Bing Bong

Imaginary friends return

Photo by Beazy on Unsplash

In the movie Inside Out, Bing Bong, Riley’s (the lead character) imaginary friend stirs her to dreaming along with a cast of emotions to get her out of the memory dump. After many attempts, he realizes that his weight was preventing Riley from rising to the surface and returning her to consciousness. At the last moment, after the final push, he jumps off the back of the wagon, begs the others to take it from there, and fades into oblivion. As his extended hand slowly disappeared, I found myself sobbing uncontrollably, snot, hiccups, blubbering, sitting next to my children. They were 6 and 8 years old. I was 45.

That scene unlocked something in me that I’d believed my foray into adulthood and motherhood had well erased. I’d been letting bygones be just that, in the past. But in the recesses, rounded out corners of my psyche they’d hid, poorly it turns out, and they’d started to resurface. Like lost ships and planes lured to the Bermuda Triangle, pulled to the depths by magnetic force, come to shore with drought, I’d begun to remember.

Today the heat was so stifling its presence threatened to collapse my lungs in on themselves. Too many times I said to myself, I cannot do more. I couldn’t breathe, tolerate the velvet texture of my too-damp skin, bear the sweat dripping from the top of my scalp, between my breasts, over my pudgy tummy. I was made painfully aware of myself, and it made me uncomfortable.

Feeling my body in space, sweat turning cold, breathing heavily, the crushing of my ribs, the pressing of them into my organs, caused me to gasp. My pinched face, clenched in like a fist as I squinted, pressed the tears back behind my eyes. I am reminded of the times I’d swallowed my hurt, my anguish, and discomfort. The times that I’d lied to myself and anyone around me that yes, I was ok when it was apparent that I was not. I am reminded of being scared to death. I begin to remember the spaces in my subconscious where I’d packed everything in dank, dusty boxes, just before my body begins to shut down.

One of the telltale signs of C-PTSD (complex post-traumatic stress disorder) is the memory dump, the forgetting of much of one’s childhood experiences, good or bad, as a protection against deep hidden truths. A labyrinth of data and dust clogs the ability to function in the knowing, the remembering and a fog settles. Bing Bong thumped me on the chest and before fading, whispered, remember.

Some of us become very comfortable hearing violent language, personal assaults, dismissive corrections directed at us. Some become quite comfortable using these modes of communication, the inevitable “voice inside one’s head” raging at everything around them. Every slight, every misunderstanding, every reminder of how they too were spoken to, treated erupting like a volcano as plates shift below the surface of themselves. Sometimes we are one way or the other. Either way, we are using our own sharply developed tools to navigate a world we know deeply to be unsafe.

We were led to believe that time would heal all wounds, that words that should have best been left unspoken, could be thrown at us like Molotov cocktails at the burning embers of our tattered child selves, and we might somehow come out of it anew. Groundhog Day would let us somehow start over unmarred. But I keep catching myself in a flinch, wincing and becoming reactive to pain pressed into my skin decades ago. Pushing away, turning, curling up. Despite my resolve, I feel unsafe. But I don’t want to let it be known just in case I begin again to look like prey.

When I was in fourth grade, I was given a plushie aptly named The Worry Bird (Worrius Relievium¹ that came with the Audabuns Guide). This toy was stressed out! You could tell by the exhaustion rendered in its face, dilated pupils, wild feathers, short legs and stiff wings that prevented it from flight. This was a creature that lived in a permanent state of freeze. It came with a manual by one Father Aloysius Fidget, that suggested this bird had the power to relieve worry in humans. I was one such worried, 9-year-old human.

So much of what I was like before puberty when my neuroflag starting waving like a banner flown behind a two-seater airplane at the beach, I was a good girl. A good, good girl. Like sit in the front row and keep it down, maybe even whisper, Shhhhhh, when other people started acting up because I didn’t want any of us to get in trouble. I had a tic where I would inhale so deeply but be unable to fully exhale and I licked a pink circle around my lips until it stung, and I needed to be slathered with Vaseline. (This was the 70-80s, Vaseline WAS lip balm.) I was a lone black girl, sitting in the front row answering all the questions and still not being chosen in the first year for G&T (gifted and talented).

There were stressors and there was stress. I figured anyone could say the N-word at any moment, ask why my skin was so brown or if I got a suntan. Ask to touch my hair or pull away for fear of having to touch my hair. Or worst of all, be called upon to answer the question. Whether or not I knew the answer was not the point. It was simply being made visible when my most relaxed state was in hiding.

One would never have known that at home, I sought safety behind a closed door, did not regale anyone with the tales of my day, never made mention of anything that excited me or made me curious. I did not dance around the kitchen or sing out at the top of my lungs or leave the silverware imprecisely lined up. Nothing about me up here was all that interesting. To anyone. We spoke quietly, watched. More was left unspoken than was shared. We never really knew each other.

Imaginary friends and stuffies were good at crouching down in the jungles of the hall closet and whispering. If you crawled under the bed, they’d go too. The real good ones could communicate telepathically, and they knew when you were afraid without your having to say anything. They knew when you were pretending you were ok, when you were squeezing tears and raspy-sounding cries down your throat, so you didn’t let on that all of it was too much.

When you woke up and returned to the 3-D, there they’d be, clenched in your arms.

I’d openly wept watching Inside Out and eagerly await a viewing of its sequel. I only remembered the Worry Bird when my oldest daughter suggested making a plushie for me, her grown up mother, to hold when I was overwhelmed and struggling to find my words with others outside the safety of my family.

I’d taken a stuffed animal, a Pound Puppy called Jarvis with me to college and slept with it every night. His underside fit the curve just under my armpit. I abandoned him and all my protections when my new boyfriend told me it was time to give up childish things.

They said time heals. All wounds. Floating through the clouds of my own subconscious, I am met with reminders of what remains unresolved. I am running, blown over, upside down, flipped in the air, all the while screaming and flailing, fighting for the ragged, little self, who licked her lips sealed shut, wouldn’t dare say the truest thing out loud, stuffed down the rage and hurt and anger and fear until it became a razor wire to keep the untrustworthy at bay. When Bing Bong disappeared, when he fell backwards and let go, giving Riley that last push back into herself, she found her strength.

We don’t always understand what it is that someone has endured or how much they are trying to untangle, won’t know unless they trust us, that they are seeking a place to drop the anchor and wade back to the shoreline. I was obsessed with the gravitational pull of the Bermuda Triangle, wondered what happened to all of those airplanes and ships and UFOs that were lured into the depths. I’ve heard it said that dreaming about a large body of water is about your emotional state or the larger state of consciousness and how you tread or float or flail is telling.

Though I am a very good swimmer, no matter where I am, in the ocean or the sea, the tub or the subconscious, I can only lay back so long with water lapping against my ears. Inevitably I will pop up and search my surroundings, afraid that without my vigilance I will sink to the bottom of it all. When Bing Bong let go, it meant Riley was on her own, their experiences together lost to her memory. Her emotions conspired to return her to herself, to her family, to a life she could enjoy and celebrate with them. That’s the beauty of a made-up story. It will always end well.

1. Worrius Relievium, vintage plushie.