Deepest Woods

By Catherine A Palmer

Deepest Woods is a memoir told by Catherine (Catalina) Palmer as she relives traumatic experiences behind substance abuse, mental health, domestic violence, and the death of a parent. In this memoir, the author recalls detailed memories of her childhood, her high school experiences, her first love and the events that led her down the de

• Language: English
• Publisher: Catherine Palmer
• Release date: May 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781087885353

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First published by Ingram Spark

Copyright © Catherine Palmer

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.

First edition May 2022

ISBN    978-1-0878-8361-8

Introduction

Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

What do you do when you have a restless need to say… everything, with not enough ways of doing so? You never get to describe things exactly the way you need to or you miss the littlest details and realize they were important. The things you never got to say and wish you did when you had the chance. The things you thought you forgot that present themselves unexpectedly, leaving you with a burden towards saying that shit loud and clear. The things you’ve intentionally or unintentionally let bottle up, later realizing if you would have faced them earlier, you wouldn’t have dealt with situations the way you did.

I can’t tell you just how many times I’ve felt the burden of wanting to clear the air, so I decided to write an all-inclusive book about it in hopes someone picks it up by chance and reads it. I don’t need your pity, in fact there’s going to be at least one someone who reads this and sends me to hell. Some things my family or familiar faces would disagree with or hate me for publicly disclosing. Remember this, there’s different perceptions behind every set of eyes bearing witness to every experience, and a plain truth that hangs over every emotion and perception. I’m doing this because if you’re still reading this and I have your attention, maybe you might be the one to read just the right thing that changes the way you’ll respond to someone someday. That it gets you thinking or moves you towards speaking up for someone or for yourself. My unpopular opinion is that all sides under the truth matter because they contribute in shaping the events that become a part of our history. Change starts as a drive within someone but does not end with them. Change is moved through masses until it sticks. We live in a society with stigmas and blind hate for each other and towards things we don’t fully understand. Not enough unity that will make a difference in the ways we’re raising our kids, not enough unity to make the changes that will re-shape our communities entirely. The only way to even influence change is through the discomfort in stepping outside of what you know. This memoir isn’t just another teen story, rather a familiar one many teens are living today, and one many adults are still healing from. Things you cannot read off someone by looks or behavior. It isn’t found in perfect smiles and clean pressed clothes selling you home insurance, or an attitude calling you names, bathing in a central park fountain. It begins somewhere a person can easily forget all about, yet the results prove to be a never-ending chain of events and passed on curses. You wouldn’t know though, not until you know. When you do, it changes you.

* * * * * * *

My name is Catherine. My friends call me Cat, my father and grandfather used to call me Catalina. I’m currently recovering from heroin addiction and still healing from my childhood trauma.

While words can paint the imagery, they can never stain you in the experience with full understanding. All that loss and grief that leaves a person in crisis, not knowing what to do or where to go.

I’ve spent my 20s discovering things I never knew, learning myself, learning life is bigger than what we could ever understand. I’ve been forgiving myself for my weaknesses and past doing, applying them towards breaking the chain of silence when it comes to the toxic social norms that were taught to us and family curses that are passed on like a torch of inequity.

My father argued my entire childhood that he can do whatever he wanted as long as we had clothes on our backs and food on the table, even if it meant he had a substance abuse problem and drank every day. I lost him before he even had a chance in healing from his own life experiences. He left behind memories of all kinds and sound life lessons I was too young to appreciate. Sometimes we don’t see how our actions really affect others until it’s too late. Then we harbor those regrets, and it spreads through us like a sickness.

I picked a career path in law enforcement trying to follow in his footsteps, much of my life I spent trying to do so without even noticing that I was. I realize that’s not uncommon when you lose a parent too early. My mother always argued that I didn’t have to be exactly like my father, that I could be me. Yet, I can’t help notice just how alike we are and it scares me sometimes.

After years of jails, institutions and near-death experiences, I moved back here to New York with new dreams and no idea how to make them happen. It was the little bit of hope I had though, that wouldn’t allow me to take no for an answer, no matter how many odds aren’t in my favor. I’ve accepted not everything you fight for you will win in battle, but you keep that fight in you and you survive.

Years of lying and hiding myself taught me to be overbearingly truthful so here’s what finally happened in 2020 when I began realizing the things I worked hard towards weren’t filling my cup:

I found God in the Bronx, my old neighborhood to be exact.

It started with a park, watching my sons run around as the sun went down and praying to God for a sign. I asked God to send me a bird that night. It was a random thought, maybe a test even. Tell me, God, that everything’s gonna be okay, I said, just send me a bird.

A couple of weeks later that sign came at that same park, where I was drinking with my friend Brian, who I hadn’t seen in about 8 years. A little brown bird had landed on the bench right next to my thigh and stared up at me. An overwhelming feeling came over me because in that moment I knew I was heard. I just knew that God had heard me. These moments are inexpressible and may sound exaggerating to someone else, but there’s some feelings you just know.

No matter what I had done to myself and others, especially through my most terrible addiction, somehow, I’m still here to tell my story.

It was the realization that I’m not alone the way I believed I was. If you know depression the way I know it, you know that you can be surrounded by many people and still feel so small. Someone can tell you they love you and you simply don’t understand or see why. When you’re so used to losing, winning feels undeserving and unrealistic.

I had stressed myself for years trying to get through school and make a name for myself that would benefit my kids. To be someone the boys could look up to. I finally had the easy money, the nice car and a 3.8 GPA. It wasn’t enough. I had a job as a city parks officer where the past somehow caught up to me no matter how much growth occurred. Leaving the job I had with the city not only made me realize that my past may always make itself present, but the things that are important wouldn’t be found in a good reputation or money. Life is so much more than that and the experiences I had at peace officer jobs were very eye opening. I no longer wish for my generation’s societal notion on success, rather the things that give my life a deeper sense of purpose. What’s good for the soul. I had an existential crisis at 26 and spent many nights sweating, but in spending time with myself again I stopped running away from what haunted me and saw a child that just wanted to be noticed and set free, so I told her a story and put her to rest.

For as long as I can remember and probably for the rest of my life, I have sat back questioning if the things I’ve done were purposely to fulfill my reckless desires in sensation seeking, or was I just another 16 year old who was misled in a world that fed a dominating need for love and acceptance. A world where everything that brought me shelter from the burning fire within me also branded me with tremendous loss, defeat and years of uncertainty to date. An interruption of an impressionable time space where innocence was easily tainted, leaving me with untold secrets hidden in scrunched up lips, shameful reminders of the things I’ve done and every dream that once was, left in a chalet of would haves I keep tucked away. The importance behind every word I never had the chance to say out loud was discarded, childhood memories left in a small box on a shelf in my closet.

Everything I ever knew and wanted had gone, including the things I didn’t even realize I wanted. Everything ripped away in just 4 years time. June 30th, 2013, I stepped outside of my childhood home into a void of nothingness, watching my feet move across the concrete. An apathetic mass accompanied me as I laid myself face down onto the precipitated grass. I watched the saltwater swell into my vision, and I breathed in the dense air around me. I could feel the heated strain in my neck from screaming but barely heard myself. I screamed at a God I didn’t know in rage and desperation.

Beauty is the sun who lays her hands against my back for a moment before she must leave me under these black skies. Nurturing are the pink and orange rays of a weak departing day, holding the whispering prayers of the suffering. The sky is a blanket covering the secrets of a small town I still call home.

Grieving and left behind, used up and lost with no purpose or destination. Breathing and absolutely dead inside. It is the purest feeling of defeat, and no amount of therapy, rehabilitation, ink or time could quite cover up all of these damn scars.

Contents

Preface

PTSD

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Epilogue

Preface

I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania where every white picket fence chasing parent up and moved from the inner-city boroughs to give their kids a better life for half of what expenses would cost in the city. This was after 9/11 and the crash of the stock market that had everyone believing the world was ending and the city was damned to raise kids. What they didn’t know is this dream was being advertised by the schemes of hungry, dream selling relators and fraudulent banks that failed to explain to you all the taxes and interest you’d be accruing after building your home. If your parents were like my parents, you traveled the two hours to and from the city for work every day, calling the house trying to make sure one of your kids picked up and assured all responsibilities were done. This also meant you paid double the taxes for working in the city and owning property in another state. A bunch of unforeseen fuck you’s by a commonwealth state and tiresome traveling before the city decided to take away toll booths, all while not knowing your kids are in the wilderness doing reckless shit.

If you were a kid like me during that time, leaving all of your friends behind to start high school in another state inevitably left you in shock, angry at your parents and curious to learn new excitement that couldn’t possibly be better than skipping after school with your friends or taking the Bx12 to the Bay Plaza AMC to make out with your crush. Learning to make new best friends and adjusting to a different lifestyle in simple terms sucked at 13 and if you were marked for greatness like I was, you already had underlying mental health problems no one knew about or would know how to help you with because your parents were old-school; suicidal tendencies and rebellion were just a phase of disobedience you’d eventually grow out of or needed beat out of you until you had some sense of respect.

My father grew up in Harlem through the 60’s and 70`s; which means he experienced the heroin, aids and crack epidemics and was raised by immigrant parents who witnessed open racism, murder and zero women’s rights. Child welfare systems were still up and coming and enlisting in the military was still a popular thing to do as a young man to save yourself or make a career.

My mother was originally from Isabella Puerto Rico, she moved to Southside Brooklyn when she was 8. No one ever got in your family matters for beating your kids the street or kicking your pregnant daughter out at 16. They lived through poverty, the history of burnt-out Bronx, outrageous violence and the first world trade attack. My father left his home and joined the military when his life in the streets proved a deadly outcome. When he came back, he learned about Rikers Island, which was hiring at those times with no need of a college degree. My mother went and got herself a bachelor’s she would never use, unable to find a job after college and fighting the odds of becoming another single mom on welfare. Then she learned of Rikers, where she eventually met my father and fell in love. We call our entitled, multi-opportunistic and free love generation hard. Gay rights were unheard of, you couldn’t even hold hands with a black woman if you were white. The toxicity they were raised in…I remember some of the stories they’d tell me about watching people hang themselves and stab each other in the jails. I’m not quite sure how they managed to keep stressful, demanding jobs and still kept up with us. PTSD and childhood trauma wasn’t recognized when they were kids, so its no surprise they treated my defiant behavior as plain bad and spoiled behavior. They didn’t know what the hell was wrong with me or why I was so dramatic.

Anyways to start up about me, in 2016 I moved back to New York from Pennsylvania completely changed. I was 22 years old, pregnant with a second child and fighting for my life. A doctor once told me I had PTSD. I never followed up because if I was going to do this single mom thing, I knew I could no longer build myself a traceable record as an adult. I wanted to work, become somebody. I didn’t want to be a statistic. I had quit heroin cold turkey after being drug addicted and insane for about 5 years. I did the welfare thing for a year and a half before an amazing switch went off where I had this new drive, living a somewhat new life with whatever was going on in me and no one to explain it to or receive guidance from.

What causes the body to feel chronic pain with no idea why? The constant fatigue, nightmares, living in fear, overworking myself with college courses and bullshit jobs, fainting on trains sometimes without a known cause. I’d binge drink from feeling aggravation or a deep nothingness that was too overwhelming to spend the day in while raising two little kids. The lack of patience with my children and overreactions to the slightest things that happened in my work life and home life just led me to drink more. I drank to feel excited enough to bake my sons’ cakes, dance with them and chase them in the parks without feeling pulled down. That was me for the first 4 years, trying to work my way towards a career, not realizing that PTSD has already been running my life for years.

In 2017 I began therapy with my oldest son Jesi, who was about 2 at the time, just after giving birth to my little Edwin. My son wouldn’t talk much and was hurting himself in his tantrums. I somehow knew it was from the toxic environment he was born into and felt guilty enough to reach out for help. Their father and I always fought. I was always stressed out or crying while holding him. I remember Jesi would instantly fall asleep to my screams as I’d be bleeding or sweating over him. When he was born, he was shaking and so small. I had a lot of things I needed to tell someone so they can teach me how to cope with my bad parenting and fear…more importantly to help me help him experience feelings responsibly and using his inner voice. I lived in fear my children’s father and his sick family would come back to reap havoc in my life, just as I finally found the driving force to try harder. I still live in fear my kids turn out to be anything like me or their father so I’m constantly trying to talk to them about things they wouldn’t understand yet.

That year in 2017, I met a wonderful doctor who I won’t name, but he helped me overcome so much fear in raising these boys. I began opening up about my childhood and the crazy ass memories of back home that was affecting how I viewed life and how I responded to feelings I didn’t understand. All these years being back in the city, I had this fear of losing the things I worked so hard for…so I hushed a lot of my underlying issues and just dealt with everything presented to me, because that’s just what you do when you’re a parent.

Yet, no matter how many times I’d share my memories or talked about the things that happened… I guess I never really came to terms with those things of the past. Somehow my reactions or behaviors in familiar situations would show me I’m still struggling to put to rest the old me. The subconscious mind is its own planet filled with repressed memories that can emerge when you pass familiar places or experience situations that feel like déjà vu. Your body gets in this fight or flight response without any real danger taking place. Disassociation places me in past moments that often cause me to feel anxious or distracted from my work. I tried long stroller walks to the Bronx Zoo, HIIT workouts on YouTube, late night runs and God knows what else trying to be a healthier mom. Eventually work or mom life would throw off whatever positive routine I’d try sticking to. Ultimately people go back to what they know, and you can’t always blame them for it. Having a drink made sense, something to take the edge off after work or when you have no time for yourself or any money to do something exciting. It was also a social routine, the weekend blackouts with my best friend and bar hopping with co-workers after work seemed like the only thing people did out in the city.

Later in 2020, I realized just how bad this PTSD thing was, so I starting writing. I finally had a city law enforcement job that could build up my resume for other jobs, with new dreams of someday becoming a juvenile probation officer. I was almost done with my associates degree and had been living with Herpes for about a year. That’s right, I said I also herpes. Oh, the wonderful stigmas about Herpes that make it feel like such a death sentence! I didn’t get it being a hoe, I just trusted a narcissistic smile and a feeling that reminded me of a time where I knew I was in love. How I treated myself after that showed me that I still had a lot of inner work to do. How much I really hate myself. You just couldn’t have a law enforcement