Memory Exercise 12/04/2016 - Peace with my Past [Part 2 of 3]

The nightmares were the worst part. I dreamt that I’d climbed to the top of Guy’s Cliffe house. My mum and dad used to take me there as a child, telling me that I was a princess and that one day I’d live there. In my dream I look at my innocent baby with no emotion and I drop it into a sea of hands that were never to catch her. Angry women run to the top of the crumbling building and they spit at me, pull my hair out. They scream at me, call me a murderer. One of them is holding my dead baby in her hands. “Look at her. Look at what you’ve done you sick fucking disgrace!” I woke up panting, coated with sweat. What have I done?

Another dream was of me sitting on the sofa in a house I had never seen before, eating banana bread while watching cartoons. Then in would crawl a little girl no older than two.

“Mama!”

“Yes pretty girly, that’s your mama! Are we going to give mama a kiss?” Joe follows her into the room on his hands and knees, smiling at me the way he used to. She reaches out her chubby arms, drooling onto her t-shirt and I smile back as I’d give her a cuddle. In the dream, I love her. The Joe and Katie story, complete with our baby girl. A story from an alternate universe where I had done everything right, where Joe hadn’t left me and I‘d not killed my baby. I wished to stay there; the pain of waking up and remembering was far too much. They don’t bother me much anymore, the nightmares. As time passes they grow less frequent, one day maybe they’ll go away. It’s reality that becomes the difficult thing to endure.

At the time I was plagued with guilt. Every baby I saw left me disgusted at myself. I despised pregnant women, despised the fact that their babies were alive and I'd killed mine.

I’d needed to get out of the city fast. When it'd gotten too much to handle on my own I left. My mum was pleased to hear from me, it'd been a while since I'd last called.

“You’ve lost weight, Katie.” She pulled at the arm on my jumper which was now baggy. Shit. I had. “How’s Joe?” she asks.

“Fine,” Why am I lying to her? Because if I'd told her about him I was scared she'd have made me tell her about everything, and she will see me for what I am; an adult woman with no meaningful relationships and her grandchild's killer.

She's always been incredible though, my mum. You can tell her anything and she'll help no matter what. So I swallowed my fears and told her.

She sat and listened to me cry, my wounds open, the secret finally out. I told her about Joe, how I was confused at how easily I’d discarded my beliefs, my guilt about my abortion and the nightmares. She didn’t shout at me, just told me that she loved me and that I shouldn’t have kept it a secret.

“Katie, I love you so much. But right now, I want you to come and live at home. Not in the same house if you don’t want, but I want you to be close.” I stayed that night, couldn’t bear to be alone any longer.

So I moved back home, but my mind was somewhere else. My mum wasn’t angry at me, but I didn’t feel any better.

I still remember my first time with the crystal. Remember the way my pupils dilated, everything I saw intensified. The trees danced and the sky and the land became one as the horizon disappeared. 

Cars zoomed past as a flash of colour. The world had appeared crystal clear. The crystals themselves flowed through my veins and in that moment I noticed how important my blood was, how I was entirely impotent, that my existence depended on it and how it felt like liquid gold as I’d came up. Every breath had felt heavy. In that moment, I hadn’t just been living, I’d been alive.

In the years since this, the crystals continued to make me feel that way, enlightening and disillusioning me. When I was in oblivion, and my body was numb, my mind was filled with music, neon colours and paradise.

It’s never stopped the nightmares though.

It’d felt as though I couldn’t sleep - but being awake was even more difficult. The days and nights blurred into one another. With no job and no real friends, there’d been no purpose being here.