STEPS

CHAPTER FOURTEEN Words and Mailboxes

Came the day I picked up a pen and once again wrote down those few lines memorised. Only this time, more words appeared on the paper!

"So young and spending endless suffocating years trying to reclaim a touch. Have you ever witnessed the solitude of one who seeks a particular day? Have you - and you - come to the same conclusion as I have? There is no capturing the extraordinary."

The words returning? Some miracle occurring? A day similar to any other only now keys were being struck, sentences impatient, scattering over pages, my thoughts rapid and all vying to break through at once. Creation once again in my hands, sitting back after several hours and wondering what happened. How had this begun? William somehow getting through this time, he finally answering my pleas? Oh how I described this miracle! Telling the pages everything, anything.

"How often have I wished you'd caught a glimpse here and there, you know, peeking in, seeing, saying she's done it, turned out fine. Despite. The young impetuous, tearaway infatuated thing, hung up on being with I was presenting once... If not for you and the words torn from myself from the tearing of me, if not. Sometimes I catch myself looking over my shoulder feeling you there. How else, if not imagining you seeing?"

Tentative new steps, hope held in shaking hands as I re-read. Tears, relief, gratitude... yet accompanying them, an affixed pain. These new sentences pointed to something - guiding my thoughts, despite my thoughts simultaneously creating them... Circles and circles. I understood it was about missing William. The pain insistent, fighting the messages because I felt undeserving of them, of him. The need to reconnect building inside me, paragraphs forming, compelling me to seek him out, erase everything and present instead these fresh eyes, this barefoot child walking the beaches, basking in the sun's light, out of the shadows finally.

Came the day my brother saved us also. His position now affording us a better home, money deposited weekly, easing our financial burdens.

My brother. I still glimpsed in him the young fair-haired boy I'd take by the hand. The big sister. He'd grown, achieved some considerable measure of success. I was proud, grateful too, for he had climbed well. I had been alongside for most of it; I saw the sacrifices, the relentless focus on his dream. But somewhere in those years the two of us stopped talking. We became instead, acquaintances.

He had no idea who I was and all I absorbed of him was what I read and watched on TV and the news he imparted on the phone ahead of press releases. I despised him sometimes. Letting me go, letting other women assume a greater purpose, women impacting on our relationship, women finding nothing in me to connect with, nothing to claim in common.

I sometimes noticed things he did not. Perceived dangers to him. But I kept silent. Learning early on my opinions and my interpretations were secondary to his perception of happiness. I feared speaking in case I lost him once, but I lost him anyway by remaining silent. Lesson learned, the conversations stopped. A while later I screwed up, losing everything, gambling away our future security. He in turn despised me for this weakness, his contempt palpable. My detesting his subsequent superiority, his rigid morality... both of us caught up in a cycle of miscommunication.

He handed over money and I took it but times I detested him for being in a position to do so. A kept woman again. Sure, I reasoned, I was leaving him free. No mundane doctor's visits, no sitting endless hours in hospital chairs, no shopping trips, blah blah. I was being paid to take care of our parents. It was a job.

The trade-off, my imprisonment. Forced to live with our parents, be everything to them. He meanwhile travelling the world, exciting, fabulous holidays, exotic locations, wonderful memories. Oh how I begrudged him this at times! Never mind the hell was of my own making. It was incidental to the bigger issue - I reasoned - for even if I became financially independent, still I'd be doing this - still stuck - leaving him free to pursue his dreams. How twisted was my mind some days? Taking his goodness, his generosity and disfiguring it, labelling it a payoff.