I don't need my name — erika sukstorf

I don't need my name.

That thought arrived as I re-entered my art recently.

A life long anguish, the struggle to justify my existence, to validate my existence, to live up to the possibility and potential of my name, to let myself be in light and not in someone else's shadow, and not voiceless below water.

We know the dream where we cannot scream.

That is not a dream.

My mother said to me so many times. "I had so many things I wanted to tell you, but now I can't think of any of them" with a sort of wistful hopelessness.

A place, a person can take our voice, our thoughts. Can silence us without intention. A daughter can take a mother's voice.

Voices come out of me that are not the voice of my thoughts.

So many times I have been surprised by the sound of the voice that arrives.

So many times I have practiced a voice and the words I'm going to use before I enter a room of family, of friends, no different than preparing for a role on stage.

Always bracing.

A force born with and absorbed: the shame of being. I shapeshift to deflect, to redirect, to belong.

But in my art, I don't need my name. I don't need to manage shame.

I am out from under. Away from the undertow,

the forces, the hauntings, that stop our voice and maintain awkward and stuck.

The horror in money that can allow my father to feel raped when I ask him for any. I know this from his raw, desperate rage. The horror in money that can allow my Montanan theater mates to revolt when I ask to be paid.

How requesting it can be felt as acutely as a knife to the throat.

The horror in money.

From where? From powerlessness. The taking of power.

If I ask, they have to give. Boundary-less. Abused. Desperately vulnerable. Me. Too.

We are all abuse victims. Descendants of Puritans. The cycle of abuse is in our ancestors. We have been born into and with the core consciousness that we aren't worthy. We've believed the story that others are the Chosen People and we have to continually strive for approval from a phantom. If we fail, we burn forever. But we have to fail. We are not chosen. We are not allowed to win. That would be shameful. Blasphemous.

I remember the horror, one recent Christmas, in the depth of desperation screaming at my parents, "I can't win!" Meaning, I couldn't win with them, but knowing that there was an ominous force that wouldn't let me win.

My elder friend in Montana said that her mother warned her never to accept praise.

"Don't bring attention to your talents and triumphs."

If you are not allowed to win, you are not allowed to have power.

Being asked to release any of what little you are allowed is death before death.

But I am safe in my art. On stage in a another character. Writing, I'm alone. Directing, I'm euphoric collaborating with other artists, novice or mature. There is nothing more satisfying for me than collaboration.

Thought. Conversation. Collaboration. Effortless.

Intimate relationship. Laborious, painful, fight. Struggle to live. To not be subsumed. In shadow.

Do you know that the legalities of slavery were based on the legalities for women? We were property. Slaves.

So when I am in Lewistown, I do the bidding (not sexual) of the dominant male and am betrayed when he misuses me. I am horrified that I let it happen again. But, in the moment, I am a child pleasing her father. He is only using me. I don't exist other than to serve his agenda. I allow myself to not exist, because I am parched for fatherly approval and maybe I will die if I don't comply. I know you won't tell me that I'm too old for that.

I know you are a child in your adult suit. We all suffer the false effect of our veneer.

I also resent and disdain dominant men for their impotence and there betrayal of the promise of protecting me. My father said, when I was born, "I will never abandon her." He eyes tear up when he tells me. His words plagued me with an obligation to not leave him. He did abandon me in spirit. Repeatedly. It is my mother who saddled me with the obligation. She told me the words he said. "You know your father loves you."

Which is why Keith offered a new world in his first words to me. "Erika! I got you!"

I know now that it is a standard line for him. I heard him say it to someone else he didn't know. But that didn't effect my experience of hearing my holy grail. When the guard said to me years ago, "I got your back!" I spun around, "Really!?!" The guard said, "Yeah," deliberately, seriously, sensitive to my hopeful surprise. His eyes were wide.

So any man who gives me positive attention gets an outsized, open response from me for two reasons: my hunger and my defense. If I please him, he might love me. If I please him, he won't hurt me. He might even be happy to care for me, instead of constantly making me feel guilty for whatever he did to provide for me. Instead of constantly making me feel guilty for using any of his money to take care of me.

Instead of making me owe him for my existence.

Keith gave me more than my holy grail. He was happy to see me. His face turned to light when he saw me. Every one of the several times he saw me. We smiled at each other from a distance. Twice. He came over. We were going to talk about his show. We talked like friends with a warm history. No blocks. None from either of us. Miraculous. We felt safe with each other and happy to be in each other's company.

And then his actor showed up. A man who stood in front of me and said, "Do I know you?"

I laugh, reach across the table to shake his hand. I am open, friendly and too much for Keith because his lightness plummets. He grimaces and leaves abruptly, snuffing out the rapport.

I go home high from our light together while one of my selves keeps saying, "What?" and another is petrified.

If I can't keep an easy relationship for more than a few moments, how deformed am I?

Is this hell perpetual?

I realize he didn't have me, after all. Not that he should have. It's just a fact, he didn't. Not the holy grail way. He did have me on the guest list.

Redo: I would have said "no" to his friend without extending my hand if I’d known Keith was sensitive to something like flirting that really wasn't, but was really feeling free to be open with his friend because I was connected in the moment to him. Keith.

A friendly, overly openness results in loss and pain.

Organic and unavoidable suffering.

My therapist friend said, "Some people suffer."

I said, "Everyone offers."

She said, "No, they don't."

I said, "Yes. They do."

I know each of you suffers.

I know words betray the severity. The intensity. The magnitude.

I know each of you is a universe. We are all betrayed by our opacity.

Is betray too strong a word? It supposes we were promised something else.

We weren't. So, our opacity only belies our translucence.

Our opacity belies the universe of each of us.

I know Keith is a universe.

I know he suffers.

And maybe what I really want to say is

I am a universe.

I suffer.

And my mom is a universe and she suffered. And my dad is a universe and he suffers. And my sister.

I don't have to fix and I am not equipped to fix your suffering, their suffering.

Or mine.

Mom wrote on her leaving note,

"Suffering is inherent."

When she left I was ablaze with the awareness that suffering belongs.

My sister and I walked the neighborhood almost giddy with the idea that if suffering belongs then it should be celebrated instead of mourned. Instead of wishing that any not suffer, celebrate the aliveness of their suffering. Instead of "I'm sorry for your suffering. I honor your suffering and celebrate the depth and deepening of your life. You are struggling now, but you will benefit from your suffering. You will. You will. You will see more that you can see now. Or maybe you are seeing it right now. You are living!

But I am sorry that it hurts so much. So much. I know I can handle it, but I don't really want you to have to endure it.

But I know you have the capacity to handle your suffering. I know you do. We all do.

We are heartbreaking in our innocence and our tenacity, our striving despite our leaving.

I really do think the world of each you and love each of you.

I marvel at the phenomenon of each of you, even though I won't be able to tell you directly.

Something about your presence will silence me.

And you exist entirely without me knowing your name.