Little demon

The exquisite pain of a grief captured inside the ribcage, as a child becoming an adult, it grows with the host, an animal in a small space.

Sneaking into the front room to pick up one of the babies, mum stampeding in, burning white hot. Then I knew I was not to be trusted to hold the babies, to love them, to keep them safe.

Baby basket, white lace and a tranquil room, twins newly minted. Unsplit silence, something for her new husband to love. my brother and I were not to be loved, I could only conform and curry favour, gain praise for being good, but that spluttering flame of anger and fury would come from nowhere when I was bad or was wrongfully accused of wrongdoing. She saw an evil in me who would perform acts of mischief and spite without my knowledge, a demon shadow. It stoked up an anger, an outrage at being so condemned.

I’ve felt the loss over and over, the pain, the inadequacy, the clandestine visits at their grandparents house and the knowledge that I was only causing trouble by turning up there, an imposter in an innocent world which didn’t want me; my heart, as it was, filled with darkness.

Worthlessness

I wish you could take a pill for self esteem or a pill that gets rid of shame. I am so sick of feeling worthless, I have missed out on so much because I didn't think I was good enough, spending time with friends, doing exciting things. I've run away from so much. I want to do things but I'm scared that I'll decide I'm not good enough and run away, so then it becomes this fucking meta-fear of fear or lack of belief in believing in myself.

I had a shameful thought/memory come up on the way home from training and it felt so paralysing and awful and I didn't know how to get away from it or how to deal with it or how it would ever go away. And now a few minutes later I can't even remember what it was. 

Functional nouns

I’m 30 and I’ve had depression and anxiety for as long as I can remember. I’m never sure whether I like to refer to it in those terms - nouns, diseases, discrete afflictions that can be separated from the self. Illnesses that can be treated, put to one side and removed from the core personality. I am chronically unhappy, uneasy, uncomfortable in my skin, and why should I take up any space if I can’t feel at ease, pouring dissatisfaction into the world, itching and scratching at my existence and calling out to be soothed by people who can’t help me? I am exasperating. 

I’ve been asking for help since I was 14, because I felt like I wanted to die and got through emotional pain with self harm, alcohol and drugs, starving myself, binging and purging. I’ve been prescribed 7 antidepressants which seem to help at first before I crash and burn and destroy whatever I’ve been working for. Bouts of counselling where I seem to do well, I have so much insight, but insight doesn’t change things in the long run, not on its own. I feel the exasperation of professionals assigned to my care. I fall into a gutter where I function too well to be in crisis.

Automatic Writing

I didn’t really get up early enough for automatic writing. I woke up with my heart fluttering in my chest again and took a beta blocker before going back to bed for a little while. The quetiapine is giving me palpitations - my heart rate is slow enough but it feels like it’s beating strangely, too strong in my chest and not quite regular. J. is in the shower, very hot the way he likes it, and long. I need to make myself have a shower this morning, his parents are coming over to help with the house. I don’t feel like hosting, telling them what we need help with, being dressed and presentable. 

I’m feeling alone, nothing I do matters and I have these images in my head of people who know me, their indifference. Maybe I need to find a way to be comfortable with my own mediocrity, with periods of not doing anything special, so I’m not constantly doing everything I can to avoid the emptiness, to pour anaesthetic on the pain. But I’ve been doing nothing for long enough, it feels like. I suppose that feeling is symptomatic.

Automatic Writing

Waves of dread keep coming over me as I lie in bed, waking up, finding the room in semi-darkness, wanting to be asleep, my heart tips over, I try to go back to sleep. I know it’s late, I want to rest today, I feel guilty for lying in and going back to sleep. My throat is dry and prickly. I don’t know what to do with myself today. It’s nearly 12 by the time I  give in and haul myself out of bed, deposit myself in front of my laptop. ‘Don’t let your wife know about this game!’, a ridiculous banner ad shrieks. I’m dehydrated. Strange dreams linger like wraiths. I hear the rats protesting to each other, tugging cheerfully on their water bottles, digging around the cage for treats. Birds sing faintly from behind a roller blind; I’m waiting for my heart to settle down, having woken in a mild panic each time I open my eyes. I’d like to wake in a good mood, please - not thirsty, panicky and full of dread. Birds trill quietly. I should probably exercise when I wake up; go for a brisk walk, do some star jumps, yoga. I stretch my neck a little instead and write whatever comes into my head, which isn’t much. Whining - what you see here. 

Automatic Writing

It’s the morning, my body shivering with shock at being forced out of sleep. Trembling in the cold white light, clinging to the dressing gown draped around my bones.
I’ve had to get up early, as if I had a job, to get the train into town and sit with K. while M. finishes her tattoo. I don’t know if M. is expecting me to be there, I don’t know what our relationship is now, our friendship a little ragged around the edges with time and distance. I’m back in town but no happier than ever, stapled down in suburbia with the weight of security and stability, forced to stare into my soul. So far I am avoiding eye contact.

I can feel tears building in my chest. I don’t want to be a weight around everyone’s necks, bringing up my unhappiness at every opportunity, beaming it out through my face. I would rather not go today, but all the advice says to push through, go through the motions. I’ve absorbed a lot of advice over time, questionnaires asking whether I enjoy doing things less than I used to. The past tense isn’t relevant here, not usually - there isn’t a bright, cheerful previous instance of myself for me to claw my way back to. The only way is forward, into the void. 

I’ve been dancing around the edges of something lately, my childhood I think, perhaps my present. Something squats on my brain, something big that I can’t think round. A memory, maybe, or a realization. I’ve put up walls around it. It’s blotting out the sky. As I try to approach it, investigating tentatively, my heart starts to race. My mind doesn’t want to go near it, it doesn’t want to be poked, it digs in deeper, claws sinking into its wrinkled throne. I have the feeling it’s masquerading as something banal, it’s something obvious that I just don’t want to see. It’s hiding behind a completely opaque black block, like it’s been censored for TV, and it’s big. 

DV Training

I’ve been taking a training course about domestic violence in order to volunteer for a charity. The realisations have been dawning over the last few years that I didn’t just blink into being as a teenager, that I didn’t manufacture my depressive personality by myself, out of nowhere. I suppose in a way I never really felt like a child. I didn’t remember much, just flashes here and there. It was more convenient to forget, when we moved to live with our father when I was nine or ten - that became our life, never mind the life from before. Sentience only seems to dawn around that time. 

The second week of our domestic violence training was about children. I had a hangover so was already feeling very fragile, an old friend and a couple of bottles of red wine made for feeling pretty awful in the morning.
The list spoke to me.

The wide range of effects children might experience in circumstances of domestic violence can include any of the following behavioural, physical and psychological effects, which may be short-term and/or long term:

There were a few that didn’t apply - physical injuries, broken bones. Then, with some others removed which didn’t apply:

Being protective of mother, being protective of siblings, advanced in maturity, advanced in sense of responsibility, introversion, withdrawn, feeling guilty, secretive, silent, self-blame, bitterness, fear, insecurity, tension, truanting, difficulties at school, disruptions in schooling, disruptions in living arrangements, emotional confusion in relation to parents, bed-wetting, nightmares, sleep disturbances, eating difficulties/disorders, self-harm, weight loss, sadness, depression, social isolation, difficulty in trusting others, low self-esteem, poor social skills, highly developed social skills, ability to negotiate difficult situations, drug use, alcohol use, petty theft and shop lifting, frightened...

I might have been reading a list of my own historical symptoms.

Children will almost certainly be affected if their mother has been subjected to domestic violence. Some will have witnessed or heard the abuse; all will sense their mother is unhappy.