Sad.

I’ve forgotten how to write. I’ve forgotten how to read.

Hell, I’ve even forgotten how to live.

I’ve forgotten how to smile and make conversation. I’ve forgotten how to make my eyes light up when my lips stretch from side to side.

I only know how to drink copious amounts of water with lemon squeezed in and a daily bowl of instant noodles with fresh lemon and coriander.

I know how to walk for hours a day, amassing over 20,000 steps to nowhere and running my eyes over hundreds of houses decorated flamboyantly for Christmas.

Sometimes, Christmas is the worst time ever. I don’t blame people for wanting to celebrate a non birthday at this time. People need something to look forward to in this dreary, grey, dull time of year. They need magical lights and bright tinsel to light up the darkness. When the sun comes out, flooding weak rays through naked trees, heat dissipating with the low lying mist that spreads damp fingers along every crack and crevice, every hole in clothes, I feel depressed.

I remember the smell of stale cigarettes. A hacking laugh. Tall, gaunt, skeletal. Long feet with bony white toes. Filthy kitchen, deceased dog. Cigarettes. Dependancy on a puff of weed. Unkempt pale brown hair. Long, face, large head. Skinny, skinny pale legs. Disgusting jokes about kicking me in a place no woman should ever be kicked. Hacking laugh.

I realised yesterday that I really did ruin my life. That even when I do want to publish my book, I can’t put my name on it. Because he will find it and then find me. I have no freedom because I am still afraid of him. No, petrified. That even in my happiest moments he is lurking somewhere in the background and I can’t ever escape, and I always, always have to be careful.

I realised that I threw everything away because I was a stupid, stupid girl.

I realised that I still think about him.

Every.

Single.

Day.

I laugh at a joke and then my insides suddenly curl up and a stinking, dripping rot spreads through my gut and I feel sick with fear because I am reminded of him. I hate that I am reminded of him.

And at night I still lie awake and tremble. For hours and hours. When my husband falls asleep I turn on the lamp because I can’t bear to lie in the darkness. Sometimes in my house I can smell that faint, sickly sweet smell of cigarettes and dirty clothes and I want to hurl. I rush around putting all the candles on and scrubbing until my fingers are raw.

The smell is in my mind. It is not real. But I can smell it as though it is there. I think I am going mad. I clean and clean and clean but I can still smell it. It makes me feel dirty.

I hate this country. I hate these people. I hate this atmosphere. I hate this season. And I have given up trying to catch up with the world. It has long left me by the wayside.

I also loathe myself for allowing myself to make such a stupid mistake.

I realised that I have not healed. And even when I think I have, the dreary winter sun will come out and remind me forcefully, miserably, that I have not. I think all my happiness has been sucked out by him and I will never ever feel joy again.

And it’s been more than three years. I don’t know when I will stop feeling like this.

Tim Wootton

 

Crests and Troughs

 

I don’t feel too good.

I spend too much time in the shower. I enjoy the torrid water beating against my body, I think it is hot but if it were to be cranked up a degree  I am afraid I would burn. I hold my finger poised over the power button on the electric shower and contemplate it for a good five minute before i press on it with a sluggish finger. Everything feels weakened. Even after I have slept.

I lay in bed yesterday for hours, and when I got up it was 4pm. I got in at 9:45am. I didn’t want to get dressed but I did because Damian did and I wanted to make an effort for him. He told me I seem like I am carrying a heavy burden and I smiled at him and whacked him lightly with a towel and told him not to be so silly.

I wish I could tell him. I wish I could tell somebody. That somedays all I think about in bed on my own with a growing feeling of fear and disgust is everything that happened for two years and ended a year ago. I am constantly reminded of it. Sometimes smells waft my way and I am jerked back into a time and a place and my throat constricts and the world shrinks and shrinks and shrinks and I want to escape but I can’t because the world is too small. There’s nowhere to go.

I was standing outside the flat yesterday, and it opens right out to the high street of the little town I now live in. I was leaning against the wall because Damian went in to get the car keys and while I was waiting the faint music from the pub down the road wafted my way. Rihanna. Singing something. I’d know that cow’s voice anywhere. He always had her blasting. He always spoke about how he would fuck her senseless if he got the chance. While I was sitting right next to him. When I complained he slapped my thigh. My thigh. My thigh. I don’t know how I could have let such a disgusting thing touch me. Why did I let him touch me. Why. Why. Why.

Or Rihanna blasting out in a rickety old car as it sped down a quiet, pitch black A road. Rihanna wailing about how she would drink to the frickin’ weekend. Him singing along. Me giving a fake, forced smile. Him telling me not to be such a moody cow. It was such an ugly song. Her moaning voice drags me back to bleak places.

I did not want to be there.

You know those times when your soul isn’t happy? When you have every reason to feel joy but you just don’t? When everything you thought would make you happy, help you escape, is in your grasp but you just want to go back? When you keep being told that you are free, you are better off, this is you being an adult, living your life… but your mind finds it increasingly difficult to relate those facts to the agony you are feeling. But I’m not really living it, am I? I am a frightened little rabbit doing your bidding because I am scared to death of you. That’s what the voices in my head were telling me.

I looked out into the darkness and blocked everything else out from my mind. I focused only on getting it over and done with and going back to the safe haven of my home again. Where nobody knew anything. Where I spent hours late at night glued a phone call I really didn’t want to partake in, tiredness cloaking me like a heavy, hot blanket. I glanced listlessly at all the work I didn’t do because I had to spend hours talking to a madman.

A madman. A mad man who rambled and shouted and raved and told me despicable things about my mother. I sat there in the dead of the night listening to somebody insult my mother and call her a fat cow and a selfish bitch. MY MOTHER who sacrificed everything for me, who still does, who spends all her time and energy thinking of me, doing things for me, planning for me, researching for me, and never spares not a second on herself. My mother. And I sat there listening to it. I took it in and I nodded and sighed and yawned and tried to make excuses but to no avail. Egotistical manipulators  don’t understand excuses. They think of nobody but themselves.

I thought that period of time would be erased from memory once I escaped it. I thought my dabblings with such a force would have no effect on me later because.. why would they? I am alright, aren’t I? I am fairly normal. Average. Happy-go-lucky. I have never suffered with any mental illness. I am fine.

A whole year ago yesterday and why is it still bothering me. Why am I still terrified? Why  does my heart beat with frantic panic every time an unknown number calls me? Why do I feel like I will never ever shake the disgusting, terrifying, menacing, monstrous feel of him off?

I want to step out of this heavy burdensome skin.

Sometimes I laugh so loudly at the things Damian says and after a while I am still laughing, but I am no longer in the moment. I have stepped away from it, and now my laughter is a deafening echo and my face is doing all the motions but I am really crying so heavily I have melted right into the ground.

So, I don’t feel too great. I have stomach aches in the evenings. My limbs fall heavy and I don’t seem to be able to breathe so well anymore. My chest feels too tight. I take off my bras and still, my deep breaths aren’t so satisfying.

It’s crests and troughs, though. I am so happy one moment in the park swinging on swings, sailing down slides, letting the wind whirl through my hair, opening my arms wide to embrace the forces of this beautiful nature. But the next moment I can hardly move for the pain inside. It just hurts. I cry for no reason. I cry when I tell Damian I love him. I cry when I hear my mother’s voice on the phone. I cry when I look at my hair in the mirror. How can somebody feel so happy, and yet so sad?

I just don’t understand it. Why do I feel so poorly, and yet so alive? How could I feel so nauseous and yet dig into meals like a ravenous pig? I want to look forward to things, get excited about things, sing and dance and laugh honestly again.

So I am just waiting for this trough to turn into a crest. Today was better than yesterday. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.