While Driving North on Federal Boulevard

Driving north on Federal, or east on 38th, or along Speer, or any where in North Denver is like pushing the rewind button in my head.The chronicity of events is all blended together as I drive through certain intersections, or pass by certain buildings, or see certain places:

 
That is where we waited in the car while Mom went inside to get the restraining order. That’s the basement where Paul Smith lived. Over there is where I let Bobby McFadden feel inside my bra. We drank Cynthia Caranza’s stolen rum here. We smoked Dave Sullivan’s weed there. There's the lot where those two guys grabbed me that one time. There’s the church where I first spoke in tongues.

I slept on the back porch of that house with white awnings on Shoshone Street, thinking my sister Nancy still lived there. 
She moved to Omaha by then, but I didn’t know it. 
Her house was vacant, but I didn’t know it. 

I remember nearly every little shit-hole place my oldest sister Nancy ever rented. Her revolving door of places she called home were often my safe haven from the anger and violence that permeated my own home. 

I remember events from grade school side by side with events as a young adult. That’s where I fell off my bike and got my first concussion. That’s where I got my first period. That’s where we buried our cat. That’s where I hid after I called the cops on Dad. That’s the store where I got caught trying to steal yeast infection medicine. The security guy searched my backpack then, once he found what it was I took, let me go home saying, "I think you forgot to pay for this."That’s the alley where they found Jayne’s strangled body. Over on either side of that hill is my old Rocky Mountain News paper route. I delivered forty-two newspapers, six days a week for over two years to my neighbors living on the west side of Wyandot, three blocks west, to the east side of Beach Court. The paper even ran a human interest story about me, complete with a photograph of me on my bike, and everything. But that newspaper clipping, along with all of our other belongings were stolen in one swift haul when someone backed up their truck to Nancy’s garage on Shoshone Street and emptied it out. 

All of our clothes, furniture, small appliances, photographs - - and newspaper clippings - - that we stored in that garage while we were between homes was all taken. It was like losing our history. No old photographs, no scrapbooks, diaries, or mementos of anything prior to this theft exist. My past exists primarily through oral history. And this history is triggered each time I drive down Federal, or along Speer, or west on 38th Avenue... A cacophony of memories assault me.

Sorting through this noise is like picking up the contents of a box full of old photographs someone turned over on the ground. The difference being that, photographs usually capture, store and help recall special memories. The good times.

But my mental barrage of memories is mostly of the darker events. Moments when I felt alone, confused and or frightened. The rush of cortisol that filled my veins back then so I could survive those times now hold me captive. And, how distorted is this memory of mine? I recall these memories through the filter of who I was when they transpired. Not as I am now. Much of what I think I recall, makes little sense to me now. Am I forgetting a detail? Did I not know something then that I know now? How to turn off this noise? How to feel differently about these darker moments? The more I think I recall, the more I wonder what is really my truth? 

Some days, I want to wrestle with the noise; unravel the memory; reveal a true truth.

But most days all of this noise only makes me want to move to someplace new and different.