A Turtle’s Retreat – Chapter 2

By this time, maybe you are wondering who the girl is.  Her name is Jenny.  Although, you can probably guess that is not her real name.  It is the surreptitious alias that she and her brother devised one day when they were bored.  Yes.  It might come as a surprise to you to learn that Jenny is not an only child.  She has an older brother whose name is Michael.  And no, that is not actually his real name either.  While through the years and over time Jenny managed to blend in, she has never been able to fully immerse herself into what society’s universally recognized and mostly superficial standards are presumed to be.  But that doesn’t mean she didn’t try often enough.  Yet, every time she determined to fit in and follow the pack, so to speak, her efforts proved to be in vain.  Awkwardness overcame her as she inevitably found herself to be no different than a floundering fish out of water.  Discovering that typical social situations were generally uncomfortable and tedious, finding real solace only when she was secluded and back in the solitude and privacy of her home’s embrace.  Admittedly the irony of her own manufactured paradox is not entirely lost on her, as she spent some of her time seeking the companionship of others to combat loneliness only to instantly regret it, and instead long to be alone. 

It was during those prehistoric, formative years, when settling for one’s own thoughts as your constant companion was oftentimes your only choice anyway.   Remember, we are talking about the 70’s with handheld devices and social media still being just mere figments of someone else’s imagination. But Jenny didn’t really mind.  In fact, she preferred it that way.  However, unfortunately for Jenny, flashbacks of her youth have proven to be particularly and unapologetically fickle.  Allowing her to dig deep into her memory bank only to retrieve those subconscious memories that have bitterly tormented her no matter how hard she has tried to decidedly push them far out of reach in an effort to suppress them.  Cringeworthy excerpts from her past that can still manage to bring her to her knees, having singularly defined her ever-present weaknesses even while simultaneously calling to action her equally persistent strength and willfulness.  John Steinbeck said, “Nearly everyone has his box of secret pain.”   A commonly ill-conceived fallacy is that over time memories fade.  That is not necessarily true for many people.  Memories do not fade or disappear, rather they simply become dormant and resurface when least expected.  And, like an uninvited houseguest, usually with little time to prepare for their inconvenient and unannounced arrival.

The history of the 70’s has been commemorated in movies and books with recollections of what is now considered to be a beguiling bohemian era.  Snapshots of a point in history that typically include the timeless music that people listened to and the clothes that they wore while symbolically illustrating a spirited rebellion that has been as garishly promulgated as strobe lights, bell-bottom pants and platform shoes.  But as we all know time is mercilessly persistent and yields unimaginable changes that can make the end of any era appear to look and sound nothing like its alleged humble beginning.   Notwithstanding all that must have transpired in between.  John Steinbeck said, “Time is the only critic without ambition.” For Jenny, even with time serving as a reliable wedge, flashbacks are as unpredictable as a raging storm swirling in the middle of the sea.  Flashbacks that wash over her and force her to be reluctantly brought back to a time, and particular moments, that she would otherwise prefer to forget. Jenny grew up in New Jersey in the 70’s.  To the outside world, she was no different than any other young girl growing up at the same time.  A time when being inconspicuous and keeping secrets was generally a standard practice, and by all accounts, not hard to do.  Compared to today’s unruly world where the opposite is true and sharing too much information has become normalized and commonplace.  Jenny can recall hearing somewhere that a story told is a life lived.  And it is John Steinbeck who reminds us that, “To be alive at all is to have scars.”  For Jenny, managing to successfully conceal her fragile scars has proven to be an isolating and deeply inhibited lifelong war that she has waged against herself.  Determined to find someone with whom she can relate, only to be confronted with the realization that there is no such person.  As it turned out for Jenny mimicking the behaviors of a turtle was much easier as it permitted her to remain peripherally unobtrusive.  The box turtle, in particular, is a curious creature as it hides its head and limbs within the safety and confines of its hard shell when it senses danger.  The shell serves as the turtle’s protective armor against its predators.  Naturally retreating within itself is the instinctive safety measure that is doubtlessly responsible for its very survival.  Over time, with enough uncertainty, and for her own protection, Jenny unwittingly became like a turtle.

You see, being born fatherless was just the beginning of Jenny’s story.  From a purely observational and practical perspective, it would appear that a father’s role to his children, especially his daughter, is to be her first example of love.  Naturally it would seem that it is his responsibility to set the bar and provide the foundation of what is acceptable and how she should expect to be treated.   Having been rejected and abandoned by the man who never became her father, Jenny had no choice but to figure it all out on her own.  Perhaps she was better off, or maybe some would even say fortunate, that he left at the very start of her life’s journey.  Growing up one could scarcely know what they were missing if they never had it to begin with which, depending on the person, may or may not be comforting.  It could also be assumed, and has been said, that what you do not know cannot hurt you.  That, of course, is not true.  In fact, it is a fool who came up with that ridiculous concept.  Oftentimes it is what people don’t know that becomes the bane of their existence and can be the very thing that incites and causes them the most harm.  And as we see evidenced time and time again, bad decisions and choices do not often stand still and become transfixed or frozen in time just because we wish them to.  Instead, and more often than not, they become a chain reaction that triggers the behavioral patterns that we learned along the way that ultimately result in inevitable, yet preventable, eventualities.  And still, sometimes, we are not necessarily bound by our own choices, rather, it is the choices that others make on our behalf that we are left to contend with and sift through.  Oftentimes all that we have is the bed that someone else made for us leaving us to decide whether we should change the sheets or if we should leave and find a new bed where we can make our own choices and have no one else to blame but ourselves.  John Steinbeck said, “So many old and lovely things are stored in the world’s attic because we don’t want them around us and we don’t dare throw them out.”  Those old, yet not necessarily always lovely, things are called memories.  While some memories are captured in photographs that are carefully curated atop a mantle above a burning hearth for all to see, there are other collected memories, intangible souvenirs from the past that are privately stored on a dusty mantle deep inside your mind’s attic where they are hidden away and never meant to be seen.

For Jenny, however, remaining autonomous and adapting to the behaviors of a turtle by hiding herself away inside her hardened shell was simply not sustainable.  John Steinbeck is quoted as having said, “It’s a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it.”  Jenny was fully aware that although she was not responsible for her father’s abandonment, she knew that coming out of her shell and leaving behind life as she knew it would be her only chance at ensuring that history did not repeat itself.  She knew that she needed to change and become integrated into society with its superficial standards that she disliked and the people whom she distrusted.    John Steinbeck said, “Men do change and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.”  It is those subtle changes that are undetectable yet unmistakable at the same time.  And Jenny knew that while her reclusiveness permitted her to survive, it did not allow her to live.  Conditionally resigning herself to the realization that the two ideas were not interchangeable and could not co-exist.  Having accepted the unabridged version of her reality, Jenny was left with two choices.  She could remain the puddle that is left behind after a torrential storm that others step over and avoid.  Or.   She could become the storm.  By this time, you can probably guess which one she chose.  And that is where Jenny’s story really begins.

It was a hot summer day in New Jersey in the year 1976…..

Disclaimer:  All quotes were found on bookroo.com and are understood to be true statements, fictional or otherwise, referenced for the sole purpose of illustrating a point.   Quotes have been bolded and italicized to provide a delineation from the author’s perspective.