Standing in the ICU of Constantiaberg Hospital, she is holding onto the last shred of the fragile life in front of her. The pipes and tubes invade the bed and the beeping sound of the machine becomes overwhelming. All the small, unimportant things all add up to a moment in time like this and they seem to knock the wind out of you.
For as long as she could remember, her grandmother had always been around her. There was not a time in her life, where she could look back and say that she was never there for school awards ceremonies, a school play, a sports day or anything remotely important to a young child. Her grandmother fetched her from school, helped her with homework and projects, spoilt her like any grandchild would be spoilt and most importantly, she stood in the place of her recently divorced, working mother when she was never there. On the morning of her seventeenth birthday, she was abruptly woken up by her mother with the news she knew before it was spoken.
The funeral was something she could not handle. The church was dimly lit and deathly quiet. Family members and friends stalked into the pews, taking their seats quietly. The drone of the organ was feint in the background. The priest was fiddling with the altar, seemingly uncomfortable in his current situation, every few minutes checking his watch and looking interested in the mourners entering the room. The microphone made a few crackling noises, as if to prepare itself for the task it was going to assist in. Standing, in her usual black attire, she faced front, she did not have the courage to look behind her and register all the people who came to say their goodbyes. She thought she could maintain her hard image but the weeping sound of one of her close family members broke down that exterior quickly. All the pain and the anger and the hurt from the previous months of watching her guardian angel suffer slowly, came pouring out like flood gates that had been forced open. With her back to the congregation and the constant reminder of her grandmother’s absence in front of her, she was trapped between two realities, one that she feared and had eventually came true and the other that she had made the subconscious decision to resent and disregard.
Everyone’s life (but the living family of a dead family member) goes on, after any funeral. The cards, help, meals and constant condolences stopped too quickly and she was faced with the surreal of the true situation. For weeks afterwards, she found herself wanting to ask her grandmother a random question or to sit and have a smoke with her at the kitchen counter, but the blunt and vicious truth hit her hard every time, leaving her with an emotional and excruciating feeling in her chest. Eventually, she learnt to train and master her mind, to think ahead so that she could trick her emotions and the pain and she could make it to the next day in one piece, even if she was being torn at the seams, slowly and surely.
Weeks went by, and so did life. She went back to school after the June holidays. She got through every class, with minimal attention, always meeting deadlines but no enthusiasm or hard work was put into anything she did. Her marks started slipping and so did her mind. She was constantly tired and her energy levels dropped. She hardly ate because the pain and the suffering were eating whatever she had left inside her, chewing away as if she could physically feel it in the pit of her stomach. She woke up every morning, in tears and it took immense effort for her to get herself ready, to put on a happy exterior and to come up with new excuses why her face was swollen every morning in register.
Eventually she reached the stage of complete and utter anger, her pain was silenced and something deeper and darker took over her. She started hating every little thing possible, and if she did not have a reason to hate it, she made up an excuse to do so. This all led to her cutting herself. She didn’t cut too deep, but she cut deep enough to leave visible trails to constantly remind her of what she was being faced with. The stinging sensation of relief every time she did it was like a pressure point that slowly released everything that was being build up. It became routine. She had to wear a jersey to school in summer, to cover the scars up. She could not even attempt to wear a bandage. That would scream out for unwanted attention. Maybe she wanted that though? Maybe she wanted someone to notice her and the constant anguish she was experiencing? She would sit on her bed, with the morbid, sickening rock music she listened to and she would slowly drag the razor blade across her wrist, watching the blood surface. She felt a numb sensation and she would lie back, so that she could grasp this feeling with everything she had and hang onto it for as long as it lasted.
Her relationship with her mother suffered and she had to deal with her own issues as well as her mother’s way of venting her personal pain. The fighting continued. The screaming and the shouting. The whole house was under a depressing and dark haze, everyone to their own and left to get on with it.
Months after her grandmother had passed, the family had decided they could cope with going through her personal items and slowly get rid of everything that had to go. If it was up to them, they would have left it all in its place and gone on with what was needed to be done. She sat in the lounge, with the television on, the sound of the latest music video filtering the room, while her aunts arrived to help her mother go through all the cupboards and drawers. She decided she did not want to get involved; it was way to close to home for her. It took them the whole morning to go from room to room, the sewing room, to the computer room to her bedroom. Personal items, sewing material and clothing. They put everything in different boxes, with the intention of donating or giving away the things that could not be used again or kept. She lingered around the boxes, with her family too busy to notice. She picked up certain items she remembered from her childhood. Her grandmother’s turquoise night gown, this had always been around as far as she could remember and it reminded her of nights that they would sit together in the lounge and watch a movie or whatever was on the television. She smelled it, it had her smell and she wasn’t sure if she was ready to let that go. Tears started to swell and she quickly placed it back in the box, shaking off any weakness that was about to appear. On the Kitchen counter was a smaller box. In it were her personal items, such as her perfume, her rosary, her ID book, her bible and an ornament she had never seen before. It was a mermaid. With a rough touch, her tail was badly chipped, the edges sharp. She was an opaque color, with bits of silver paint swaddled in her hair. Her face was blank and bowed, her arms were dropped and she looked sorrowful and vulnerable. For some reason, the mermaid appealed to her in more than one way. She was transfixed. Would anyone notice if it went missing? She contemplated asking her family if they would mind, but that thought quickly escaped her as she subconsciously grabbed it out of the box and headed for her room.
She had placed the ornament on her wall, with the best attempt of hammering in the nail. The perfect spot was over her bed. For a reason unknown to her, it gave her a sense of comfort, as if her grandmother was there with her in some way. She had hoped no one would notice it, this was her secret now and she didn’t want to let go of it.
Weeks went by, she would glance at it before she went to sleep and she would wake up every morning taking a quick glance at it before she left the house, her sense of comfort for the day and she started to feel like something inside of her was evolving.
Over a period of time, she found that she had become able to express herself. This came as an unnatural and utter shock, as she was so used to keeping everything inside of her that she was not sure how she would channel or deal with her new found power. She decided to write it all in a diary. She sat down every night, with the mermaid on the wall in full view, (her inspiration) and she would just write. She wrote until her fingers were sore from the skin being rubbed raw from the pen. She put everything else in her mind to the side and she went with it. She stopped cutting herself, assisting the scars to heal in their own time and throwing away their accomplices. She didn’t need that form of mutilation anymore and she made a promise to herself that she would never do it again. She also promised herself that as long as she was writing, she would not look at what she had written, she would leave it and read it one day when she could look back at it all and feel that she was finally at the finish line. Over the space of a year, she went through six diaries. She kept them hidden away and she told no one. Through writing, she came to the realisation that she needed help and overall she needed someone to talk to. She managed to break the black ribbon tied between herself and her mother and sought professional advice.
The therapy went on for a year, sessions twice a week. She secretly looked forward to it because she knew her confidant would never repeat what was said, she had the utmost trust in this women and it was her chance to completely break down and express herself, other than the writing, it helped and she started to head in the direction she needed to go.
She had had a dream. Her grandmother was sitting on her bed, right in front of the mermaid. She was in her turquoise night gown and she sat with a sense of peace and happiness surrounding her. Her smile was warm and loving, as it always was and remembered for. She couldn’t see herself in the dream, it was vague, but her grandmother and the slight haze of turquoise behind her were the prominent visions in the picture. “I love you” were the words her grandmother spoke, “Always remember that. You are my first born grandchild and I will always be looking out for you”. She turned and glanced at the ornament, her head tilting upwards and she turned back. The smile was still held tight on her face and she closed her eyes. She looked like she was at peace, someone who had been suffering and was finally where they longed and needed to be.
She woke up the next morning, tears running down her cheeks. She needed that so badly, it ached from within and she climbed under her duvet and sobbed for endless hours.
I have the mermaid hanging on my wall to this day. She is among all my photos and memories of my grandmother and my family. She sits there and she reminds of what I have been through and where I still need to be.
(Written by Gemma-Louise Wright, assessed and critiqued by Karen Jayes)
No comments:
Post a Comment