Читать книгу A Diary of Secrets - Deb Shugg - Страница 5

2^nd July

I’m 33 years old. I’m married and have two beautiful children. My life is perfect. I have a home, a happy family, a career. My life appears to be perfect.

I’ve been crying for days. An all consuming tearfulness that’s consumed my life and I can’t stop. I feel so sick I can’t even put food in my mouth for fear of throwing up, but now I’m scared I’m going to starve to death.

I’m so paralysed by fear I can’t even go shopping and I have no idea what’s happening to me. I can be perfectly rational one minute and paralysed the next. I’m so confused I don’t even know what to do about it.

I want to die. I am so distraught I think I might kill myself. I can’t live life like this. I can’t even participate in the normal things everyone does and I just want to get better. I can’t do this anymore.

Harold says that I should see a doctor. I can’t bear to be like this but I don’t want to risk taking any medication in case I become addicted or I feel weaker than I already am. I really don’t know what’s best or even what to do.

13^th July

Each day that passes changes nothing. I have anxiety that only lets up for a few minutes at a time. Most of the time I feel sick and can’t eat and I’m running out of energy. I want to die but I’m too scared.

I spend my days on the couch crying and my nights in bed, crying. I’m so desperate and lonely and I’m not sure that anyone really understands what’s going on; least of all me. I’m afraid to dream because my dreams distress me too much and I’m afraid to wake up because I’m so overwhelmed with anxiety.

On Saturday morning I visited the doctor because I’m such a mess. I tried to explain what’s wrong but I couldn’t stop crying to say anything. Harold ends up speaking for me and it annoys me. There I was in the midst of an “anxiety attack” anticipating a world disaster with my husband speaking on my behalf. I’m not sure what I’ve become.

The doctor gently explained that things have probably got on top of me and that it will pass. He says once the temporary anxiety passes everything will return to normal. I have a prescription for anti nausea pills to help me eat better, but I’m not sure they’re helping. I think the nausea is in my head rather than my stomach. I bought myself some flowers. I’m trying to convince myself that things will get better but I really don’t think they can.

20^th July

I asked mum to take me to a homeopath this week to see if there was something he could do. I sobbed the whole time I was with him and he confirmed that I’m in a terrible “state”. He blended me a “potion” of something I drank while I was there. It tasted like straight alcohol and I felt great almost straight away. So good in-fact that I stopped at a fried chicken restaurant on the way home for something to eat!

I can’t believe how good I felt and for a moment in time I could feel what it was like to be free of the burden of anxiety.

The homeopath mixed me a combination of medicines that I take during the day. He says they will help me to feel better and cope with whatever I’m not coping with.

28^th July

I’m amazed. I have always been suspicious of natural medicines, however they have had an amazing effect on me.

What’s changed exactly I can’t define but I’m feeling less tearful, less depressed and more “even”. Mornings have always been one of the worse times of day for me and they still are but once I work through the first hour or so of the day, I can function in a more “normal” way. Well, maybe a way that’s more acceptable to the people around me and myself.

I can eat small amounts of food at meal times. I’ve lost six kilograms in the past weeks and while my appetite’s improving I’m not going to break any weight gaining records. I’m still limited to drinking only bottled or boiled water and tea. But the return of a little solid food into my diet is a visible, tangible and measurable return to okay.

The freedom’s refreshing and I might even be coming to the end of whatever it is that’s scaring me, causing me to become a nothing.

It’s been three weeks since we sold the house and we’re still looking for another house to buy. I can’t find anything that’s just right. I’m sure something will turn up but I’m a little worried that we might end up with nowhere to live if we don’t get it sorted.

I’m worried that we might have to rent somewhere for a while. I know in my head that it’s no big deal but every time I think about it I feel sick.

8^th August

I’ve started to think I might not recover from this at all. I’m sick with worry about what might happen. The anxiety is worse than ever and the potions don’t seem to be working anymore. More weight is falling off and I’m desperately trying to hold on to what my life has been.

The natural medicines seemed to provide a turning point but now even that hope is fading into a hazy memory. My downhill slide is generating its own fear and I can’t even get out the front door. Everything is ten times harder now and I don’t know what to do.

I’m unbelievably afraid and have no idea why. This fear of fear itself is greater than I have ever experienced. I imagine tragedy where there is none and I’m incapable of explaining why. I’m beginning to believe in my own craziness.

Like any mother I’ve always been very protective of my children. But now, I can’t bear to be away from them in case something terrible happens to them. But, I can’t bear to let them see what I’ve become. I crave to be alone but can’t let myself.

I just want to kill myself.

There must be something so terribly wrong with me that I won’t ever be “normal”. I’ll never be understood. I’ll never function without help. I’m probably going to end up institutionalised just to relieve my family of the burden of caring for me. I think I’m at breaking point and I don’t know what to do.

It’s too hard. I can’t do it.

I don’t want to move house anymore. I need to stay here so everything will be alright.

15^th August

I’m really upset about not having anywhere to live. My life is a mess and I don’t know what to do. Everyone thinks the decision to move house is the trigger for my “temporary anxiety state”.

We’re waiting to settle the sale and I’m so desperate to escape from this agony that I made enquiries with our lawyer about pulling out of the sale agreement. It’s a long shot but I’m hoping that if it works I can get my life back.

I just want to be normal.

Harold’s been furious with me since I told him what I was doing and he couldn’t believe it. He can’t believe that I can’t sell the house.

I’m devastated.

I thought Harold would understand but now I have nowhere to turn. Nothing I can do. I pleaded with him to help me get our house back but he refused. I have to do something to stop this. I can’t take it anymore.

I can’t even look at the “For Sale” sign at the front of our house. I wish they would come and take it away but it’s left there to terrorise me.

I’m looking for anything to stop the pain and undo this mess I’m in but there’s no way out. It’s too much. I dread every waking moment. If only I could sleep 24 hours a day.

2^nd September

I went to see the doctor again, this time with mum. I’m sure he thinks I’m crazy because I can’t stop crying. If I am crazy maybe I can stop worrying about what I’ve become.

Mum held my hand and told me everything will be okay. I don’t believe her. “Think of something nice” she said.

The doctor told me that I’ve tried it my way but now he wants to take control. He wrote me a prescription for anti-depressants and a referral to a psychologist for help. I don’t want to take medication and I’m afraid. Even antibiotics, which have their place, are not high on my to-do list unless they’re absolutely necessary.

Now I’m reduced to medication. “Debbie’s little helpers!” I resisted to begin with but he insisted because he was “very concerned” about me and so he will no longer give me a choice.

Mum prefers to use a homeopath but now she’s actually agreed with the doctor’s pronouncement. She held my hand and even though she probably felt otherwise, she gave her permission for me to take the medication. I’m 33 years old and in my mind my mother’s permission is required in order for me to take the damn medication!

Really, I just want the pain to stop. Right now I would do anything to make it go away with, or without, my mother’s permission.

17^th September

There are two weeks left until we move and even though we now have somewhere else to go now, I know I won’t be able to do it. I can’t leave my home. They will have to drag me from it kicking and screaming. I can taste acidic fear in my mouth and I know there’s no going back. My fantasies that everything could be undone are gone and I have to face the reality that no matter how I feel there is only one direction I can travel.

I don’t understand why I’m like this. I feel guilty and embarrassed about my behaviour.

I never expected my life to be like this. I don’t understand why I have succumbed to living a life that’s enveloped by fear, distress and sadness. I’m powerless.

Anxiety controls me.

Destroys me.

How many times do I have to beg to die just to escape this torture?

I hate the new house. I can’t believe I have to go there. What if someone needs me and they don’t know where I am? It’s a nice house but I don’t want it. I can’t do it. I can’t move.

I’ve been driving past the new house every chance I get sometimes parking outside it for hours at a time. I’m trying to imagine that that is my home. The place where I live. But it just makes me cry.

I want to die.

3^rd October

There was no panic and no screaming. I still feel low, a little depressed maybe but I managed to control myself and even be a little helpful.

Leanne did most of the packing and unpacking for me because I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I could feel the anxiety in my chest and I waited for it to manifest. But it didn’t. Perhaps the medication is working and is providing the relief I need to get through the day. Or perhaps, I’m beginning to recover from whatever this is.

4^th October

I’ve been to see the psychologist. I’ve seen a few counsellors to find out why I get anxious so I’m not holding much hope.

I arrived at precisely the right time to begin the session and Joan, the psychologist, showed me to the correct chair in her small home office. She has the big comfy chair!! Then with a notepad and pencil in hand she asked me what had brought me to see her.

I started with “I had a very normal life” then without warning the sewerage of my life came spewing out like a pipe had broken. I told her about my childhood and how it was to grow up in my family. She was interested to know more about my dad but there’s other stuff that needs to be dealt with so I can just get through ‘now’ so I think she’s waiting until next time.

I’m not sure I agree with this “it’s all in your childhood” psychology. At the end of the session Joan told me that she thinks I have control issues. She says they probably developed in my childhood when I felt unsafe and now they’re not working for me anymore. That’s what’s creating the anxiety she says.

11^th October

I took a photo of me with my mum and dad from when I was a baby to show Joan in my visit today. Joan decided to ask me about my father and that’s when the tears started to well in my eyes. I’m not sure what sparked them but I couldn’t even bear to think about him. I looked at the photo but it had become impossible to hold so I threw it on the floor. It landed face up forcing me to maintain contact with the faces looking back. I couldn’t pick it up and left it lying discarded on the carpet for the entire session.

Joan wasn’t convinced that I didn’t have any issues with my father and she left the photo on the floor where it landed. “What do you think your father thought about the attack you suffered?” she asked carefully.

“I don’t think my father ever knew about it” I told her.

He certainly didn’t know about the ongoing abuse when I was a teenager. No one knew about that. But I’m not sure whether mum told him about the man who came to the door. Mum and dad were beyond talking, so it was unlikely.

Mum had applied for legal custody of my brother and I (the two youngest children) because she didn’t like the way dad disciplined us. I think mum was mad at dad for all the stuff he put her and the older kids through. She had also obtained a legal separation from him even though they still lived in the same house.

Joan can’t believe mum wouldn’t tell dad, regardless of the state of their relationship.

“It doesn’t surprise me” I told her.

Joan wants to know if my mum was afraid of my dad, but I don’t think she was. She was past being afraid of him. I think she was angry with him more than anything else.

“Were you afraid of your dad?” asked Joan.

I looked back to the photo of my family on the floor and tried to find some way to divert Joan’s attention onto something else but I can’t clear my head. I couldn’t answer her. I squeezed my eyes shut to block out what my mind could see but no matter how hard I squeezed, I could still see it.

The tears that I hoped to hold behind my eyelids started to escape and dribbled down my cheeks. I couldn’t answer Joan’s question and I wasn’t even sure that if I opened my mouth that any words would come out. I could feel them in my chest but I was mute.

I blinked and saw Joan waiting patiently in her chair. She expected an answer but nothing about her displayed any impatience. My face was wet, my nose was running uncontrollably and I didn’t care. I hoped Joan didn’t care either but she slid a box of tissues towards me so I think maybe she did.

I took a tissue from the box and blew my nose. I was still in her small office. I could only look at the tissue in my hand and fiddle with its corner between my thumb and finger.

I think Joan was worried about me because she asked if I was okay. I nodded, still mute. I tried to focus on the tissue as I squeezed it down into my fist. I closed my eyes again because they stung.

My father is sitting at the kitchen table with a half empty glass of beer in one hand and a smoking cigarette lies idly in the ash tray. His dinner is only half eaten and the plate has been pushed away into the centre of the table with the knife and fork he had used thrown down carelessly. He’s finished his meal.

The television is turned up too loud in the adjoining room as the newsreader passes on information. I’m about seven years old and we children are restless as the day comes to a close and the inevitable squabble about who will wash and who will dry dishes begins. We move around our father like skittish foals clearing the table and trying our best to stay outside an arm’s length.

My mother tells us to be quiet and get on with job but we have no hot water because the briquette hot water service hasn’t been lit. We’ve run out of briquettes and my mother can’t afford any more until she gets paid. Unless someone goes outside to collect sticks from the yard there won’t be any hot water for the dishes or for bathing tonight.

While we wait for the kettle to boil and provide the hot water we need, the volume of our voices rise. Suddenly aroused from a contemplative state my father yells at my mother. “Tell them to shut up.”

He can’t hear the news.

My mother tells us wearily to stop fighting and get on with the job. We stop complaining and silently continue our work with the dishes, our voices fading into silence. We’re sulking now. The water is only tepid and the kettle has been put back on to boil. The television is still way too loud, yet our silence is louder.

There is no time after the dishes are done to watch TV. My mother, who has been washing clothes and hanging them outside in the dark, tells us to get ready for bed. She has bought in some sticks she collected and has lit the hot water service to try to warm up some water for the bath. We manage to run a couple of inches of warm water into the bath and tonight I get to get in first, a rare privilege. I quickly soap myself up and rinse off by lying down in the bath and rolling over.

The bathroom smells of kerosene from the heater my mother used to warm the house. There is black mould growing around the tub that I try not to touch. I wish that black stuff wasn’t there and I carefully climb out of the tub avoiding touching the edges. I pick up a worn towel from a pile on the floor. They’re all damp so I just take the top one and rub my wet hair to stop it dripping. I wrap the towel around my shoulders and edge closer to the heater to try and warm up.

The element on the heater is glowing red and there is a blue flame like a cloud floating around it. I still have goose bumps on my flesh and I back up closer to the heater. As I get closer to the heater I feel the burn of hot metal against my skin. I have leaned against the metal grill at the front of the heater with my bottom. I scream and scream and my mother comes to find out what’s happened. I screamed that I burnt myself and she quickly rushes to see what damage I’ve done.

She holds me close to her while I cry, all the time cooing at me and rubbing my hair back from my forehead. Eventually we walk back to the kitchen where my mother can inspect the damage fully.

My father is still sitting at the table and as we walk into the kitchen he looks at us. I’m wrapped in the towel and crying. “What did you do?” He mumbles through a cloud of blue exhaled smoke.

“I burnt myself” I tell him, still crying. He laughs and with the end of his cigarette squashed between his fingers he raises the bottle of beer in front of him and pours himself another glass. “Your hair looks like rat tails” he says “you need to dry it”.

“I will” I reply taking the towel from around my body and rubbing it over my head.

The pain is incredible as I stand in the kitchen naked waiting for my mother to find what she needs to minister my burns. When she has found the cream and bandages she’s been looking for she sits down on a kitchen chair. “Come here and turn around” she says tiredly and I do it. Carefully she applies a medicinal cream to my burns and gently covers them with bandages and elastoplast and sends me to get my pyjamas on.

A few minutes later I’m lying in bed. The pain is so bad I can hardly stand it. My mother comes in to kiss me good night and I am still crying. She bends over and rubs my forehead again. “Think of something nice” she whispers. She always tells me to think of something nice when I’m upset, but tonight I can’t, the pain is too intense. Gently, she sits down on the side of my bed and begins to sing softly.

“Underneath the table on the kitchen floor, on a soap box upside down. Happy and contented we adore, a little queen without her crown…”

I relax a little. My mother pulls up one of the coats she has put on my bed to keep me warm because there weren’t enough blankets to go around our family. In the middle of winter we slept under whatever coats my mother could find. She often collected them from “rag bags” left out on the streets for charities or from friends or relatives that no longer needed or wanted them. Not only did the bags provide the warmth for our beds, often this was the only way she could clothe us. She would collect the discarded clothing, pull it apart and resew into something that would fit one of us. She sewed a lot of clothes for us and herself.

After a few minutes my mother got up to leave. I asked her to sing some more but she refuses.

“I have work to do”, she says as she kisses me. “Goodnight sweetheart” she whispers.

From my bed I can hear their voices over the sound of the television. I find a half read Famous Five book under my pillow and call out to my mother. A minute or so later the voices stop and she arrives at my door. “Can I read for a little while?” I ask holding up my book.

“Just a few minutes” she says.

I can’t move easily because of the pain so I am stuck on my back holding the book in the air. The voices are making their way back into the bedroom I share with my mother.

“All I get is shit. I can’t even get a decent meal in my own home,” says my father’s angry voice.

“Well maybe if you gave me some more money, I could afford to feed everyone,” my mother replies testily.

My mother had started working before I was born. At the time she had 5 children. I think that was the very beginning of my mother’s self -discovery. The time that she realised she had the ability and strength to control her life.

In the many years she had been married to my father she had watched him move from job to job and business to business looking for just the right opportunity. But it always ended in disaster as my father would eventually drink or gamble every opportunity.

Their voices continued to make their way into my room.

“I haven’t got any money,” growls my father.

“Well where did the beer and smokes come from then?” she asks.

“None of your fucking business” he yells at her and I hear the scrapping of a chair sliding across the linoleum floor.

Then I hear my mother start to sing. Not the same way she sang to me but loud and harsh.

“Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette, puff, puff, puff until you smoke yourself to death…”

This was what my mother sang when she was mad at my father. It was an adaptation of a Tex Williams song from a few years earlier and she would sing it when my father would abuse her to block him out and to annoy him at the same time.

My mother had stopped being afraid of my father. For many years, earlier in their marriage, she would take the verbal and physical abuse without complaint. As if she deserved it. But now, she was stronger, both physically and emotionally.

“Why don’t you smoke yourself to death,” yells my father over the top of her singing. I hear the fridge door slam closed. Everything in it rattles.

I hate my father.

When the bottles in the fridge stop rattling, I hear my father say “You’re a bitch”.

“Then why do you keep coming back?” my mother asks.

“It’s my house,” he says.

“Maybe if you paid something for it but until then you may as well stay away” says my mother.

I can hear them moving around in the kitchen.

“Oh you’re a big man” says my mother sarcastically. “Does it make you feel good to hit a woman?”

One of the coats has started to slide off my bed and I struggle with my burn to pull it up again. I want to call my mother to help me but I know I can’t. “Stay in bed” is all she would say and I would make my father madder.

I don’t like listening to them fight but it’s hard not to. They always did.

I lay in bed wishing my father was dead so we could live happy. The Famous Five have been placed back under my pillow but I can’t sleep. I have pulled the worn flannelette sheet over my head and try to imagine a life without my father.

My mother starts to sing again:

“Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette…”

This time she’s interrupted by a thump followed by the clatter of dishes. I can hear my mother yelling but now the words are indecipherable.

There’s no crying. My mother is long past crying over what she can’t change but I’m worried about her. My father’s voice assaults my ears and I don’t know what to do.

I can hear thumping sounds and grunting. What if he kills my mother? I’m scared about what will happen to me if my mother dies. I don’t want to be my father’s daughter. I want him to die.

I can’t bear the sound of my father’s angry screaming voice and I can’t hear my mother anymore. I don’t know what to do. What if she’s dead? There are no more words moving through the house, just the sounds of fury and rage in a discordant melody that has replaced my mother’s singing.

I am worried that this time my mother is dead. Who will look after me? I can’t bear not to know and I slip slowly and silently from my bed.

Quietly, I pad across the hall and through the laundry to the kitchen door. I wait outside the closed door trying to decide if I should open it. I can’t help it, I have to see if my mother is dead. Quietly, I turn the door knob above my head and slowly push the door open a crack. The house is silent except for the sound of the television.

I can’t see anything so I open it a little further. Lying on the floor I see my father sleeping and as my eyes travel upwards I see my mother, bloodied, kneeling over him. With my face barely visible through the crack in the door she makes eye contact with me and screams, “Go back to bed.”

I pull the door closed and make my way back to my bed as fast as I can.

A few minutes later, I hear my mother telling my father to get up and go to bed and I hear him bouncing off the hallway walls as he staggers to his room.

My mother is alive and my father has gone to bed. I hear the sounds of my mother putting the kettle on to make herself a cup of tea and I know she’s okay. I can sleep now.

“Are you okay?” Joan asks.

I nod.

“Where did you go?”

I shrug my shoulders. “Dunno.”

18^th October

Joan still wanted to work on my dad “issues” this week. I’d rather not but I have to trust that she knows what she’s doing.

My dad is pretty sick at the moment and no one expects him to live for very long. I never thought his death would affect me but it does. I spent my whole childhood wishing he was dead but now he’s close to death I’m sad about it and not really feeling that okay. Now I feel guilty for wishing he was dead.

It upsets me to think that if he needs me, he won’t be able to find me in this new house. There is nothing rational about that. He’s never been to my house no matter where I lived. I don’t understand these feelings. They create such an anxiety in me that I don’t know what to think or feel. I’ve been to see him a few times in the hospital and he looks pitiful. Nothing like the angry man I grew up knowing. I guess that’s what age and a few cerebral hemorrhages do to a person.

I worry that because my father is an alcoholic that I might be like him. Another anxiety trigger! But right now I can’t even drink water from the tap in case it makes me sick so I know I’m not an alcoholic at the moment. But I still get anxious about it.

I always thought that I had blue eyes. But when I looked at them they were kind of grey-green. I don’t know when I lost those blue eyes but like everything else they just seemed to disappear.

I’m waiting for my father to die. He’s sick and old. He hasn’t always been sick or old. I don’t remember when he was young. When I look at a photo of him with me when I was a baby he scares me. It’s like looking at a picture of the devil. When I look at him in his hospital bed I don’t see a devil. I see an old man who is sick. I wonder what caused him so much pain to make him my devil. Was it me?

My father is disappearing, like my blue eyes. One day I’ll wake up and not even remember a time when I had a father. Did I ever have a father? I whisper the words. Out loud they scare me. To have a father like mine means you don’t belong anywhere. You’re kind of stuck in a nowhere that means wherever you are, you’re in the wrong place.

I wished he’d die when he was the devil. Then not having a father gave you somewhere to go. Then you could belong in a happy place, wherever that is. I always thought I loved him but it didn’t seem to matter to him. It didn’t make him stop being the devil even when I told him I loved him. Did he think I was lying to him? Is that what made him angry?

Now he’s dying and I want him to stay. I don’t know why. Now that my memories are with my blue eyes it doesn’t seem to matter that he was my devil. I don’t want to be left here.

I know I was bad when I had blue eyes. When I looked at my father who is old and sick I saw blue eyes but they weren’t mine. They were faded, like the blue had started to disappear. Perhaps he noticed that his blue eyes are fading and he wants to die because of it.

Is he sad? Now that he’s dying what does he think about? Does he want me to love him now? Does he still feel the same as he did when he was the devil? Does he care that he’s leaving me? Does he know what happens when he’s gone?

It’s cold on the floor. Like being dead. The floor is dead. I am dead. Only a child of the devil can survive.

19^th October

I guess I’m not over my father after all.

25^th October

Today it was my turn to ask the questions. I asked Joan how people could tell when they’d dealt with stuff. I wanted to know why the memories of my father could still affect me and how I could tell if I was getting any better.

I found out that Joan is the consummate professional when she turned it around and asked me how I think they would know.

Before I’d started seeing Joan I felt like I must have dealt with my stuff. I’ve been living with all this in my life forever. It’s not new stuff for me. But, if the patterns of behaviour I learned as a child are still controlling my life then maybe I haven’t dealt with it.

Apparently, now my stupid patterns of behaviour aren’t working so well at keeping things manageable for me. Now, everything is unmanageable and completely out of my control.

I haven’t gotten over my “stuff” at all. All I did was find a way to cope with what was going on in my childhood. Nothing ever got dealt with. I just moved on.

Joan wanted to know if I always considered things in black or white. She’s worried that I see my “condition” as either being on or off. I’ve either dealt with it or I haven’t. I think she wants to bring a few shades of grey to my black/white, good/bad, true/false world.

I cried as I told Joan I want to be over it. I can’t do this anymore. I want it to be over. I can’t do this anymore. No one gets it. No one gets me.

Everyone thinks I can just snap out of this like I have a choice.