10 September 2013
Shit happens. When you least expect it. That was the sort of shit that happened to me in 1995. When a brute-force tsunami struck. Flashback after flashback of truths once erased by sleep. Truths I tried to forget. Truths I left behind. Truths I omitted from my diaries.
Everything that happened after my twenty-third birthday just unspooled in my head. Came back in a merciless surge.
Bringing their soul-destroying burdens of guilt, fear, and regret.
Guilt. The death of my Persian cat, Catapult, three months after my twenty-third birthday. The grief as I buried my face in his fur. So soft. So velvety. Yet so devoid of life. Truth was, I’d been too lazy to write down the symptoms of his illness in my diary. Even though he had trouble breathing for days, I did not take him to the vet. That’s the real reason why Catapult’s heart stopped beating.
Fear. The shock of nearly being mowed down by a car on Trinity Street two weeks after my twenty-third birthday. The vehicle barreling in my direction, headlong, nose pointed at me. The sunlight glinting off its chrome fender in diabolical fashion. Tires hurtling forward with malevolent intent. The sickening screech of brakes. The helplessness on my tongue as I lay under my crumpled bicycle. The bleak, terrifying certainty that my life was about to be snuffed out by two tons of steel.
Worse, the flash of realization that I’d brought it upon myself. I only had my own stupidity to blame. I had been dense enough to ignore the one-way-street signs and cycle in the wrong direction.
Regret. My foolish breakup with Alistair six months after my twenty-third birthday. The crushing distress that flooded his eyes when I told him he deserved someone better. Truth was, I’d been seeing my ex-classmate Jack for months behind Alistair’s back. The burning regret that consumed me later when I found out that Jack was in fact a two-timing jerk. I had made a big mistake about Alistair. Massive. The boy had loved me. But he had already moved on by then.
It was too late.
The staggering number of times I threw up in the loo. Minutes after eating. Eyes averted from the vomit in the bowl. So I could be as slim as Laura, whom all the guys fancied. God, I was envious of her lithe, slender figure. Her consequent ability to twirl men around her little finger, like one of the locks of hair framing her face. How they would come panting in response. Trousers practically around their ankles.
Truth was, I had omitted each and every toilet episode from my diary. Just to pretend they never happened. Flushing, then forgetting. So that I could keep throwing up. Again and again. Even after promising Dad that I would kick the habit on pain of losing my monthly allowance.
Scars I’d accumulated after my twenty-third birthday. Baggage I thought I’d shed. Lessons I failed to learn. Promises I broke. Secrets I failed to keep. Errors I kept repeating. Things I regretted. Opportunities I missed. Aches that tore my heart apart. Fears that flooded my gut. Horrors that haunted my mind. Reminders of my own stupidity that scarred my soul.
It was the sheer magnitude of those truths surging into my head. Unbidden and unwanted. Terrifying in their immediacy. Overwhelming in their volume. Crippling in their intensity.
It punctured my spirit. Turned me into an emotional wreck. I could no longer hide beneath the cloak of self-delusion. I could no longer tune out the terrible realities that swamped my mind.
I spent days wandering around in a daze.
When I realized there was comfort in forgetfulness.
But I could no longer forget.
11 September 2013
Why can’t I be like the other people around me? Like the Mono housewife who lives next door with her cat and husband. Who wakes up cheerful most mornings. Ready to begin yet another page of her life. Emotionally untainted by the previous pages. Blissful in her selective ignorance.
She isn’t a prisoner of her unwanted past.
Will I ever be free from bad memories? Free of the traumas clogging my mind. Swamping it. Weighing it down. Free of the baggage of memory. The burden of remembering. Free of knowing what I do not wish to know.
I tried, for a while, to pretend that everything was all right. That I was the girl I once was. Even though the girl was gone. Then I gave up. No point in keeping up the pretense, I thought. That’s when I did the stupidest thing I could have ever done. I threw away all my old paper diaries, thinking I didn’t need them anymore. After all, those diaries were a mocking reminder of the bliss I enjoyed after my twenty-third birthday.
I was dense enough to think that no one would notice.
Big mistake, as they say.
Huge.
Dad thought he had the right medicine for me, didn’t he? The tablet of institutionalization. If he dragged me to St. Augustine’s after he found my diaries in the bin, he must have interpreted my act as lunacy. My frustration as insanity.
But all I needed was sense. The understanding that I should conceal my differences from people around me.
Dad meant well, I’m sure.
But fuck him for that one-way ride to St. Augustine’s. It took me seventeen years to get a return ticket.
12 September 2013
Why isn’t Mark Henry Evans ringing? Yet I’m not going to be the first to call. I won’t. Even though I’m tempted to feel sorry for myself. Little Miss Memory sitting in her cottage all alone.
Memory’s weird, by the way. Because some recollections are getting fuzzier and fuzzier.
The problem with being able to remember everything is that you don’t really remember all of it. Some memories no longer arrive as they once did. A few have even warped into elusive fragments. Wispy clouds of blurry, opaque nothingness. Indistinct bits and pieces, all blunted around their edges. Shadowy shards of darkness and light. Vapid remnants of sounds and colors.
Yet bad memories have a stubborn tendency to stick around. The god-awful ones. They refuse to travel down the fuzzy route. They creep back into my mind at the most inopportune moments. They haunt me in the middle of the night.
And that’s the whole fucking problem.
But I should stop feeling sorry for myself. It’s pointless to moan about old shit. It’s time for a new sort of shit. It’s time for change. From now on, I will use my memories well. To my advantage and satisfaction.
I will use them to destroy him.
13 September 2013
He called. Oh, yes, the mighty Mark Henry Evans finally did. He was attending a meeting in London at three in the afternoon, he said. But he was free afterwards.
What he wanted from me was clear.
Perhaps, I said.
He had to beg. Oh, yes, he did have to beg.