Back

noun

• the rear surface of the human body from the shoulders to the hips
• the upper surface of an animal’s body that corresponds to a person’s back
• the spine of a person or animal.
• the main structure of a ship’s hull or an aircraft’s fuselage
• the part of a garment that covers a person’s back
• a person’s back regarded as carrying a load or bearing an imposition
• the side or part of something that is away from the spectator or from the direction in which it moves or faces; the rear
• the position directly behind someone or something
• the side or part of an object that is not normally seen or used
• the part of a chair against which the sitter’s back rests.
• a player in a team game who plays in a defensive position behind the forwards
• (the Backs) the grounds of Cambridge colleges which back on to the River Cam.

adverb

• in the opposite direction from the one that one is facing or traveling towards
• expressing movement of the body into a reclining position
• at a distance away
• (back of) North American • informal behind
• North American • informal losing by a specified margin
• so as to return to an earlier or normal position or condition
• at a place previously left or mentioned
• fashionable again
• in or into the past
• in return

verb

• [with object] give financial, material, or moral support to
• supplement in order to strengthen
• bet money on (a person or animal) winning a race or contest
• [with object] cover the back of (an article) in order to support, protect, or decorate it
• [no object, with adverbial of direction] walk or drive backwards
• [no object] (of the wind) change direction anticlockwise around the points of the compass
• [with object] Sailing put (a sail) aback in order to slow the vessel down or assist in turning through the wind.
• [no object] (back on/ on to) (of a building or other structure) have its back facing or adjacent to
• [with object] lie behind or at the back of
• put a piece of music on the less important side of (a vinyl recording)
• (in popular music) provide musical accompaniment to (a singer or musician)

adjective

• of or at the back of something
• in a remote or subsidiary position
• from or relating to the past
• directed towards the rear or in a reversed course
• Phonetics (of a sound) articulated at the back of the mouth

Origin Old English bæc, of Germanic origin; related to Middle Dutch and Old Norse bak. The adverb use dates from late Middle English and is a shortening of aback.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/back?q=back
____________________________________________________________________
I couldn't have identified the noise as screaming before. I hear words for a second but not long enough to determine what they are. That second is only long enough to recognize the sound as words. As soon as I try to listen, the wordless words turn to screaming and those screams smother, leaving me overwhelmed by their noise. Collectively, the screams are sirens receding into words spoken under water. I hear only the vibrations-- the brontide-- and they make me dizzy, distort my vision, leave me cold and drop my heartbeat from the center of my chest to the bottom of my back.

For 18 years, I heard sirens every night. When I laid in the middle of the road, in the middle of the night, I expected an ambulance would run me over and grind my fat, bones, and skin into the asphalt. The hospital was only a half-block down, close enough that the flashing lights would bounce off the baby blue walls of my bedroom. That night, for those hours, there weren't any sirens. Every other night, it seemed they screamed all night long. Every other night, when my fat and bones and skin--when my insides and my outsides-- were ground down beside my breath and my voice and my sense of the ground, there were sirens. In hard spaces now, I hear sirens where there are or are not actual sirens. Maybe I'm hearing words disguised as underwater voices disguised as screams disguised as sirens. Maybe sound sounds different from behind.

When I look back or go back or find myself back without realizing I've traveled back, it is like trying to listen to these voices. At first, I hear screaming and try to stay still, hoping that maybe this night or the next one or the next day will be the day when those screaming sirens silence, when there is nothing coming to kill me, when and where I don't experience terror from outside or inside. Then I hear murmurs from under water--or something like the Charlie Brown teacher voice. The harder I try to listen, the more I'm smothered with indistinguishable sound and the harder it is to hear what's dangerous. The harder I try, the further away I go. The harder I try, the more voices I hear in the cacophony. The more voices I hear--the more the sounds touch me--the smaller and smaller I must get inside this shell of fat and bones and skin. I am so far away underneath-- I am so far back.

Back a week ago or so, I woke from a dream in which I'd been standing above the backyard at my childhood home playing a Native American Flute. The grass was growing beneath my feet and there was a minimal breeze lifting branches in soft waves. There was neither sun nor rain-- gray blanketed everything, save for the deep, deep green of the grass and the deep, reddish brown of the flute. Everything I could see looked incredibly beautiful, yet in the dream I experienced a paralyzing sadness the beauty understood. I could do nothing more than play a three-quarter time, mournful, repetitive melody. I sensed people listening, and though I never saw them, the greater my sense they were there, the greater my sadness. I didn't want to be heard, but I kept playing.

Looking back, though I'm not certain I knew what the efforts were then, I've made many efforts at being heard--many efforts at 'playing the flute'. (As a side note, when I was faced with the 4th grade decision to pick an instrument to learn, I listened to the sample record given to us in music class and decided I wanted to play the flute. I learned the clarinet instead. My mother played flute and didn't want me to play the same instrument.) In an effort to both be heard and to stop hurt, there have been multiple suicide attempts-- starting in elementary school and running right through until college. There were loud nightmares and weird behaviors and clinging and refusing to play with other kids and extreme fits of depression. There have been writings and drawings I see as exposing once I've completed them. Of course, I only see this when looking back and so I have no expectation that anyone at any time during this time would have understood all of my oddities as telling. 

I don't think I've ever stopped my efforts at being heard and that truth bothers me. I feel like I should be over it all by now. That's the general expectation of the world--get over it. An eighth grade teacher asked why I couldn't believe that people cared, why I couldn't hold on to that truth. At thirteen years old I couldn't, and twenty-two years later, I still can't. My logical brain understands that truth but my being does not know that truth. And still, when I'm heard, I don't feel heard 'right' or 'enough' or I reject being heard all together. I'm waiting on something else or something more or, or, or. Maybe it's that I don't know what I'm trying to say or express or let out. So I keep trying, but I hurt worse for the trying because I feel I've failed and then I feel shame and it all circles back again and again. It is--I am--in a constant state of conflict. So much of the work I do is internal and I still opt to go it alone.

I knew the beauty understood the sadness in the dream because the beauty stopped. While I played, it did not move. It held space, like a scene on a canvas. The wind, minimal to start, stopped. The beauty gave me permission to keep going. It held back its own energy so I could express my own. And I believed it meant the gesture.