STEPS

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE - Suicide and other suppositions.

My brother a part of this need for closure too. Same deal. I hold back, questioning, mistrusting my motives. What do I seek from him? Absolution? Compassion? Have I ever tried to alleviate any of his pain? Where were my assurances when he'd needed them, when they'd have mattered? Before - even during - not afterwards! Not going to him with the devastation already in place! Laying on the table the end result and expecting unwavering support? Now expecting again? I've done the time, put the gambling demon away so it's only right he should embrace this new and improved version of me?

What? Because it had been tough? The machines almost taking my life? Never mind taking everything else. My life? Do I dare tell him how close I came? How favourable it had seemed those years to surrender, forfeit myself to compensate for the pain I caused? Yet never once considering the further pain this action too would inflict, horrible, forever pain in everyone around me. Still, whilst in the blackness, the only light most days showed no tunnel exit to life, rather the entryway to some other world... one offering blessed relief. That's what I believed for a time. Selfish in this assumption too.

Not that anyone around me expected, let alone suspected my inner turmoil. There were my vehement public declarations that life mattered, despite the worst, the darkest of moments. "Life means access to possibility," I'd tell my boys, when another in their school succumbed to suicide.

"Wrong! Fucking selfish, cowardly," I'd proclaim. "As long as there is life, anything can happen, any measure of positive change. Death is eternity, perpetual nothingness!" I stressed this over and over.

Yet I further understood within myself. How one gets there, to the moment when the only thing of matter is some reprieve, when another hour, another day feels impossible to live through. Only a finite strength of mind and this strength deteriorating, day by day, hour by hour, depleting the mind of any positivity.

It shuts down. It does. Everything contracts. Beauty, emotion, the ability to experience anything joyful removed from one's living. A hand reaching into one's brain and re-arranging their matter, eliminating self-worth, optimism, hope - leaving only despair, inadequacy and failure. An undeserving self... battling the next bleak moment and the next; no colour breaking through for me - not even from my children's smiles.

Yet functioning, living within a structured existence, sharing space, exchanging commentary with others, leaving no trace of this likelihood as I passed through lives and conversations; no one suspecting. How did this happen? How did I function without a hint of the blackness escaping me? More importantly, what kept me from seeking help?

What disallows reaching out - even now? I've battled this question over time, approaching it from diverse angles, varying perspectives. There is fear, sure. Worry over prescribed meds messing up my mind, robbing me of creation perhaps, the ability to experience depth of any kind, any extreme. Placidness; a succumbing to a power greater than I and nullifying my own strength even if this strength lies invisible, even if unable to be called upon right then. I saw this in my father... the gradual numbing leaving only an emotionless shell, a one dimensional caricature.

Judgement perhaps... of me by others - my considered flawed, damaged? Weakness brought forth beneath the surface bravery? Hell I'm already judged I've fulfilled those suppositions.

My own cowardice then? The thought of others assuming superiority, positioned to help me, the distressed one; and my not wanting anyone to be placed there, above me, reaching down, lifting up?

And the words also, having to convey, construct verbal statements describing the what, who and the why, over and over, revisiting evil and darkness. Sure I journey there now but somehow because it's only in my own mind, I feel safe. Laid open, examined by others? Their observations defining, offering perhaps new meanings and my having to justify? Am I sure everything happened the way I remember it? I was very young...

"Maybe it wasn't exactly the way you describe it..."

The way I describe it. See, not for me the blessed relief of forgetting, blanking out, hiding it all in some dark inaccessible corner of my mind where therapists work hard to bring forth the  hidden memories. No. Everything chronicled with forever ink. I lost my writing sure and sometimes doubt my recall on some things. But those few times, those vile occasions I watched things happen to me, hell - no forgetting those. No relief from the space they occupy. Easy to manifest, relive every fucking moment in minute detail as though it is but the day after. Relive it moreover with the added clarity of knowing, recognising the evil touching me each time.

Maybe some therapist could make sense of it all. I suspect in time, with enough reflection given over, it might be explained to me. The steps, each one of them put in perspective. Maybe I'd feel some measure of relief then. Tidily identified, tagged, each repercussion leading back to the first, original source. Talking, talking... a bespectacled professional having heard it all before - or at the very least, similar versions. Abuse is everywhere. I am no different to millions of others, only my interpretation and the after-steps affecting my individual outcome.

Hell no. I need to battle this alone. It is my struggle. The procession of dank basements I re-created in my lifetime, the escape I sought from each one whilst I busily created the next, they are all mine. The steps leading back up to the light, back to salvation? Only I can walk them and arrive. No one beside me can serve as an ally now. Back then, sure. If somehow then became now and I was my mother? I'd have picked up the mute distress, the wide-eyed head shaking. I'd have questioned, reacted, acted. Protected. Fucked the sons of bitches over, ensuring they didn't hurt anyone again.

I'd have stood up to my husband too. The first time he raised a hand to my child. Snatched my child away from the danger, defended her. Hell, if we lived today, my husband wouldn't give a shit about honour anyway. My daughter wouldn't need to rebel against her father's demons. Suppositions maybe... Still, like I keep telling myself, different times back then. The central characters bound by codes and mores long discarded, obsolete in this new brave contemporary society.