I Know Where I Am

I know where I am. I am standing in the hallway of my old house, the house I’d lived in as a child. I am outside my old bedroom door, and I am inside, sobbing.

It is dark in the house, and silent apart from the quiet noise of me crying. Me then, not me now. Me now is quiet, though my breathing seems very loud. I am standing outside my old bedroom door and wondering whether or not to go in.

What would I do if I did go in? Comfort myself? Put an arm round me and tell me it was all going to be all right?

Well no, because that would be a lie. It isn’t going to be all right. It will be a long hard slog, and sometimes I will want to just give up and die, but I won’t, I will just keep on going through the pain.

It hurt for so long and it hurt so much. For a while – years – I thought I was dealing with it rather well, because I hardly ever thought about it, and I was doing great, just great! I used to gauge just how well I was doing by how much I read, bizarrely enough. I could read a whole book in one sitting – sometimes I would stay awake really late and read and read and read until early in the morning – and I thought – what a kid eh? What a smart kid, reading like that. I was doing so well. I hardly ever thought about – it. Wasn’t I doing fantastic? I filled every waking moment, that wasn’t already filled with school or whatever, with reading or the TV or my own private fantasy land. Sometimes I was so far gone in this fantasy land I could spend hours in my room alone talking to people who didn’t exist, in places that didn’t exist. But I was doing great. I hardly ever thought about it.

Then came all the breakdowns. It got to the stage where eventually I couldn’t just distract myself anymore and it’d all just bubble up and boil over and I’d spend an entire night crying. Wailing silently, or with the covers stuffed into my mouth. I started cutting myself, and it helped, a little. I started calling ChildLine and the Samaritans and that helped more. I started talking to people about it, just a few, just a very few, and it was scary and terrifying and horrible but it helped too, and I stopped cutting. But I was doing well, I told myself.

Then I couldn’t stand it on my own any longer and I had to tell my parents. It was the scariest and hardest thing I’ve ever done. It wasn’t a brave act, though – it was more of a compulsion than a conscious decision. I couldn’t go on without them knowing anymore. So I told them and it was the best thing I’ve ever done. It got so much easier after that, being able to look at them and know I wasn’t lying to them by omission, that I didn’t have to say I’m fine through a false smile and screaming eyes, that I had people to fall back on when I couldn’t cope anymore.

Selfish, probably, but I never considered how they’d cope with the aftermath of the information. All my energy, in the run-up to telling them, was concerned with how they’d take it when I told them. Would they be angry, sad, disbelieving, angry, believing, stunned, angry? Their anger was what I feared most and it was an utterly irrational fear, but I couldn’t help it – I was terrified that they would be angry. A little kid, scared of owning up, that’s how I was.

And now? I am scared for them. It’s an awful thing for a parent to have to face, and even though I think they’re facing it amazingly, the very best they can, they are very sad and I hate that: the feeling that I did that to them. I hate that they feel guilty and scared and sad and upset. I hate that they feel confused, and I hate that they don’t always understand the way I’m acting. A little part of me hates that I told them, that I wasn’t strong enough to deal with it on my own – but I wasn’t strong enough (or stupid enough) to deal with it on my own, and I did tell them, and we all have to live with it.

So what do I do? Do I go inside and tell my younger self all this? Could I go in and tell her there will be years of pain and suffering and torment ahead, and in all probability never any satisfying conclusion? Could my younger self keep going, knowing what would happen? Or would she just give up and die?

Or would telling her change it? For better, or for worse? I can’t know. I won’t ever know, because I can’t go in and tell her it’ll all be okay, because it won’t. All I could tell her is that there is a future, and although it’s hard sometimes, it’s worth sticking in, it’s worth hanging on. It’s worth slogging it out and it’s worth the sleepless nights and the tears and the tearing, clawing guilt because in the end, I am still here, and I am whole. I have some cuts and bruises, I’ve lost things along the way, I’ve fucked up and made up and been helped up, but I’m here now and I’m alive and it’s worth it all just to be able to say that. I still get scared and sad and sick sometimes, but I know it will get better, not worse, and I just have to keep going.

Perhaps an even older version of me is hovering just out of sight, wondering whether or not to tell me how it’s worked out for her. Well, I don’t want to know. I want to get on with my life, for better or for worse, and fuck it up my way and rebuild it my way and to hell with future me. I’m not her. I am me, it is now, and I’m turning away from the door of my childhood room and the sound of me sobbing, young me sobbing and now me sobbing too, and I’m going back to the present. I can’t save young me, I can only save now me. My back is to the door of the past and I am facing the present. And that is right, and that is all I can do.