Forgiven
I slowly walked down the street, my heart crawled heavy in my boots. I could feel my heart beat pounding in my chest, much harder and it must surely break through my flesh to lie bruised and battered on the pavement. Maybe that was what I deserved to have my heart torn out and mangled the way I had done to his.
Coming back was so difficult. I knew he'd welcome me, after all he'd begged and pleaded, almost crawled on his knees. Swore he'd forgiven me and that everything would be different now. Promised to make me happy, give me everything I wanted so that I'd never need to leave again. And weighed down with guilt I'd finally capitulated and agreed to return.
Even now as I approached the door my steps get slower and slower, my boots turned to lead, my memories of why I ran away an anchor dragging me backwards. And I start to realise that he may have forgiven me but I haven't forgiven him.
He'd suffocated me, stifled every ounce of individuality. Showered me with gifts as if to buy my love. Yet each gift came with a price. I had to become the person who would wear the gifts, each time I sold a piece of my soul I became more and more a posession, less of me left each time. And deep inside I begin to realise that if I go back I will surely lose what little is left of who I am and the price is too great.
I approach the door and instead of turning to enter I walk right past. "Goodbye I whisper. I forgive you."
Blind Ambition
I used to wonder why they called it blind ambition before I met you. My childlike brain argued that the ambitious knew what they were striving for and hence could not be called blind. I even envied there focus. But that was before you came.
You don't even see the footmarks on my back do you. You put them there as you scrambled over me in your relentless quest to reach the top. I really believed you loved me. I was so naieve. No longer do I look at life with such sweet innocence. You made sure of that. You tore the veils away from my eyes and made me stare into the harsh light of day. Even as the tears flowed from my eyes you did not see how you had caused me pain.
"But sweetheart I'm doing this for us" you claimed. Even as you wormed your way into another womans bed to ensure one more promotion came your way. You did it for us sure enough, you tore us up and then threw us aside because we impeded your path.
I wonder if one day, when somebody younger and more ambitious uses your shoulders as another rung on the ladder to success, if you'll finally realise how it felt to be one of the people you left behind. Will you finally see the trail of human debris, bruised and battered that marks out the path you took? Or will you always remain oblivious to the pain you caused? Blinded by ambition
Mama
The first time ever I saw your face it tore my heart in pieces to know it would be the last. I always wondered what you looked like. I'd heard so much about you. "Delicate ethereal beauty" they said "Far too fragile for this world". Then when they noticed me listening they'd lower their voices or move away as if somehow I'd be harmed by knowing about you.
I hung eagerly on every word that was uttered about you. Building in my head a picture of the perfect motherer that I had been denied. Each time I heard about your beauty I'd search desperately in the mirror for any legacy. I always turned away dissapointedly, seeing just another homely girl, nothing special, not one to ever turn heads or stand out in a crowd.
For years I longed to meet you but held back, afraid of your response. After all you were quick enough to abandon me and walk away without a second chance. At least that's what they led me to believe. I know they acted from kindness, somehow believing that I would be more damaged if I knew about your illness than I was by believing you hadn't wanted me.
It broke my heart when I found out that my birth had been the final straw that sent you over the edge and severed your tenous link with reality. They say you didn't understand that you were locked away, enclosed in your own world you weren't aware that you were missing anything.
I cannot help but feel that the sun on your cheeks, the wind rustling through your hair, the cry of your daughter in a cradle nearby, these things would have drawn you back if only they'd given us both a chance.
And now at last they can't keep us apart. I insisted that your coffin be left out in the orchard for this last day. Giving you one last chance to feel the light, and the air before they lock you away one last time beneath the ground. As I sit here I commit your features to my memory, this only chance to come anywhere close to touching who you were. Goodbye Mama I wish I'd had the chance to get to know you.
Careless whisper
I hear them whisper time and time again behind their hands. Careless of my reaction time and time again they snigger and make me the butt of their jokes.
I don't understand what it is they find so funny about me. I know I'm different and I don't fit in with their social rules. Why is this funny. Why does this make it allright for them to laugh and be cruel about me.
When I was younger I wanted to have friends but somehow I always got it wrong, then I'd get angry and fly into rages, or sit in a corner rocking and they'd laugh at me more. There is a name for this rocking and other behaviours that help me to cope when it feels like my world is spinning out of control. I now know it is called stimming.
I used to think I was going mad, living in a world whose rules I didn't understand. Time and time again my mom tried to get me help. Telling them that I was not bad but had real problems but in their heads they would pin labels on me, "behaviour problems", "dysfunctional family" thinking this explained my behaviour they didn't want to look any further.
Eventually something lucky happened. Mum did some studying with two ladies who worked with people like me. Mum had to do a role play, which is where people act as if they were someone else, doing the things these people would do and saying the things they think they would say. Mum acted like me, she must have been good at acting like me because from watching her these ladies realised what was wrong with me.
Because of them we managed to talk to the right people, who knew other people, who eventually got us an appointment with a doctor. The doctor agreed. I am not bad, or mad or have behaviour problems or come from a dysfunctional family. I have a brain functioning disorder called Aspergers Syndrome
Suspicion
I am beginning to act like a thief in the night. Sneaking from the house when you are not around. Making secret assignations over the phone. Lying and hiding and acting in such a way does not sit easy with my conscience but I do not know what else to do.
I stopped going to pubs or clubs because you constantly accused me of flirting or encouraging men to pay attention. I gave up my course because you were convinced that my male teacher fancied me. I left my beloved job and became a housewife because you were threatened by the men I worked with, even the male customers you saw as people I might run off with.
Where does it all stop. I have eliminated practically all contact with males to help you feel more secure. I have done my best to show you how trustworthy I am and yet your suspicions just grow.
Now you accuse me of making lovers trysts each time I go out to spend time with my friends. When they come to visit me you make sure to stay around, forbidding visits when you will not be home. When did I become a child to be told what I could or could not do. When did you become my jailer rather than my lover.
How can I go ahead with our wedding plans when already you seem to believe you own me. When I have to act against my own conscience to even visit my friends.
Time
His breath caught in his throat
A year and 3 days ago and yet I remember it so clearly. Most of the time I don't even bring it to mind but then a stray thought or phrase brings the picture clearly into sharp focus carrying with it all the pain still firmly attached.
I kept vigil at my fathers bedside three times, when they didn't think he'd last the night. He only went into the hospice to manage his medication, they didn't expect him to die so soon. He was supposed to leave the hospice again for a few more months life but it wasn't to be. The drugs made him so violently sick that the vomit entered his lungs.
That was the first time he cheated death. I reckon he heard someone say he wasn't expected to last the night and being the awkward cuss he always was decided to defy their prediction. It was a strange night my mum and all of us children sat around his bed and we spent the night in tears. Not as you'd expect tears of pain or misery, rather tears of laughter, as we sat and made jokes and shared stories, and remembered. Even to me it sounds strange but we weren't being callous, in our own way we each felt the pain but chose to share the best of dad rather than just focussing on the worst.
From that night on dad was never left alone. The staff made it clear to us that he was on the final stretch and there would be no miraculous recoveries
Time
Scattered pieces
I cannot see the tiny shards scattered across the floor. But I am aware of them. I pretended not to notice but in truth I heard your cry of pain at the very moment that trust burst from your chest and exploded into a thousand tiny pieces.
No matter how we try to repair the damage, patch you up and act like nothings changed you will never be the same again. Some pieces have disintegrated and cannot be recreated. So much for innocence, It only hurt you anyhow, without it you will be armoured against others like me.
I never meant to hurt you. I was just careless. Perhaps that's what hurts most, spite, or anger or revenge or hate, at least they would have some meaning. By not even noticing, or considering the effect that my actions would have on you it was as if I said that you weren't worthy of attention. In my offhanded way I dismissed you as insignificant and in some ways that was the cruelest cut of all.
I do not hate you, I do not know you anymore than you now realise you don't know me.
Irreconcilable differences
"Irreconcilable differences" she said "your father and I just can't live together any more. We just make each other unhappy" and she continued to pack. It didn't take her very long, she just slung a few clothes into one suitcase, grabbed her coat and started to leave.
She was almost out of the door before I realised she wasn't taking me with her. "Mummy, why are you leaving me behind? Let me go with you please" I begged. She put her elegant hand under my chin and tilted upwards "Sweet child" she almost laughed "where I'm going is no place for a child" and she swiftly slipped out the door closing it behind her.
I ran to the window and watched her walk away through the blur of my tears. Just before she got to the end of the road a car drew up beside her. A large sleek car that I recognised only too well. The door opened and she slipped inside. I watched in disbelief as she leaned over smiling and kissed the driver briefly on the lips. Then without a backwards glance she drove out of my life.
Time
No regrets
Little Ginny smiled up at me with that crooked tooth grin "But surely there must be something that you regret Granny" and she gazed at me with that quizzical smile, almost daring me to find something in my life that I'd take back and do differently.
"Ah Chickadee you have to get as old and wise as me before you'll understand" I explained "but I'll try and tell you anyway." She snuggled down on my lap content to have once again elicited a story of my past. The truth is it wouldn't have mattered what story I told her, she just loved the comfort of snuggling up and the feeling of importance it gave her to capture my undivided attention.
It didn't happen very often that she got me on her own. After a late start, which had left me fearing that I would never have the grandchildren I craved, my children went on between them to provide me with 13 grandsons and 2 grand daughters.
I'd transferred joyfully from my role as mother to that of crone. Over the years my grandchildren spent much happy time with me.
Time
Gone with the wind
I can hear my secret whispering in the wind. It became too much for me to hold inside. I had to let it out or burst.
So I came to this secluded hill, and climbed to the top. Even from the ridge of the hill there are no buildings in site, no signs of human inhabitance. Even the road a good thirty minutes walk away is hidden from view by the thick gorse and shrubs. One coud easily believe that no one else existed.
In this quiet solitary place I knew I could relieve myself of the burden of the secret in perfect safety. Cupping my hands around my mouth I shouted as loudly as I was able "The babies mine, all mine. She's having my baby".
My words echoed around the hill for a few seconds then the words were whipped away by the wind as if they had never existed. Relieved of the tension I returned slowly to my car, at peace at last.
I drove swiftly home and arrived just in time for the start of the celebrations. My mother happy at last at the prospect of being a grandmother had thrown a large family get together. Annie sat there radient with the glow of the life inside her. I walked over to my brothers wife, kissed her gently on the cheek and handed over the gift that I had purchased earlier in the day. "You'll make a wonderful mother" I told her. "And you'll be the best uncle in the world" she replied.
I love to hate you
We argue on almost every subject. Our friends ask why we can't agree on anything, they are almost afraid to start us off. I wonder if they will ever understand.
I relish the joy of sharpening my wit against yours, the competition invigorates and stimulates. I can feel the heat rising as one pointed barb after another flashes between us, bouncing first off your shell then off mine. I love to bask in the frisson of excitement that permeates the atmosphere as we sharpen and test each others intellectual strengths and weaknesses.
This is not a battle we are engaged it, rather it is a dance of passion. A hidden flirtation recognised only by the two of us. I see the lust that you attempt to disguise as disdain each time you appear to brush off another sally that I have fired in your direction. I know that you recognise the glow in my cheeks an indicator of my bodies reaction to your mere presence.
The only battle we're really fighting is the battle to keep our hands off each other. To remember and respect that both of us have spouses who deserve our loyalty. To subsume the desire to tease and explore each other more fully in a playfull battle that neither of us really wishes to win. Deep down I would love to love you. As circumstances are I will content myself with loving to hate you.
Waiting for the right moment
Not yet, not yet, wait just a little longer. I hold my breath as I watch her through the tiny crack in the door.
She has no idea that I am even here. I fight hard to smother my giggles, as I picture the shock on her face when I burst out of my hiding place present in hand and love in heart.
Father and I have been planning this surprise for her for several months now. He told me how much she missed me and that she regretted the harsh words between us as much as I did. We'd never been apart for more than a couple of weeks before and both had been stressed out about the departure.
So deep inside I'd known she'd beeen right to worry. Handling money was never my strong point. But I'd been angry that she didn't trust me to learn for myself, experience as they say is the great teacher. It felt like she'd been trying to stop me from growing up, keep me mommies little girl for ever.
Over the months I'd had time to think, and so according to father had she. I wanted to take back my angry words but didn't know how. Each time I picked up the phone to call, hurt pride rose up and prevented my action. But I missed what we'd lost and when father called me with his idea for her 50th birthday I knew that I had to take this chance and find a way to build an adult relationship with her.
