Listen while reading:
Occasionally it takes a hold of me. I don’t know if I consciously do it to test how bad I’ve gotten or whether it happens organically? Occasionally I let myself feel how much I miss my son. It threatens to swallow every part of me, bad and good.
Tonight I find myself alone. Accompanying the isolation is the deafening sound of silence, right before I find myself sobbing uncontrollably on the bathroom floor. Moments like this one could end in a bad way given too much time spent in this headspace. This is why I keep myself busy. As time goes on I become aware of how important it is to avoid testing myself like this.
My 4.40 am message to my sister,
“Sister I need your help. I can’t do this anymore. I need you to find me an inpatient hospital or something or maybe see your doctor. I’m really gonna kill myself soon if it doesn’t start to change. I’ve done enough shit I won’t do anymore”.
I am the older sister by almost four years.
My sister and I are broken!
Don’t get me wrong, while I say we are broken I don’t mean we are ‘not without hope’.
For a very long time I believed I was the stronger one but in this last year I see how I never gave her enough credit. In these last few months especially she’s been the one holding it together for us both.
We have not always been close. We were pinned against each other for a long time. For someone who has been told her entire life that she’s incapable of preforming even the most menial of tasks, she’s the only one who can see how bad it’s become?
Is she really the only one who can hear me?
Something I’ve learnt about people over the years is that they only see what they want to see.
Maybe it’s that she doesn’t get pleasure from my pain that makes her different to all of you?
My sister is not a trained mental health professional. In fact for years she played with mine and my sisters minds. While I always ran away from her my sister stayed. They dumped her in a long list of mental health facilities as they tried to convince her she was crazy.
Why is it my sister is the only one who can see that my son needs his mother? And this mother needs her son?
But she’s crazy right? Or is she just the only one not afraid to see the forrest beyond the trees?
Most people think it’s not possible for a mother to hate her children. A mother who hates you simply for existing it would seem? Why? That’s the thing I’ve never been able to work out. Maybe I’ll never work it out?
It would be easier if my mother were Joan Crawford some days. I’d be able to say she beat me with wire hangers or strangled me. As you read this you might understand me better.
Something my sister said today probably saved my life again.
“What happens if you give up now but it turns out that if you had held on just a little bit longer that he came back to you. What do I tell him? It will all be for nothing. I love you sister.”
Let me guess, even though the writing is literally written on the wall, you will still fail to do the right thing won’t you?
At the end of the day people will still choose to only see what they want to see. I know this.
But I see you.
Onto another day.
DIARIES FROM DOMESTIC VIOLENCE 