A beginning

A beginning

Memories wander in and out of my head like ghosts. They leave their traces and whisps to linger through any new reminders of times. Happy times. Their spirit like fingers trail over these and turn them into grey frozen blocks of self-condemnation. Any seed of contentment that was beginning to flourish by reminiscing is shrivelled up and the entirety of my mind is flooded by a tormenting yet tedious sadness. Drip drop.
It never ends. These fragmented memories dig their shattered shards into the recesses and forefront of my mind. It's been so long since happiness came unblemished and immaculate I often wonder if happiness ever does come in an angelic form. Or does the reality of each individuals past - the things that moulded them into some form instead of the square mandatory shape we all come in- does that blunt truth effect everyone like it does me? Does everyone have those inner moments when the scales of justice tipped down against them? Or do some people let go of the things they can no longer change....I can't. Letting go for me means forgetting and I don't want to forget. I don't want to pretend I'm mended when I am not. Pretend it didn't happen. It surely would be taking the importance and value away from her. Away from her life.

I've heard words saying 'moving on isn't forgetting, it's choosing to remember the good things and memories you have' but i find the words 'moving on' disgusting, they repulse me. They deflect from the issue. Flippantly casting those words at me is disregarding what happened, it makes it sound like I have a choice in the matter. Like there is a button in my head I can press and automatically I'll be left with fond stories to tell people, like I'll be at peace with her loss. Anyway could I ever stop reliving what happened? Would my mind and conscience ever stop bringing back the events prior to what took place? I try and imagine a day where she wouldn't be at the forefront of my cogitation. Although it has only been 2 years and 9months, trying to envisage a day without her drifting into my mind seems impossible. It almost appears that there were no days before in which that didn't occur. Tick tock.
I remember what the mirror showed me before she got taken. The reflection I see now doesn't match the girl who was there before. The girl who was maybe fucked up, but at least free. Careless. A girl who tried and failed. Now i witness
myself with scared and lonely etched into my body-running through the very core of me. Those words have been bought to life in me.
I see tired eyes. Hopeless bereaved eyes, lined with distress. Eyes that have cried a thousand tears and will cry a thousand more in in the solitude of despondency.
I see a weathered face, a face that is harrowing. I look and I don't recognise myself anymore, it is a face of a victim. An eerie face showing defeat.
I see a dormant smile. It stopped happening after her. All the smiles since are not the realistic ones I used to radiate out.
I see a body that I loathe. A body of scars, a body of bloated medicated weight. A body that has been created partly by tablets but partly by me. I am scared, scared he will find me so if I look as horrendous to him as i do to me, I hope he will take notice and leave, go away. But as I wait for he day he will inevitably arrive I have to live in this detestable, monstrous form. My fucking body! It cant even do the most natural of things. If I catch a glimpse of myself I cry. I am a freak. Grotesque.
I see trembling hands brushing the damaged hair away from the eyes of someone in solitude. I see baggy clothes covering a baggy body. I see jumpers worn all year round.
I see noose marks around a previously unmarked neck. Drip drop.
Misplaced guilt they tell me. Guilt is guilt, how can it be misplaced? The feeling of contrition in the times I experience it, is genuine. I'm not making a conscience decision to be affected by this, so how am I misplacing it?? Anyway I SHOULD feel it!! It IS my fault so they can fuck off with their 'clever' idealisation of what the reality is. Tick tock.
I deliberate over the events, the lead up to what I now agonise over. It's haunting my mind. Those people that still want to know me find it distressing when I try and talk about her. Ive sadly learnt to not force the issue with them. They either don't want to understand or just can't. What do they say to me? What would be 'right'? I know. I just want someone to listen but I get heavy hearted and they try and make it better, but they can't. So I sit and paint on my false smile. It's easier that way.
I've learnt to keep my grief private, chose moments when I am alone to let my memories flood my mind and the tears flood my face. Drip drop.

I feel accountable for the incident, i should be punished. I abuse myself to try and balance out this wrong, i hurt and bleed and my heart fills with remorse.
I can chastise myself for the rest of my life and it still wouldnt be enough. And yet the clock hands keep moving. I am pushed, by time, further away from her. Tick tock.

I remember the first time i saw her. He didn't want me to go to the appointment, he didn't want anyone to know what he did to me in the darkness. My name got called out and like a robot I walked into the room, scared that there would be something wrong with me. The room was dark and instantly terror hit me, smacked into my stomach and sent icy shudders up my back. Fear began crawling up from my chest wrapping its gnarled fingers around my throat choking me. No, no please not the dark. The radiographer was a man. He instructed me to take the bottom half of my clothes and lie down on the hospital bed. My mind got taken over

Him. Him holding me down. Holding my arms in a vice like grip. He is so strong. He holds me with one hand and with the other he pulls his trousers down. Then comes the familiar pain, the stinging burning fire as he rips my vagina open. Oh the pain, it's like no other. Tears streaming down my face trying desperately to fight. It hurts so much.

'Are you ready?' My mind comes back to the present. I nod in reply. I lie down and then the scanner is inside me. It's not a pleasant experience having this done. I can't remember the time period it took between the scan commencing and him telling me. I remember being so shocked I didn't speak. Then her picture, a fuzzy black and white blob. It was hard to decipher what I was seeing. She was 9weeks and 2 days old the picture wasn't that clear to me, it was wobbling through my tears.

I remember the journey home. I remember so many emotions- they were fluttering through my body like butterflies, not all of them good. I feel regretful about that. Did she pick up on those feelings and chose to escape me because of them? I argue that point a lot in my head. She was the product of something so awful, she was born out of rape. A Phoenix rising from the ashes that I had become. Drip drop.
There's a quote in the bible that says 'there is nothing new under the sun' so somewhere, somehow, someone has gone through this scenario. A beautiful soul emerging, a beginning out of what I thought was going to be the end. I did want her. I did! Please don't condemn me for the truth of the situation. All the thoughts, the unpleasant and the joyous. I jumped years ahead of myself, would I see him every time I looked at her? Would my bond and love be lesser than other parents? I would never be in total freedom from him. Not if this child entered the world, he would have rights. That fucked me off, Where were my rights when he impregnated me through force and without consent? I had none. He would taint her, use her as leverage to control me, I could never be liberated. Every point of damage I could find I did. I feel so burdened with a sickening reality now. That I even allowed those horrible vile repulsive dirty thoughts to dance around my mind, each one linked to another slowly constricting my brain...but then not every thought was a negative. I held my stomach as the taxi bumped along over the roads leading to my home. I had her, only I knew she was there and she was my secret. She was something I had dreamed and wished and prayed for. Ok so the conception was not how I envisaged, but she was a little life, take away the circumstances she was created out of and she was pure. A little life growing in my belly. She held promises of a chance. A opportunity to make a family that I never had. She was mine! And I would love her, hold her, soothe her....tick tock.

Telling him. That was difficult. I text him the news. He said 'get a test and show me' that was all. I got two, he was there and the two lines came up. Proof of her existence. He was angry, so he left-I didn't see him until after she went. I was facing this alone, but it was easier that way. My poor poor girl. I couldn't protect her, I failed as a mother. I let her down and I never stop thinking that, feeling that, how can I??? I am responsible and I fucked up. I torture myself every day, the past twirling around my head so I cannot live in the present and I cannot think of the future. I become possessed by my guilt wracked tears and sorrow. Drip drop. Drip drip drop.

The one thing that is supposed to be the most natural for any women I failed at. I had a house made of cards, everything in place ready for the final two pieces to finish the structure...it was there, ready I had gone through putting up every other card before with ease, then as my hands hovered above the fragile house I started to tremble. My previously steady hands began shaking, as much as I tried I couldn't stop them. I'm balanced ready, I have to finish the house, I hold the cards above where they need to be. I place them....and they all flutter gently to the floor, i ruined it. This is nature, it's a natural pure and perceived as somewhat easy by the outside world. There are stages, set stages that every woman goes through. There are books written on it....so WHY??? Why? Tick tock.

Ring a ring of roses we all fall down. Theres a vivid memory my mind coils back to, I have no idea of the time scales in which this happened but when I'm sat in cogitative silence it comes back to me. At some point in the last of my time with her I went to tescos, I didn't have much money for food so I picked up a box of rusks. I figured, from reading the back of the box, that they had lots of vitamins and she needed something that was going to be nourishing. I bought them, took them home and ate some. This is where my memory gets hazy I can't decipher how Long after I ate them (or possibly proceeded to eat over the course of a week) the bleeding started.

Ring a ring of roses we all fall down. The pain, the pain in my stomach, back and shoulder blade. I was fearful. Feeling something dripping out. Seeing the blood. I blinked hoping it would be something I hadn't visualised properly. No it was real, the blood was there. Crimson staining my underwear,drops spreading through the fabric, a stark blunt accuracy in what was happening. What I knew and what i had known before.
Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock
When the bough breaks,
The cradle will fall
And........and down will come baby,
Cradle and all.

Down will come baby. Down will come baby. She was coming down. And I couldn't do anything to stop it. She was losing her life and I was losing my life with her. Did she know....did she feel my relief, my stupid selfish emotions? The weight of my decisions taken away by the fucked up thing we call fate? The pain the raging pain screaming through my body at high speed knowing I couldn't keep her. A fatality was there, in front of me. Help...help! Somebody care enough to help me please? If you don't want to help me then please help her! I need someone. I just don't want to be alone.....can anyone hear me in this deficiency of light, the caliginosity I am facing? I don't want to talk to god. He shouldn't take my beginning and turn it into an end.
Drip drip drop little bloody showers. The slaughter, the blood shed. Blooming scarlet falling heavily out of me, when the bow breaks the cradle will fall, each drop was another cessation of her body and life.

Six days passed and the bleeding stopped, but it had only just began in my heart. Never have I ever felt such abandonment, she deserted me. I was now unoccupied. My mind, however, was full. there was an abundance of 'what ifs' 'maybes' and 'whys'. There still is. I remember her. I remember I loved her, I know I shouldn't have let her go. I know I should have banished my doubts and been selfless. Who cares in what circumstances she was created? She didn't choose them..oh the mental pain I inflict on myself now. There's no one here today because someone took the light away. I could have a thousand children but nobody can replace her lost soul. She's out there somewhere, if she's in heaven I will go to see her face would break the low.

How do I now survive? How do I function with the remorse and culpability my heart is filled with. I haven't gone through a natural cycle since. I can't help thinking and thinking and fucking thinking, was she my last chance??? There-I said it. I face my reality, nothing can live in my torn out tomb. I know I cannot carry on with any quality of life until my womb is leased out and occupied again. But I am dragged away from fertility in ageing waves. Waves that keep lapping over me, pulling me further and further from womanhood normality. Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock.....

I may not experience a blossoming expectancy again. She left. And I hope if that if there is such a thing as heaven she is there waiting for me. Perhaps in life I will not be blessed but I take some small comfort knowing that in death, she will be there - and I will, for the first time, get to embrace her.