Enter your email Address

ENTROPY
  • About
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Advertising
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Info on Book Reviews
  • Essays
    • All Introspection
      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      The Animal Form

      January 22, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      On Fantasy and Artifice

      January 19, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Tales From the End of the Bus Line: Aging Ungraciously

      January 18, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Salt and Sleep

      January 15, 2021

      Introspection

      The Birds: A Special Providence in the Fall of a Sparrow

      January 2, 2020

      Introspection

      Returning Home with Ross McElwee

      December 13, 2019

      Introspection

      The Birds: In Our Piety

      November 14, 2019

      Introspection

      Variations: Landslide

      June 12, 2019

  • Fiction
    • Fiction

      The Birds: Little Birds

      December 11, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: Perdix and a Pear Tree

      December 9, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: A Glimmer of Blue

      November 23, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: Circling for Home

      November 13, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: The Guest

      November 9, 2020

  • Reviews
    • All Collaborative Review Video Review
      Review

      Review: Dear Marshall, Language is Our Only Wilderness by Heather Sweeney

      January 21, 2021

      Review

      Review: Shrapnel Maps by Philip Metres

      January 18, 2021

      Review

      Perceived Realities: A Review of M-Theory by Tiffany Cates

      January 14, 2021

      Review

      Review: Danger Days by Catherine Pierce

      January 11, 2021

      Collaborative Review

      Attention to the Real: A Conversation

      September 3, 2020

      Collaborative Review

      A Street Car Named Whatever

      February 22, 2016

      Collaborative Review

      Black Gum: A Conversational Review

      August 7, 2015

      Collaborative Review

      Lords of Waterdeep in Conversation

      February 25, 2015

      Video Review

      Entropy’s Super Mario Level

      September 15, 2015

      Video Review

      Flash Portraits of Link: Part 7 – In Weakness, Find Strength

      January 2, 2015

      Video Review

      Basal Ganglia by Matthew Revert

      March 31, 2014

      Video Review

      The Desert Places by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss, Illustrated by Matt Kish

      March 21, 2014

  • Small Press
    • Small Press

      Gordon Hill Press

      December 8, 2020

      Small Press

      Evidence House

      November 24, 2020

      Small Press

      death of workers whilst building skyscrapers

      November 10, 2020

      Small Press

      Slate Roof Press

      September 15, 2020

      Small Press

      Ellipsis Press

      September 1, 2020

  • Where to Submit
  • More
    • Poetry
    • Interviews
    • Games
      • All Board Games Video Games
        Creative Nonfiction / Essay

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Games

        Hunt A Killer, Earthbreak, and Empty Faces: Escapism for the Post-Truth Era

        September 21, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: Lady of the West

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Paperback and Anomia

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 12 (Once in a Lifetime)

        November 10, 2018

        Video Games

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Video Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Video Games

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

        Video Games

        Best of 2018: Video Games

        December 17, 2018

    • Food
    • Small Press Releases
    • Film
    • Music
    • Paranormal
    • Travel
    • Art
    • Graphic Novels
    • Comics
    • Current Events
    • Astrology
    • Random
  • RESOURCES
  • The Accomplices
    • THE ACCOMPLICES
    • Enclave
    • Trumpwatch

ENTROPY

  • About
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Advertising
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Info on Book Reviews
  • Essays
    • All Introspection
      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      The Animal Form

      January 22, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      On Fantasy and Artifice

      January 19, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Tales From the End of the Bus Line: Aging Ungraciously

      January 18, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Salt and Sleep

      January 15, 2021

      Introspection

      The Birds: A Special Providence in the Fall of a Sparrow

      January 2, 2020

      Introspection

      Returning Home with Ross McElwee

      December 13, 2019

      Introspection

      The Birds: In Our Piety

      November 14, 2019

      Introspection

      Variations: Landslide

      June 12, 2019

  • Fiction
    • Fiction

      The Birds: Little Birds

      December 11, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: Perdix and a Pear Tree

      December 9, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: A Glimmer of Blue

      November 23, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: Circling for Home

      November 13, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: The Guest

      November 9, 2020

  • Reviews
    • All Collaborative Review Video Review
      Review

      Review: Dear Marshall, Language is Our Only Wilderness by Heather Sweeney

      January 21, 2021

      Review

      Review: Shrapnel Maps by Philip Metres

      January 18, 2021

      Review

      Perceived Realities: A Review of M-Theory by Tiffany Cates

      January 14, 2021

      Review

      Review: Danger Days by Catherine Pierce

      January 11, 2021

      Collaborative Review

      Attention to the Real: A Conversation

      September 3, 2020

      Collaborative Review

      A Street Car Named Whatever

      February 22, 2016

      Collaborative Review

      Black Gum: A Conversational Review

      August 7, 2015

      Collaborative Review

      Lords of Waterdeep in Conversation

      February 25, 2015

      Video Review

      Entropy’s Super Mario Level

      September 15, 2015

      Video Review

      Flash Portraits of Link: Part 7 – In Weakness, Find Strength

      January 2, 2015

      Video Review

      Basal Ganglia by Matthew Revert

      March 31, 2014

      Video Review

      The Desert Places by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss, Illustrated by Matt Kish

      March 21, 2014

  • Small Press
    • Small Press

      Gordon Hill Press

      December 8, 2020

      Small Press

      Evidence House

      November 24, 2020

      Small Press

      death of workers whilst building skyscrapers

      November 10, 2020

      Small Press

      Slate Roof Press

      September 15, 2020

      Small Press

      Ellipsis Press

      September 1, 2020

  • Where to Submit
  • More
    • Poetry
    • Interviews
    • Games
      • All Board Games Video Games
        Creative Nonfiction / Essay

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Games

        Hunt A Killer, Earthbreak, and Empty Faces: Escapism for the Post-Truth Era

        September 21, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: Lady of the West

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Paperback and Anomia

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 12 (Once in a Lifetime)

        November 10, 2018

        Video Games

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Video Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Video Games

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

        Video Games

        Best of 2018: Video Games

        December 17, 2018

    • Food
    • Small Press Releases
    • Film
    • Music
    • Paranormal
    • Travel
    • Art
    • Graphic Novels
    • Comics
    • Current Events
    • Astrology
    • Random
  • RESOURCES
  • The Accomplices
    • THE ACCOMPLICES
    • Enclave
    • Trumpwatch
Creative Nonfiction / Essay

DRAGONS ARE REAL OR THEY ARE DEAD #9

written by Kristen Stone December 6, 2016

I am grateful for everything I know about the darkness

[note: I was asked to share a story on the subject of gratitude for Storyteller Sunday at United Church of Gainesville on November 20, 2016. Below is a version of the essay that I read there.]

I text my wife while I am at work: I am done making J. go to sleep on his own. We’ve been trying to teach him that he can lie down and go to bed without one of us there, holding him, like a baby, but he hates it.

When I get home I tell him, it wasn’t fair, our making him do that. You weren’t ready. We took away your snuggles and hugs. I hear myself, as if I am some other person, repeating that silly phrase. Snuggles and hugs. I apologize.

No, Mom, he says. ‘No fair’ means you don’t get something you need, like food and a family.

But actually it isn’t okay, and we took those away from you.

(That was, in fact, what he would wail at us, upon waking. It’s not fair that y’all get to be with each other and I don’t get to be with NOBODY.)

So now we let him fall asleep in our bed, between the two of us. We rub salve on him, the way you might with a toddler, bath-soft and plump, before sleep. He is all muscle, though, a wire, bony survivor of a boy. We nest together, like wholesome, crunchy earth mothers. (I am not a wholesome crunchy earth mother) He holds my hand. I reach over and pat my wife.

I am gripped with a terror that goes like this: what if Mike Pence comes for my family. Often I fall asleep while putting him to bed but tonight am wide awake and weary, my heart hammering.

img_7333

*

At 3:38 when he screams but does not wake, I think the phrase, calm the nervous system.

*

Sarah Schulman, in her amazing new book Conflict is Not Abuse, writes that we escalate the normal disagreements of human life when we cannot assess our own role in the situation. When we have an inflexible view of ourselves. A person locked into the role of a victim or an oppressor cannot turn the mirror back on themselves, cannot tolerate being wrong.

The first night, the first week we put out son to sleep, he became hysterical. It took hours to calm him. We found that he would settle down only if we sat in front of the door, blocking both his escape and his access to the dimmer switch. Once we discovered this, he would lie in his bed with the lights dimmed, gently rolling a single car or train across the sheets, murmuring to himself.

For months my heart would hammer when we began the bedtime ritual. I could not enjoy Goodnight Moon or, worse, the glow in the dark book , which required flashlights and pitch darkness. I hate that fucking book. It was a symbol of everything about my life that I hated, that I needed to manage. That I could not control. To this day, because of this book, his love of flashlights causes me an irrational anxiety.

*

I do not believe that family is a place where we can escape from trauma, or power, or gender, our own parents, or the threats of Mike Pence and Steve Bannon.

Family, like therapy, is a safe place to take risks. To try new behaviors. In therapy sometimes this is called a corrective emotional experience.

When he first came to live with us, the chaos that he brought triggered me. It reminded me—my nervous system—of living with an unpredictable, alcoholic father. The feeling of walking on eggshells. I needed a bone-deep kind of control. I was constantly on guard, poised, ready to grab him from danger. He could not be alone, even for a moment. He did not know how to play.

What Sarah Shulman is asking us to do, what the trauma parenting literature is asking us to do, is to tell and show our traumatized loved ones that they are not in the scary past, but in the safe present. That they can experiment with new behavior, that we will love them through it.

Our first instinct, as social creatures, is to call out for help. If we’ve been taught that no one will come when we cry, we will try to handle it on our own. We will fight or run. If neither is possible, the worst will occur. Freezing, getting stuck.

Part of giving someone this felt sense of safety—because it isn’t enough to say you are safe here, or in this family we do not hit each other, is to show it, through repeated actions over time. Repeating the action is a form of play.

Traumatized people have a hard time being spontaneous, because when you are busy assessing for threat you cannot go with the flow. You cannot just chill out. In children, this shows up as an inability to play. Play is a way of repeating something until it makes sense, to change the ending. To change directions.

I am grateful for the times when I can change direction. I am grateful for my own flexibility, which is hard won. I am grateful, not for my own trauma, but for the things that I have learned the hard way. I am grateful that I can—sometimes—recognize the authoritarian elements in my own self, learned from my own fear and trauma, and stop. I am learning to be wrong.

I knew that the chaos of this small boy would hurt. I held on when I thought I could no longer. I told myself that we would grow into a family, even when I did not believe it. And we did.

DRAGONS ARE REAL OR THEY ARE DEAD #9 was last modified: November 29th, 2016 by Kristen Stone
DRAGONS ARE REAL OR THEY ARE DEAD
0 comment
0
Facebook Twitter Google + Pinterest
Kristen Stone
Kristen Stone

Kristen Stone is a writer and trauma therapist living in Gainesville, Florida. They are the author of That Which Girls Conjure Will Help Them Survive (Guillotine 2018), self/help/work/book (Birds of Lace, 2014) and Domestication Handbook (Rogue Factorial, 2012.) Read their sporadic love letters 4 psychics survival at kristenstone.com.

previous post
Superseding The Diurnal: The Latest Works of Byron Baker
next post
“My vampiric Proustian madeleine”: A Conversation with Tony Trigilio

You may also like

Notes on World Building: Famblae

February 13, 2017

Six from Day Counter by Sara Mumolo

January 3, 2018

Letter to You: The Untold Embarrassing Story of How I Made a One-Player Card Game and Then Got Divorced

November 3, 2014

The Birds: THE KING OF THE CASTLE IN THE AIR

June 3, 2016
Facebook Twitter Instagram

Recent Comments

  • Lei Yu wow so beautifully written!

    Review – : once teeth bones coral : by Kimberly Alidio ·  January 18, 2021

  • Lisa S Thank you so much for your kind words and your feedback. I can only hope my story is able to help someone who needs it.

    WOVEN: This isn’t love ·  January 8, 2021

  • Ann Guy Thank you, Josh. And glad you didn’t get tetanus at band camp on that misguided day.

    A Way Back Home ·  December 24, 2020

Featured Columns & Series

  • The Birds
  • Dinnerview
  • WOVEN
  • Variations on a Theme
  • BLACKCACKLE
  • Literacy Narrative
  • COVID-19
  • Mini-Syllabus
  • Their Days Are Numbered
  • On Weather
  • Disarticulations
  • The Waters
  • Session Report series
  • Birdwolf
  • Comics I've Been Geeking Out On
  • Small Press Releases
  • Books I Hate (and Also Some I Like)
  • The Poetics of Spaces
  • Fog or a Cloud
  • Tales From the End of the Bus Line
  • 30 Years of Ghibli
  • Cooking Origin Stories
  • YOU MAKE ME FEEL
  • Ludic Writing
  • Best of 2019
  • The Talking Cure
  • Stars to Stories
  • Food and Covid-19
  • DRAGONS ARE REAL OR THEY ARE DEAD
  • Foster Care
  • LEAKY CULTURE
  • Jem and the Holographic Feminisms
  • D&D with Entropy

Find Us On Facebook

Entropy
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram

©2014-2020 The Accomplices LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Read our updated Privacy Policy.


Back To Top