Shades · of · White

Tonight the past does not reach out to me with the tendrils of bitter memories. The few good memories do not call out to me either. Struggling for something to write my brain lingers on the phenomena of recovered memories.

The strange thing is that until I was in my 30's I had no positive memories of my childhood. Only bad memories interspersed between great sheets of nothingness where memories should be. I was afraid of that nothingness, was it so bad that I had to be protected from remembering it?

It never occurred to me that some of the lost memories could be good memories, hidden away because they made such a painful contrast to the overwhelming negative memories. My life was difficult and painful, but bearable because I didn't think I could have anything better.

I cannot help but think that the pain became sharper when compared to brief glimpses of the happy family we could have been. Therefore I hid away these glimpses so they would not constantly remind me of what might have been.

I had heard of recovered memories, but everytime the term was used it referred to really painful memories, generally abuse of some kind or other. I had not considered that perhaps happy memories could be recovered too.

The first time I recovered a happy memory was during a hypnotherapy session. The therapist would ask me to drift back to a memory, then describe it to him and we would do therapeutic work based on the memory recalled.

On this one occasion I drifted back to a happy memory of the family playing together on the beach. As I described the memory tears flowed down my face, a wellspring of grief released. Slowly over the years I've recovered a few more happy memories, not many but enough to show me the kind of family I could have had if my parents had not made each other so unhappy.

It's nice to have these memories, but none of them had the emotional impact of that first one. It was a real turning point in my therapy, as it allowed me to start to understand what positive emotions felt like. To realise that I could choose to respond to anything that happened in my life in a positive fashion. A major milestone on my journey away from depression and fear and towards freedom and the joy of living in the moment.

"Aggie Baggie Earing Aid, Aggie Baggie Hearing Aid" I can still hear the mocking chant chasing me down the street if I listen carefully. They called out from a distance, not daring to come within reach of my fists as I'd already shown them that I could hurt them physically as much as they hurt me mentally.

Every night the refrain was the same. The boys followed me almost all of the way home weaving their nasty little chant around my heart. It was hard enough making friends as it was. Nobody would come to our house or garden to play. "your mothers a witch" they whispered, afraid to raise their voice in case she heard. The adults all loved my mom, but the kids could see past the veneer to something twisted inside.

Most of my playtime was out on the streets, unless I managed to hide behind the settee with a good book before she ushered us out to play, or found us a job to do. If we were playing team tag games I was popular as I was big and strong. And I was always welcomed to the football games as I would happily play goalie, a position nobody else wanted to take. For me the unpopular positions allowed me a way in, to slide into the edge of the groups, not really one of them but expected. Leave the safety of our street and it was another matter, especially in the vicious little jungle that they called school.

I found it especially difficult to fit in with the other children at school. Children, adults too in all honesty, do not like difference. They tear away at anything they do not understand, their vicious little claws attempting to reduce it to a pile of quivering garbage that holds no threat to them. It didn't help that I liked learning, books were an entryway into a world of imagination and I ate them up. Mathematics was a magic language that flowed easily from my fingers, and science an the doorway to exciting discoveries. I thrived on learning and soon teachers pet was added to the epitaths that the other children hurled at me.

If my love of education was not bad enough I walked with pidgeon toes and had time of school regularly for traction on my feet. Then there was the box, the instrument of torture that some bright spark chose to call an hearing aid. Today's hearing aids are small and discrete. Tiny devices that sit neatly behind the ear. Mine was a box, about six inches square and at least 2 inches deep that hung from a chord around my neck, a wire went up from it to an earpiece that went in my ear. It sat there an ugly lump bang in the middle of my chest. But looks were the least of it's problems. The worst thing was the squeal. As the batteries started to die I would have to turn it up to hear properly. When turned up it would emit a high pitched shriek and above the sound I could hear the boys start to laugh.

The teacher however never seemed to notice the laughing and whispering behind me. It seemed to me then, and I still believe it listening to the tales of children who are bullied now, that the selective deafness of teachers is an important contributory factor to the incidence of bullying. If teachers acted each time nasty things were said and done in classrooms, right from the very first year, it would send a clear message as to the unacceptableness of some behaviour. As it is by ignoring sly digs, and whispers and name calling and piss taking, teachers send a message that such behaviour is acceptable.

As I grew older my hearing improved until finally I was able to put away the hearing aid. By then the damage to my self esteem had been done. The cries of Aggie Baggie Hearing Aid were only now in my head, and round my heart. Sometimes I hear it still

Let me say it again. I love my parents. Even though my dad is no longer with us I love him still, and I love my mum even though her life is so busy I don't see her very often.

Funny how we find a way to love even when we have no template. I do not remember my mother saying she loved me at any point during my childhood. I do not remember her hugging or kissing me, or even appearing pleased to see me. I do remember her anger and her scorn. I remember how nothing I did was ever good enough, I could always have done that little bit better if I'd tried harder.

I remember being surprised when my mother left my dad taking only the baby with her. I wasn't surprised that she left us girls behind, just surprised that she left him. Why would she take us, after all it seemed to me that we were just another inconvenience that she had to put up with. I was even more surprised when my dad moved my bed that night into the babies room. I don't think he meant to be cruel. I just think he wasn't aware that my baby sister was the only person I let myself have feelings for. And to be moved into her room just rammed the finality of her going down my throat.

I used to pretend that Gina was my baby. At 14 I could have easily passed for her mother. I'd take her on long walks, pushing the pram andas cars went past I would think "they don't know she's my sister". I wished she was mine, so little but loving, and I treated her as if it was mine. When mother left it was Gina I mourned for, her happy gurgle I cried for in the night. I didn't understand how she's wormed her way around the wall that locked out the rest of the world but she had. When mother left with her it was as if part of me had been torn away.

One of my earliest memories is of my decision to stop feeling. I don't have very many memories of my childhood. I think this is my subconsious mind's way of protecting me. This one however stands out really clear. It's intensity a bright counterpoint to the foggy miasma that hides the majority of my formative years.

I don't remember why I was angry and upset, just that I was. And I remember clearly thinking "I will never let you hurt me again". I was far too scared of them to say it, but I took the decision with quiet resolve. From that point on I would let nobody be important enough to hurt me. I would care for nobody enough that their opinion or judgements would matter to me. Within our large family I would nonetheless dwell in splendid isolation. The real me would hide inside behind masks, and thick walls, and an emotionless puppett would take her place and face the world. I couldn't have been more than six years old, maybe even younger, but I was to live by that decision for the next 30 or so years.

Long past the time that my lack of emotion offered any protection. Even when it had become a prison I couldn't escape from deep down inside that hurt, frightened, angry child held fast to her decision and no amount of logic from the adult I had become would shake her grip.

For many years I had no feelings for my parents, I was indifferent to them, or at least I thought I was. Looking back in my early fourties I was able to clearly see just how many of my decisions and life choices had been aimed at trying desperately to seek the approval of parents who didn't see to care, even though I had hidden my motivations from myself.

In my twenties I finally started to get angry with them. I stayed away. I convinced myself I hated them. What I realise now is that I couldn't let myself see that I loved them. Hate, anger, indifference all were ways to hide both from myself and them the side of me that longed to cry out "why don't you love me". "What is wrong with me that even my parents can't love me".

After a lot of personal work, and some expensive therapy I finally confronted my mother, and she apologised and we rebuilt our relationship and I came to know that she loved me.And I knew that I loved her. But I could not confront my dad, and I wasn't sure that I loved him, and I didn't believe that he loved me and we limped along a funny kind of half relationship.

And then I found out that he was dying. And the pain that cut through me, pierced me to the quick and showed me in a way I could not ignore just how much I loved him. I was lucky we had a year to rebuild our relationship. I could not tell him to his face that I loved him so I wrote him a letter. He never told me that he loved me, but once, the only time ever he called me love, and I knew.

My parents had always loved me they just didn't know how to show it. I had always loved them I just had not allowed myself to acknowledge it. In their pain and anger they hit out. In my pain and anger I hid away. The miracle is that we ever found a way past those barriers. The blessing is that we did it before he died. I miss him. I miss even more the parents they could have been if things had been different.

I love my parents, thank the goddess for bringing me this far.

I don't have to wonder, even now 32 years later I remember all too well.

If asked before hand I'd have guessed that it felt sleazy, or shameful, or maybe even for those oversexed few that it felt enjoyable. I even thought that some would take a kind of pleasure from the power it gave them over others.

When it happened though it was a million miles away from my expectations. What did it feel like to have sex for money, it felt like nothing, it was blank, feelingless, my body didn't respond, my emotions were absent. My mind focussed on nothing but the rhythm, "in out, in out, I hope this finishes soon". I guess in some ways the wall that I habitually sheltered my emotions behind protected me, it allowed me to distance my inner core from the experionce of my young body. Soon, more quickly than I could imagine, it was over, and he was turning me out with only half the cash he'd promised.

And then the feelings returned, I felt cheap, and dirty, and used, and ashamed. I also felt angry and powerless. In some ways this callous stranger had confirmed my view of myself as worthless, by paying less than promised. The one thing that I knew men desired in me this man had tasted and then in effect said that's not worth so much either. Probarbly most surprisingly to me I felt young, so appallingly young. I wasn't very often aware of my tender age. I'd grown up fast and I thought and felt far older than my years. At 13 I sometimes felt positively ancient. But that night, as the tears ran down my face, I remembered just how young, and helpless I was.

And I knew that a child on the streets of London could not survive without repeating the events of the evening. And although I had very little hope in life, very little view of the future and no love or respect for myself, still a spark of something stirred inside me. I think that was possibly the night that I decided I would make something with my life. Despite everyone's expectations, I would prove them all wrong and I would suceed at something. Home wasn't much more appealing than life on the streets, but on reflection it would damage me a little less. So I swallowed my pride and went home.

Counting the seconds until midnight

I sit here watching the hands on the clock creep slowly around the face, tick, tick, tick each second passes moving closer and closer to the appointed hour.

I hadn't expected to feel this way, this ambilvalence taking the place of the expected joy. Yes each minute brings me closer to freedom, but also it hammers another nail into the coffin of what might have been.

I still remember the joy at the beginning. Each step I walked towards you, with hope and expectation of a happy ending. How we got from there to here I will never know. Things spiralled so quickly out of control. Funny how it was with sobriety that things began to crumble. Maybe the alcohol camouflaged the cracks. Strange how it was easier to be the wife of a drunk than to be the wife of a recovering alcoholic.

I wonder if your sitting in ths strange limbo, time standing almost still, counting the seconds until midnight, the point at which our divorce becomes absolute and the last few threads binding us as man and wife are cut. I hadn't expected freedom to have such sharp edges.

Sometimes I wonder if my brain has gone on permanent vacation. It certainly deserts me at the most crucial times.

Where was my brain each time I walked up the aisles, the little voice of intuition each time whispering "Why are you doing this, it's not right, flee" before being drowned out by the noise of the congretation and the organ as it began the wedding march.

It was also absent the day that I ran away from home. Thirteen years old, sad and angry, my actions were fuelled by pure emotion. No sign of rational thought was apparent, not on the day I ran, or the week I spent in London. Not even on the day I came back, my return being motivated purely by fear, the fear of not surviving, the fear of surviving but only by selling my body. The fear of being alone, rather than just lonely.

For a long time my brain and emotion did not appear to be capable of co-existing, when one was present the other was sadly absent. Normally it was the emotions that were absent as I lived, a cold, safe, unaproachable life. But every now and then the emotions forced their way past the barriers I had erected and my brain fled in terror, leaving me to the frail mercies of the current of emotion.

1) Take event a, explore the different possibilities based on event A, different future strands, merging at point b, possibly crossing over in dreams. Main character is looking backwards, before either major decision or death

2) Main character reminiscences on how came to define life in terms of colours, exploring each coloured period, coming to an understanding of how they shaped the person she became.

3) Charting the main characters withdrawal from the world of matter into the world of spirit. Pherhaps acknowledging the things she is loosing in the process, e.g. human contact.

Maybe a merging of the three ideas, culminating in a decisionas to wether to remain in the world of matter or cross over into the world of spirit in service of a greater purpose/or maybe no decision, just crossing over at time of death. Possibly as life drew to close being given the gift of exploring alternative life paths, to find completion and peace.

Any strand will actually be an exploration of my own thoughts and feelings, drawing on events from my own life and fictionalising them. I guess I'd like to write anovel and in the process come to understand myself better.