I am toying with the idea of letting You read this. If You are reading this, then the toying is done. Make of it what you will and, if nothing else, please let me know that You read it.
Dear You,
I wrote the following many (three) years ago. It was inspired by a plethora of split-second memories which when taken individually mean nothing; put them together and add a spattering of Other Things and these split-second memories take on completely unsavoury connotations.
There’s a little girl in my head.
She makes daisy-chains which will eventually wither and die. She runs through hay-fields, screaming with delight, until she’s out of breath and it’s time to go home for tea. She plays board games with her siblings and can only dream of beating them. She likes to don long party dresses and wear her hair fancy.
She’s an extrovert, a chatterbox.
Innocent.
Beautiful.
But she’s confused. Things have happened and they don’t feel right. They feel very wrong. Things that make her have feelings she doesn’t understand, and thoughts that should be far from the mind of an eight year old.
And so the little girl in my head becomes increasingly introverted, shy, and withdrawn. She bottles her emotions and memories up
(“It’s perfectly fine to say how you’re feeling, Katie”)
until they’re so deeply buried inside that they cease to exist. And once they cease to exist she can pretend that they never happened. If they never happened then she never has to tell anybody about them. And everybody in her life can live happily, blissfully ignorant of any wrongdoing. The little girl can live happily.
There’s a little girl in my head.
She’s created a jigsaw puzzle in my mind and, through flashes of long-distant memory, she’s filling in more gaps. As more pieces fit the puzzle so the little girl is edging me nearer to the truth. I want to fight this: I don’t need to know the truth. I want to be blissfully ignorant. I don’t like jigsaw puzzles!
When the puzzle is complete, who will I turn to? Who can you turn to when the only people you trust will be the people whose hearts you break?
Sometimes I wish she’d go away and leave me alone,
the little girl in my head.
I have struggled with that little girl, to the extent that – at times – I have been convinced she was nothing but a figment of my imagination. I have often assumed that the little girl in my head was not repressed memories, but just something I latch onto occasionally to help me fill a need (although I’m not sure what that need is … maybe an excuse for being me?)
In a moment of drunken-ness (aged 18) I blurted out to a friend that * had done things to me. I only had vague recollections of telling her and the subject was never really raised again. Likewise, during an argument with Mumsy I couldn’t bear it anymore and proclaimed, But you don’t even know what * did to me!
She told me not to be stupid, effectively putting her hands in her ears and tra-la-la-ing. Only one other person (an ex) is aware. I don’t talk about it, because what if I am just being stupid?
In reality I only have one recollection of * doing anything to me. But the split-second memories don’t really tie in with this recollection because in the split-second memories I am younger and the split-second memories don’t really involve anyone else; they are feelings, and sights that don’t make sense.
There are no faces and there is no *.
And then I stumbled across Your blog. I say stumbled, but I was being nosey. I didn’t really have any intention of reading it all, but I did. Perhaps Fate made me.
And You said something, ever-so briefly, something that could easily have been passed by. And I cried. And I’m crying now.
Because what if I’ve got it wrong? What if my recollection of * is based on something that * felt compelled to do by someone else? What if it was learned behaviour? What if my Monster wasn’t * but was somebody else, and when my Monster wasn’t around I chose to look for it elsewhere?
What if the * memory was actually my fault?
Sometimes I have attempted to make sense of my split-second memories, and I have wondered who my Monster was. But never … NEVER … did that person cross my mind.
Never.
Ever.
I don’t doubt You at all. But I need to know … I need to know so many things.
But mostly, I need to know if it started with me.
I have come to terms with it. I don’t know what happened, but I know something did. I don’t know how often it happened, but my split-second memories suggest many times.
I don’t know if that person is the cause of all my split-second memories, but reading that one simple sentence that You wrote in February 2009 didn’t surprise, nor shock, me. This could only be so if I already know think he’s capable of doing something intrinsically wrong. To recognise that my Monster might be that person would give me some sort of closure; it’s something I can accept and work with.
I want You to know that I love You lots.
