if he could see through the lie, but it was my truth. “Drug test me right now,” I ordered. And with that statement, he gave up his assumption.
The boys were not let off as easily as my small, female, Caucasian self. As soon as Duke burst down the hallway in a panic, I knew everything was going to shit. Tears stained stone-cold Ryan's face, and Nick was too fucked up, quite frankly, to know what was going on. Sophie took a breathalyzer test, blew a zero, and was free to go.
The night became a blur. My tear-stained eyes, in fear, met Duke’s. On this night, our souls became tied. The boys left in handcuffs, and I was met with a ticket from the campus police, a simple formality for being in the wrong place at the wrong time that soon became expunged.
I walked home late that night, and the fear of what had just happened weighed down on my chest. Outside of my dorm across campus, I collapsed. I sat there on the cold pavement, feeling like an immense disappointment. It was only my first week on a big campus and I had already let myself down. Suddenly, a shadow erupted in the darkness...
It was Duke, coming to save me from my own thoughts.
September
Days of hanging out with friends became nights when no one could tear us apart. Kisses in secret became our lips locking in front of a crowd. Our hands lingering together in secret had become handholding throughout campus. I began to stop talking to others, consumed by Duke’s presence, and pushed everyone away in the process.
When we had sex, it felt like an out-of-body experience, as if it wasn’t my body engaged in the act. I could see us from the third-person point of view—the passion, and anything that might have been there, was numbed. I felt like someone who was doing their duty to make sure he wouldn’t leave.
We laid in his small dorm bed as he toyed with my honey-brown hair. As he rummaged through my room he told me, “I’ve decided I love you.”
And just like that, I was branded to him. I don’t even remember how I reacted or if I said it back at that moment. I just went with the flow. He called the shots, and I was too afraid to protest. I felt as if I was begging to lay down and roll over. We sprawled our bodies out in the dorm room, and he looked me in the eyes.
“I want an open relationship, because I want to fuck skinny blonde girls and have the college experience,” Duke insisted without breaking eye contact. I felt hurt. I looked at myself in the mirror, my curves, my big thighs, my brunette hair paired with big brown eyes. I knew that if I protested, I would lose him. I would use sex as a way to keep a man from leaving me. I would feel sex was a way of getting closer to someone, but I was wrong.
The peculiar thing about our relationship is that I remember the beginning and the end, yet the middle is all mush—a puddle of memories consisting of little moments accompanied by a girl I do not recognize—and it took me a long time to realize this.
“…he told me, ‘I’ve decided I love you.’”
By the time parents’ weekend rolled around, the pressure was high. This was the first time my parents would shake hands with someone that was mine—someone that was mine by association and a possessive pronoun. The pressure filled the room, weighing down on me more and more.
“You have to look good, if my mom thinks you're not pretty enough, she will want me to break up with you,” he instructed me. I took hours preparing my appearance, curling my hair, and skipping breakfast that morning to ensure my appearance would look slim enough. When comments were made to me, I wouldn’t fight back or protest. I would accept.
My own family sat at a long table in the rustic Mexican restaurant down University Street. He shook my dad's hand with a firm grasp, smiled at my mom, and chuckled with my sister. For a second, I could see a future. I could see everything falling into place.
His hands were constantly intertwined with my body, his lips constantly bracing mine even if it made others squirm. For once in my life, I felt desired by a man. I felt his attention. I began to mistake his attention and obsession for love and suddenly our lives were beginning to bleed into one. I was losing myself to become a part of another.
When I was saying my goodbyes to my mom and sister, the car suddenly jolted to a stop. My mother looked into my mind, deconstructing the moment. Tears clogged her green eyes, breaking the silence she said, “I’m worried about you. That boy is taking away your personality.”
My sister agreed, claiming he was not good enough for me in her own playful way. Reading between the lines, I now know my sister was worried. She just used humor to mask it.
“We love each other,” I claimed, not knowing the first thing about love at that point in my life. My mother went home for those few months terrified of what is to come of me. She saw her ex-husband in Duke.
Within weeks, Duke’s things were in my small dorm. We were suffocated by each other's presence. I grew weak from temper tantrums where he would bang his fists on the ground over nonsense. I would do everything to calm him down as he sprawled his body on the ground, threatening to leave me or doing awful things to himself. He would curl himself into a ball on the gross dorm carpet, screaming and yelling. Instead of standing up for myself or fighting back, I gave him reassurance and comfort. I was the one person that could calm him down, and I felt I couldn't live to see a day without falling asleep to the beating of his heart. I feared that, with one night apart, he would find comfort in someone else, and I would be disposable. I frequently developed UTIs because I would hold in my pee all day, fearing that, if I left the room, he would shit talk me or belittle me. I told myself I loved him, but in reality, I was afraid of him, and he made me fear a life without him. He would use weed to calm his fear, and I would use him to calm mine.
When I first came to college, I was on 40 ml of Prozac, a name-brand of the SSRI fluoxetine, with intent to treat anxiety and depression. From my dad sleeping with his secretary to my nasty eating disorder, I had my fair share of drugs and this one stuck. However, Duke convinced me to stop taking the meds, after being on them for the majority of my life.
“It’s numbing you, Mar. Don’t you want to feel something?”
And instantly, like every other thing he told me, I was completely pulled in. I hid my meds in the cabinet and stopped taking them cold turkey.
With the absence of the meds, I felt overwhelmed with emotions, emotions that were foreign to me. I felt sadness that was overbearing, weighing down on my chest until I couldn't breathe. How impressionable I was. This was the first time I was off this medicine, which usually makes life a little easier and makes me think a little less. But at that moment, it was very easy for someone to manipulate me into thinking I was in love and that this “love” was worth pushing everyone else out of my life.
November
It was November. The current me has grown to hate that month. The once-dry air feels thick and suffocating. The sun that provides the serotonin I crave robs me of it as the desert becomes quiet, cold, lonely, and dark. Part of me wishes I could remember the best parts of our relationship. They come in little waves almost like a small, warm embrace, and suddenly those hands that once gave you warmth grow cold. But then, those hands entangle around your fragile neck and begin to choke, blocking all airways.
Oftentimes I feel like my love or relationship with someone is a movie until I get out of it. This was the iceberg point to our little Jack and Rose.
Duke pulled himself out of me, releasing. I straightened myself up. The room was now hot and stuffy. He moved his body further away from me and locked his icy blue eyes with my big brown eyes. The contrast of the warmth from mine and the coldness from his was more apparent than ever. Suddenly, his icy eyes glazed over as if I was looking into another man's eyes. The energy in the entire room did a 360, flipping over completely. The universe shifted. I could feel it.
“Margaux, I have to tell you something.”
I swallowed hard. A pit slowly formed in my stomach. I nodded slowly at this now stranger in front of me. The eyes looking at me felt foreign.
“I don’t love you. I never did. I consider you a friend. You never experienced love or a good relationship, but I wanted to give you that. I was forcing myself to try and get feelings for you, but it never happened…I just see you as a friend, so we need to break up.”
The world went silent. Complete white noise. When men leave me, I feel myself go into panic mode. My subconscious memory of my own father leaving the second things got hard, making me go into problem solving mode, begging to be loved. I look at myself from a different point of view as if I’m in a different body. I look fragile, broken. The liveliness of my body and soul begins to diminish as I change myself for a man only to be left over and over.
My body began to reject the information I was told. I launched myself into the cramped, freshman, germ infested bathroom. I hurled myself over the toilet, my insides spilling into it. I began to feel myself coming apart at the seams—erupting. I marched back into my own room.
“Get the fuck out.” The words captured the attention of not only Duke but my friends down the hall. My fragile, small frame was filled with anger. Just like that, I turned on someone I thought I loved.
Duke’s face was in shock—oh how someone once so fragile and delicate can scream and use that anger to detach. I looked at the man looking back at me. He was now a complete stranger. My two male friends piled in, scooping up Duke’s body limb by limb and disposing him from my life. They all yelled; they all screamed. I sat in the silence of my own thoughts.
He manipulated me into feeling what I thought was love towards him only to watch my downfall, each word like a bullet. But I finally felt free. He let me loose to become the best version of myself. He had a purpose in my life—to teach me what I didn’t want and what I was worth.
After we broke up, he left school for various reasons, but I always wonder if I was a big part of that.
January
Duke had tried to contact me twice in December. Protesting for us to be “friends” to stay in each other's life. To me, being friends with an ex is simply, for lack of better words, a bad idea. I simply told him to leave me alone and that I’d call him over Christmas break, but I never did. Every man I’ve been with has tried to keep me in their life as merely friends, but I know it would hurt more to have the remains of that person. So, selfishly, I always decline.
I used the insecurities Duke gave me about my body and desirableness to allow myself to have meaningless sex and the contradiction of the heat that cold liquor leaves down my throat. I felt loved when guys would throw themselves at me even if they only wanted to use me for sex. In the few moments their bodies intertwined with mine, I felt good. I felt wanted and, after being left so suddenly, desire was all I craved. I slowly became someone who was attractive on the outside with a slim figure and revealing clothes, but on the inside, I slowly became uglier than ever. I welcomed the wrongful ways guys treated me, throwing my body like a simple handshake. I became obsessed with being desired and would end nights crying when I wasn’t the one these silly college boys wanted. It was a repetitive pattern that was bound to break in tragedy.
March
March 3, 2020. I was scrolling aimlessly on Instagram out of my own boredom and need for distractions. Suddenly, a post captured my eye, and the room began to spin. The feeling felt familiar—that rush of a warm shot of liquor coursing throughout my body, starting at the throat, then slowly venturing into the stomach and sitting there with a sour taste. Bile began to build up in my stomach.
Rest in Peace.
Rest
In
Peace
Dead at age 19.
I read the phrasing over and over, waiting for my brain to catch up. I searched for breath. My heart was sinking in the blood of my body. I felt myself collapsing from intrusive thoughts. I felt blame coming from my throat. The guilt ate away at me, consuming me like a flesh-eating bacterial disease. Oftentimes, I act out of impulse and the realization sets in when actions cannot be undone. Blame and guilt tend to be the mean girls of my mind, insisting that I am the cause of others’ actions. He left me on read—I didn’t look pretty enough. She doesn’t include me in her plans—I’m not cool enough. They didn’t like my writing—I’m not talented enough. He killed himself after being with me—I wasn’t enough to save him.
No one told me, no one warned me. I found out through damned Instagram, a lifeless app built on vanity and thirst traps. I found out my ex killed himself through a caption. A fucking caption.
I began to bury myself in a nervous hole, my insides eating themselves up. I confided in others for help, asking if I could have done anything, if I missed something. Each one of them told me, “He had it coming.”
My own mind went into flight-or-fight mode, trying to do everything I could to distract myself instead of grieving. I used the attention from others so I wouldn’t have to spend a night alone, battling with whether he saw me when he pulled that damned trigger or if I am merely vain in thinking so. Wondering if the few months we spent together had so much of an impact that, out of all the people that came and went in his life, he saw me.
So instead of thinking about him, I did my best to forget. The memories faded more and more, and his name felt like a foreign person when brought up. I avoided the topic. I avoided the feeling. I avoided it all, until I couldn’t.
“It was a repetitive pattern that was bound to break in tragedy.”
Now
I find traces of my past brought up in current relationships. The smallest reference, the smallest hand movement triggers me. Instead of grieving his death during that time, I pushed it down until I felt his name was something separate from my experience. It wasn’t until the anxiety attacks started that I got into a new relationship and felt the repercussions. I now know that Duke wasn’t my first love. It was a feeling so different from love. It was a toxic dependency, festering its way into my mind. When you experience real love, it opens your life up with a warmth that makes you feel whole again. You breathe for this person with care so deep it fills your veins with blood pulsing for them. You learn to live together, two separate souls intertwined but not bound and confined into one.
I carry my experiences from my relationship with Duke in multiple ways. When a man does something Duke would have done, I spiral and don’t realize why until I’m deep in anxiety. What I carry with me the most is when I lie down at night and wonder what he would be like if he was still in this world. What would he think of me? A selfish part of me wants him to see that I’ve grown into a woman he would be proud of. For him to see I’ve learned to fall in love, not once but now twice. And that I have navigated heartbreak. I’ve learned things about myself he didn’t even know. I hope he's somewhere at peace. No matter what we put each other through, I find peace from knowing in my heart that he is somewhere better than the place he left.
Grace Katich is an aspiring young writer. She is a senior at the University of Arizona pursuing a Bachelor of the Arts in Creative writing with an emphasis in creative nonfiction accompanied by a minor in journalism. She is currently freelancing as a student.