I know it was summer because my room was warm and I was wearing shorts. I know it was before my little brother was born because my room was what would become his room but it was still mine.

I don’t believe this happened while my mom was pregnant with him, but I’m not sure I knew enough to know the difference – so this could have been summer of 1984.

I was playing in my room. Either time or minimal (or unknown or even non existent) significance have erased the detail of what it was triggered this incident.

Mom walked in to my room and it was like a darkness had eclipsed the sunlight that normally enveloped my room.

I knew, even then, that there was a difference–a staleness–in the air. The feeling I connect to when I think about my bedroom is overwhelming happiness. Sunshine, warmth, safety.

This difference was taking all of the oxygen out of the room.

I was playing on the floor in the middle of my room, as I often did.

I noticed The Difference as she entered my room.

She started angrily shuffling things around in my room, muttering something. It did not seem directed at me so I did not engage in conversation.

I also didn’t move out of her way.

In one smooth motion she grabbed me by the arm and I felt the weight of my body leave me.

The next thing I knew I was on the floor, on my back, and I couldn’t breathe.

It all happened so fast and unexpectedly–and unpredictably–that I couldn’t comprehend what had even happened.

I could see her face.

There was so much rage on it.

But I couldn’t breathe. I squawked to make as much sound as I could to draw attention to my situation while I gasped for air.

She looked down at me.

I know I was expecting to see sympathy, but there was none.

She reached down with both hands, her long nails digging in to my sides.

Again, in what seemed like one smooth instantaneous motion–WHAM!

Down on the floor again.

I was only beginning to catch my breath from the first time, this second body slam took my 3-year-old lungs back to zero.

I squawked, helplessly. Writhing, wriggling, pleading with my face.

She turned and refocused her energy on Whatever It Was.

Tears rolled down my cheeks and as I could start to take small breaths I bellowed, “I”, “Can’t”, “Breathe”.

I distinctly remember thinking and believing that if she knew that I couldn’t breathe her behavior would change. This felt serious! She must not have known that I couldn’t breathe.

Her attention snapped back in to focus on me.

“You can’t breathe?”

Her face and the tone of which she replied did not match what I felt was the gravity of my situation.

“I can’t breathe!” I managed to connect in one breath.

I was panicking. Would I ever be able to breathe normally again? Was I dying?

She came after me again, astonishingly still filled with rage.

I knew what to expect this time. I closed my eyes hard, pressing my chin in to my chest in preparation, pulling my body in to a ball.

She picked me up, again, her nails digging in to me, despite my will to make myself as heavy as I could, I felt my body leave the floor and then again–WHAM! Instantly back to the floor, and I was flat on my back again.

I must have been able to make some sort of noise or the general commotion captured the attention of my big brother Frank.

I spread out again on to my back, crying between tiny gasps of air on the floor, desperate to breathe–to live.

I don’t recall the detail of the argument that transpired between the two of them but they were yelling at each other. What ever words did exchange resulted in her chasing him down the hall and then down the stairs.

As soon as I could recover enough breath to do so, I got up, closed my door, and hid under my bed.

The feelings I can connect to were fear and confusion.

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This is one of those stories that I have difficulty telling.

When my children were each this age, and as a full grown adult myself, I could not imagine repeating those same actions.

I was a tiny kid. I would have weighed 25 pounds max.

Writing this now I definitely am astonished at my own disconnection of myself to what happened.

Were my own kids to tell me such a thing occurred to them I would be seeking blood. Even my own brothers–if this were their story I would be so mad I wouldn’t be able to see or think straight.

When I think about it from my own perspective, I am not.

I have so deeply compartmentalized and disconnected myself from what happened that I can’t really see it any other way, besides connecting to my childhood feelings of confusion and fear.

I can remember exactly how it felt to not be able to breathe.

She could have killed me.

Somehow I have blurred the lines between right and wrong and settled on “It’s ok that that happened to me.”

Because I did not die, I lived?

Because it did not seem personal, she was in a fit of rage?

Is it even plausible that I could have had that figured out about people–about her–at such a young age?

I was there. I felt, and experienced all of it and yet–I am not mad that this happened on my own behalf. Then, or even now. And never have been.

Completely removing myself and looking back at it outside myself, that seems odd.