It.

Some days are so painful in my head, inescapably. I wake up and know the day will be anguish, mental. I brace to face existence aka life.

A demon clinging since childhood, it grins when I rouse from dreams, my departures. Unpredictably it crawls into my room and under my covers as I sleep. I never know when I am to be afflicted. It claws down my face when I wake. I shut my eyes tight and wish it were not so. I open them again, and see sunshine. But I feel bleak, hopeless, empty, sad.

Mum had electric shock treatment in a room somewhere down some hallways of some old mental institution. But it did not stop her suicide. Dad was electrocuted for ‘treatment’ too. But still he was manic and depressive; still he viciously emotionally, psychologically abused us. Seethed. Seethed he did, like a demon personified. White spittle always in the corners of his foaming mouth when he bludgeoned us with words that crushed my endeavouring spirit. His spittle landed on my face, and burned.

My sister the schizophrenic; my sister not a schizophrenic but ever giving to professionals who counsel and counsel, for decades now; my other sister surrendered: it’s easier to be a victim of our childhood, accept the benefits and call it a day, your life. But I don’t know my sisters three, and they don’t know me. We are all strangers. Same family, same orphanage, different planets in the universe. Not a thread connects us, but blood. And that has worn thin.

I don’t know, but what I see.

Today I cannot see light, life or beauty. ‘It’ has come for me again. ‘It’ sinks its teeth like a Rottweiler into my jugular and sucks the life from me, rendering the sun dull, perfume of roses putrid, the laughter between sisters in the streets a shard of no recall that slices down my wrist and draws blood tears.

I peep from under the covers, listen a moment to Daniel’s Angelic breaths in his cot. I see the sun trying to force its way through a crack in the curtains. If I fling them open, it will flood me with its glory, beauty, warmth, comfort. And still I will feel void, lost on this Earth, sad beyond repair. I know this even before I get up and do it. But I get up and do it, because I must be victor of my mind, not victim.

Standing beneath the sun’s shine, bare feet on soft carpet, I listen more as my son takes breaths of life in my universe, his tiny heart keeping beat his tiny life. I don’t want to move, to start today’s momentum, only to use all my energy to the point of exhaustion again – laughing gaily, crying. But it is only a matter of time – will I be granted minutes or an hour – before I must do; before he wakes. I must make Daniel and me food, I must get us out the door, I must have us doing something.

My sister Wendy said in a letter that I should be still more. She said I don’t need to exhaust myself propelling Daniel and me into activities daily. But she knows nothing. She doesn’t have a child. She doesn’t understand their need and need and need of you, and I have never even been able to keep a pot plant alive – and how you have to keep giving the only way you know, because if you don’t then they cry and you hate to see them rejected by your need to be alone.

And besides, I must keep us active and moving even when it draws from me my last dregs of energy because if I still, then ‘it’ creeps over. ‘It’ waits in corners of my life, I wanted to tell Wendy but could not; and if I still, ‘it’ crawls into my lap, this sadness from my past, and ‘it’ wants me to stroke its head and comfort it and indulge it. But I can’t I can’t – I have to keep my energy for Daniel and me.

He catches me, he does, my new witness to Self. He catches me on days like these staring at a crack in the wall, or a clump of weeds, or a paw print Pathos has so profoundly left in the leafy garden of our Cottesloe flats. This boy so young sees me as I truly am, though try to hide me I do. I try to hide ‘it’. I try and be victor of my mind not victim. But always, he catches me.

Chris said he would still care for Daniel so I could work but he wasn’t going to promise to have Daniel any more. He said that I was silly and over-cautious and he would leave Daniel with his sister Karen or with his girl friend Tracy when he wanted to, and he didn’t need to tell me. I said that I had a right to know where Daniel would be and he said to trust him. And I said but I was disturbed that he smacked Daniel for not standing up in the shower that time when Daniel was physically not capable of standing yet and Chris said “that was last year,” and I said “but I don’t want you forcing him to stare at the wall in a corner to teach him focus and obedience like you say you’ll do if Daniel ‘needs it’” and Chris laughed at me, and I said “but why do you say you want to see Daniel and then you palm him off” and he said, and I said, and he said. Then Chris told me, “I have to go now” and I was dismissed again.

And I can hear the care taker sweeping the leaves on the path outside my flat.

Chris didn’t give back my number 5 top. He said it was still in the wash. I am finding it hard to believe him.

Daniel moved in his cot and I froze. The day was going to have to start; I was going to have to live today. Please, please don’t wake yet Daniel. Please don’t wake yet, Daniel.

Milk stirred in my bosom, wept. Daniel woke.

Standing barefoot on the carpet, staring at nothing nowhere in mental turmoil: my son caught me, again.