I’m just going to let my mind wander. None of the people or situations are real. SVU Rules.
Jack sits up in the middle of the night, and realizes his bed is wet. He is too old to be doing this, and he knows it. He’s been out of training pants for a long time, and his eyes betray his years. He heaves a pregnant sigh and gathers up his bedclothes. It’s happening again, and he knows why. It’s the monster in his head and the ghost out to get him. It’s the memory of having been told secrets too hard for him, even with an ancient soul. He knows that monsters aren’t fictional, even if he can’t admit it.
Jack walks downstairs to the laundry and dumps in everything. He looks at the clock. It’s 5:00 AM. He might as well start the coffee. He knows it will keep his mother from complaining if she wakes up to the smell. Keeping his mother under wraps has been his job since he was born. He knows the cycle will never end. Coffee and gin for the rest of his life.
He sighs again.
Since no one else drinks coffee, he only makes four cups. He takes care to level his tablespoons and measure the water. Jack thinks to himself that he should probably learn to cook because then he could be a TV star, and then dismisses that idea because he knows you have to like girls to do that.
This is the level at which Jack’s mind operates at nine years old. He knows who he is, he knows he is male, and he knows he is queer. He also knows that if he treats his mother with love and never displeases her, his life gets better. His dad is in jail. Has been for a long time. He lives in the shadows, and not because he wants to be there.
This is also the way he thinks all day about everything. It never stops. Sometimes he talks to himself about himself. The rest of the time he talks to himself about how to make things better for everyone else. He can do that because people leave him alone to an enormous degree. He is not being raised, he is raising himself….. and he is self aware.
Everything in his life is a nebulous gray, because it hinges on someone else’s schedule and desires. He notices when people don’t want to be near him, and doesn’t care. He’s his own best company.
But. There are complications.
Jack knows he cannot let his secret out, and you will not even know it by the end of this story. This story is about physical and emotional reactions to trauma, and how they play out. Jack is an amalgamation of the process it takes for humans to become monsters from the victim’s point of view. He thought it was healthy until the first wet dream. He’s nine. He’ll cling to men who aren’t him for decades hoping to recreate that experience, turning healthy relationships into trash until they step out of the situation and do the work. But you can’t accept your fate, and will actively self-sabotage if it looks too clean. You’ll doubt yourself forever, unable to recognize beauty for what it is………… because there’s always a catch, and sometimes it’s an obstacle you put there yourself.
To an extent, abusers don’t know what they’re doing. They know they’re fucking you up in the moment, but they never in a million years guess how long recovery takes. Jack will face therapy every week of his life and take medication chronically because his reality broke a few years ago.
But what about when you can’t take medication because your family has forbidden it? Jack longs to be bigger and stronger. His parents won’t let him be that, but his abuser still does. Clark has a stranglehold on Jack, and will until he gets bored. Then, he’ll conveniently move.
Jack’s behaviors are set. They’re completely different than they were, and no one has noticed, he doesn’t feel appreciated unless Clark is there. Clark is Jack’s person. He won’t betray him for anything in the world. It doesn’t take much to betray Clark, so Jack’s days are numbered. At this point, he doesn’t know what hell awaits him as he’s expected to move on from this as if nothing happened. He tries to be invisible because if he talks Clark will go away. He can’t stand him, and he’s trapped with him. He won’t realize until much later that getting his body to react was planned. He won’t realize how much weight he was carrying. He won’t realize the enormous work it will take to shed it and will not be able to function until it’s resolved. Even then, things that Clark did or said will trigger Jack in an instant.
No one noticed when his night terrors started. No one noticed when his grades dropped. No one noticed whether he gained or lost weight. No one looked at the stoned, frightened look he gave everyone else.
His parents are suspect, and need to stay uninformed or the fun stuff will stop. He hates himself that he loves it.
As he sits, he broods and gets frustrated. Being frustrated always leads to a white hot rage as if one is fainting.
Being able to let out his demons appropriately is going to be a battle. If he turns out to be a regular person, he’ll have wins and losses like everyone else. Even as a regular person, he’ll be a sociopath to one degree or another. That’s because you don’t have to be born with psychopathic tendencies. The reality break will do it for you quite efficiently. Jack will become a criminal or the greatest American who ever lived, and he’ll decide in the car.
Life is what happens when Jack is supposed to be doing something else.
He’s supposed to be doing his homework. He’s supposed to be doing his chores. He’s supposed to be watching his sister. He’s supposed to be a lot of things. But he doesn’t live on the ground anymore.
When someone has complete control, it’s an adrenaline-filled high that fuels thoughts of them while they’re not there. It increases their control while not having to do a damn thing.
Clark perpetuated a cycle, and so will Jack. But he doesn’t know those implications, and it’s not even because I’m the author and he isn’t. It’s that all abused children are The Timeless Child. None of them have all of these symptoms, but if you’ve read up, they’re accurate for someone.
Jack doesn’t know what story he’s going to tell, because someone took control of the pen, violently at first. Then, it was love. He said he was sorry. If he trashes this relationship, he’ll have no one else. So even though he was a dickhead, he’s forgiven over and over because Jack can’t even breathe when he thinks of Clark. A child thinks that it will get better for far longer than they should because they have absolutely no experience with relationships. They don’t even know many adults besides their parents….. the people Clark told not to tell.
In every adult conflict in his life, there will be echoes of this. If he can keep one secret, he’ll keep them all.
That’s what will make him a world leader or a white nationalist. Just because you have to cut off your emotions to protect yourself doesn’t mean that you can’t learn to deal. It means that your first reaction will always be wrong. Your programming before your reality. Until you change the disk, you’ll react the same way.
Jesus saves.
Stories That Are All True 