I Will Never Forget That Day
I don’t ever want to feel, like I did that day. I was abandoned and left to wander through the midst of my own anxieties, knee deep wading through every current, fighting it. Another drop of the remedy, one, two, it was my only solace at this time. Constant devils racing and teasing. It was partially my fault, I lied, I said I wanted to go to Olive’s house. I would have told them anything just to escape that house of utter ruin. This was beyond that. Imagine a place glowing and welcoming inviting you in for a tea party but you look closer and you can see that everything is slightly crooked, and then you look again and the walls are screaming, demons roam freely, where respect and dignity is nothing, jealousy and envy command actions and emotions and chronic repression is the only way to survive. It’s not normal, it can’t be and I hated it, brought in as a guest, welcomed suspiciously and treated like an enemy once I was on their territory.
Those nights lying there, awake, watching the dark surround me, shadows, the monster grunting, not even sure if I was awake. Was I awake or asleep, what was the difference, I felt I had forgotten, praying, screaming, grasping, my stomach throbbing. The terror, I know of night terror, night torture. I’m standing there, Dali is painting me in and I can’t get out, wandering aimlessly in a limbo of anguish. I am there crying, no tears, dehydrated from crying, the kitchen is too far, the water can’t quench me. If I leave I might wake the beast up, every grunt rhythmically intertwined with my panic, I can’t move and I sip on the remedy which would help me remember I would get out of there soon. I would be out. It would help my soul relax for just a few seconds, sometimes even a minute I would drift, but then abruptly wake from a deformed dream into a nightmare, sweating, panicking, hysterical convulsions of pain. They say we have no notion of hell but I do. The only thing I never expected was that what they did to me over those five days would last for years later, would haunt and terrorize me in the middle of the night, waking up panicking and sweating and crying. And anytime I’d feel anxiety or dread I would flashback back to that time. Standing on that doorstep feeling restless and broken down, no strength left, having my soul slashed out and to them it was nothing, it was life, for they had no souls, theirs were ripped out at an early age and were walking fiends. But those particular few hours I spent in my grandmothers house, if I die never feeling like that again I will be content, but I wont be, I can never be because I was exposed to it by my own naivety, I let them make me feel like that and I will never be able to forget feeling completely worthless.
I had nowhere to go, well I did have places but I had to redeem the situation and make all the pain worthwhile. I had the backdoor key; it was an accident. I went in. I was an intruder sneaking into a house that was abandoned, ripped apart, ghostly and left for junkies to hide out in. Children used to play here, I could hear them, and I longed to be with them. Instinct in a search for normality was to make some tea. I opened the fridge; there was nothing in there. I was in my grandmother’s house and there was no milk in the fridge. The house was torn apart. I was torn apart. How could I look at my family, my grandmother, in the same way ever again after knowing I had been there and felt something I was never meant to be exposed to. I sat in the dining room. I opened that sandwich I had bought earlier, tuna and sweet corn, I took a bite and I didn’t feel like anymore but I felt I should. I should eat, it was healthy, I was not. When had I eaten last? I couldn’t remember, I was nothing. I was worth nothing. I was a ghostly intruder; they broke me. The pictures on the wall stared at me, disgracing me, yet pitying me all at once. I accidentally walked into a parallel universe and felt unearthly out of place. I’ll watch some videos in the sitting room. I couldn’t though; I just couldn’t do normal things and feel right. It was wrong, I was wrong; I was reduced to do this. I’ll go upstairs to the bathroom. There was a big window there and I could smoke out it, I always did, except this time no need for excuses and no air freshener to get rid of the smell. It was wrong. I smoked because it was all I had left. In that house, I found a disturbed sanctuary for a few hours. In that big town, this was my only refuge. I was weak, faint, my body a shadow, my heart no good anymore. How could it recover, it didn’t. I went on up to the bedroom where I lay on the bed for hours waiting for a phone call that would lead to company, company I did not want but I needed. Anxiety plagued me for years, but this was different, this was destructive and it reduced me to nothing. I was wasting away; I needed someone to catch me. There was no one there and I knew that when I went home I couldn’t tell anyone because it hurt too much. Little did I know, I wouldn’t remember. The tears would stop if someone were looking at me. The pain would only leave when I felt safe but the anxiety never left. It never leaves but I needed help, I needed help and I couldn’t get any. I lay there on that bed exhausted and broken. Hope was a word, I had no sense of the feeling anymore, it had left. Death was a reality but even I was too pathetic for that. I can’t remember much after that, its vanished from my memory, lost somewhere never to be found because I’m afraid to remember.