Still Dizzy
Oct. 11th, 2019 09:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingbootThis is why I don't like things like Mental Health Awareness Days etc. It's not a case of 24 hours of revelation and the next day we are all normal again. One door opens, more doors open, that's how it is. And I must go out into the cold wind today, to shake this out of me, to concentrate on the real world. That's what it takes. I still can't breathe properly but it will loosen, it won't even take 12 hours.
Flashbacks then, the most terrifying times of my life, nothing to do with Terence Henry Emmett's sordid little attempt. And because I have no clue who else might be triggered, I try to use the old LJ cut.
Mum so ill, triggered by Dad's considerable mental issues, I suspect. Strange how the ill find each other. Attacks that she knew would, if reported, have me taken into care, even in the blase years of the 70s. That's why she warned me never to tell anyone, that I would be taken away and given to strangers who would molest me if I said a word. She was so tremendously ill, dangerously ill. But she was not so ill that she didn't understand the law.
A beautiful shining sweet adorable woman almost destroyed by schizophrenia. She has come such a long way since then, something to be proud of. And she deserves kindness.
But my god, when I was a child, she frightened me.
Making me kneel down in front of her as she cut my fringe. Just once I remember her telling me to be very still or she might cut into my eyes with the scissors. She gave a strange low laugh as she said it. I am every day and more of 57 years and that one still scares me.
Scenes of her growling at me like a dog, telling me that I had a new name, that my name was Fuckingbitch and I had to answer to it. I refused.
She would growl 'Fuckenfuckenfuckenfucken...fuckkkkkkken...' over and over again until my skin was crawling at the sound of her voice, her lips drawn back in this long strangely frozen canine snarl.
I was late to meet her outside the local Tescos once. She was surrounded by shopping bags, and she was furious.
'Everyone staring at me as though I was a prostitute!' What, a prostitute surrounded by groceries? I protested but it wasn't enough. I said sorry. She pursed her lips. 'Just wait til I get you home,' were the ominous words, and she gripped my hand hard. So sinister, how on the way home she would stop and talk to people courteously, and I wondered for a long time after why I didn't beg them for help there and then. All the way home so measured. Then in the house, she beat the living daylights out of me.
She was always threatening my death. The first time I actually wanted to die was after she pounced on me and bit down deep into the crown of my head, growling again like a crazy dog, and the air was full of this taste of salt. I ran out away into the fields and looked up into this perfect summer's day, blue sky bright sun, and I was ready to be gone. Something changed in me then.
Something changed in her too. The strange rages gave way to active paranoia, delusions of poison and enemies, voices in the walls, non existent people threatening her, the floor burning, spies in the PC, endless nasty rubbish that consumed her mind and her years. Now she is in a much more passive state, she lives without electricity and running water, and she is benign, happy. The disease seems to have worked its way through her, and with luck, she will live to a ripe old age enjoying life as much as she can.
I have a few scars to be sure. Write them down, cough them up, get them out, out into the aether, open the bloody windows, get air into the room. I am embarrassed by it all, guilty to write like this about a person I love who is still alive.
But it does work. For now at least, I feel better.
Flashbacks then, the most terrifying times of my life, nothing to do with Terence Henry Emmett's sordid little attempt. And because I have no clue who else might be triggered, I try to use the old LJ cut.
Mum so ill, triggered by Dad's considerable mental issues, I suspect. Strange how the ill find each other. Attacks that she knew would, if reported, have me taken into care, even in the blase years of the 70s. That's why she warned me never to tell anyone, that I would be taken away and given to strangers who would molest me if I said a word. She was so tremendously ill, dangerously ill. But she was not so ill that she didn't understand the law.
A beautiful shining sweet adorable woman almost destroyed by schizophrenia. She has come such a long way since then, something to be proud of. And she deserves kindness.
But my god, when I was a child, she frightened me.
Making me kneel down in front of her as she cut my fringe. Just once I remember her telling me to be very still or she might cut into my eyes with the scissors. She gave a strange low laugh as she said it. I am every day and more of 57 years and that one still scares me.
Scenes of her growling at me like a dog, telling me that I had a new name, that my name was Fuckingbitch and I had to answer to it. I refused.
She would growl 'Fuckenfuckenfuckenfucken...fuckkkkkkken...' over and over again until my skin was crawling at the sound of her voice, her lips drawn back in this long strangely frozen canine snarl.
I was late to meet her outside the local Tescos once. She was surrounded by shopping bags, and she was furious.
'Everyone staring at me as though I was a prostitute!' What, a prostitute surrounded by groceries? I protested but it wasn't enough. I said sorry. She pursed her lips. 'Just wait til I get you home,' were the ominous words, and she gripped my hand hard. So sinister, how on the way home she would stop and talk to people courteously, and I wondered for a long time after why I didn't beg them for help there and then. All the way home so measured. Then in the house, she beat the living daylights out of me.
She was always threatening my death. The first time I actually wanted to die was after she pounced on me and bit down deep into the crown of my head, growling again like a crazy dog, and the air was full of this taste of salt. I ran out away into the fields and looked up into this perfect summer's day, blue sky bright sun, and I was ready to be gone. Something changed in me then.
Something changed in her too. The strange rages gave way to active paranoia, delusions of poison and enemies, voices in the walls, non existent people threatening her, the floor burning, spies in the PC, endless nasty rubbish that consumed her mind and her years. Now she is in a much more passive state, she lives without electricity and running water, and she is benign, happy. The disease seems to have worked its way through her, and with luck, she will live to a ripe old age enjoying life as much as she can.
I have a few scars to be sure. Write them down, cough them up, get them out, out into the aether, open the bloody windows, get air into the room. I am embarrassed by it all, guilty to write like this about a person I love who is still alive.
But it does work. For now at least, I feel better.
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no subject
Date: 2019-10-11 01:10 pm (UTC)For the record, your childhood and my childhood were not that dissimilar. Although my mother wanted to take us both out. The old murder/suicide gambit.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-13 07:41 am (UTC)Quite how you have become the extraordinary woman you are is a mystery in itself. Thank you for surviving, the world is warmer and brighter with you in it. But I appreciate that can be hard to see when you are the one generating all the spark.
In an infinite number of universes and timelines, everything can happen, so I have decided to adopt the memory, that in one of these you did materialise in those sparkles, and the shy little me was comforted!
And in another, I appeared in your life, to have serious words with the adults, and offer you somewhere safe and fun to grow. Turns out you didn't need my fairy godmothering to make you awesome. But it can never be said enough how much you deserved it.