If you would like to read more of this book please let me know by voting for this piece of writing and/or leaving me feedback. Each Chapter in this 70 chapter book was accompanied by an image i took on the day. if you would like to see the full gallery of these images please visit: http://web.mac.com/petracreffield/iWeb/Sense%20of%20Place/My%20Stories%202004.html Thanks for reading :) Petra Creffield Feb 2008 Chapter One I just wished I could get through one damn day without thinking about M, the whole thing was driving me nuts. Whenever I stopped other and far more useful brain activity, such as putting my mind to the question of where my three children and I were going to live in two weeks time (we were being evicted from our current residence), there he was, in my head, like a constant shadow. It wasn’t even a coherent thought as such, just a malignant presence, sitting there, waiting to fill up any void that happened to occur. It just sat and throbbed – it could appear while brushing my teeth, trying to sleep, driving the car, and then sit there, saying nothing, looking at me, making me uncomfortable. Maybe I needed some kind of psychic radiotherapy to burn him out of there, to blast him into the farest reaches of oblivion. I had done the hard part, finally he was out of my life, I didn’t live with him, see him or even call him (well only occasionally but we’ll go into that later) so this should be easy in comparison but it wasn’t, it was almost as hard. Unravelling him from my mind was like trying to get chewing gum out of your hair without using scissors, damn tricky business that required a lot of time and patience. M was my tumour, I had once read a book about a woman that had healed herself from a tumour the size of a baseball, surely I could heal myself somehow, the ‘how?’ was part of it though, like a sister tumour for the first, malignant twins in my mind. The volume of discomfort was amped up no end when anyone else mentioned M’s name, then the tumour stopped being a silent, staring thing and instead became a radioactive neon sign flashing a zillion questions that couldn’t be answered, ‘but does he miss me? Is it like this for him too? Do I still love him? Are we meant to be together? Am I resisting the truth of that? Does he still think of me when he wanks? `Do I care? Should I care? Has he met someone else? Will I survive? What is he doing? What am I doing thinking like this? And on and on… like a swarm of bees the questions flying up and stinging my mind incessantly for hours and sometimes even days after any friend innocently mentions in passing that they have seen or spoken to him. My friends have no idea that their simple comments can wreck havoc in my insomnia-ridden, hyperactive mind. So in order to avoid this painful stimulation I have decided to abandon all friends that knew him as well as me, not because I don’t love them, need their support, especially now, but because the discomfort that arises when I am in their presence and M’s name inevitably pops up, the hours and days of discomfort that follow are almost too much to bare. Even when his name isn’t mentioned, his absence would sit there, like a pregnant pause between me and the friend, the subject we avoid, skirt around, a bit like they do with cancer – nobody mention the ‘c’ word, has become ‘nobody mention the M word’. I had decided therefore it was better to stay away completely, start again with new friends, people that don’t know his name, at least until I can is get through a day without thinking about him anyway. ‘A week would be great’, I thought, ‘a week would mean I was really free’ yet it seemed to me that possibility was a very distant one, every song on the radio was a trigger and most of the stuff on the TV reminded me of things that we had watched together. The one place he didn’t intrude was on when I was on my computer, that had always been mine, a private space he had rarely invaded and for that I was fucking grateful, because there I would sit, for hours on end, in a whirl of forgetting. Surfing the net, playing on-line games, joining lonely hearts web-sites and occasionally, when I felt guilty enough, trying to work. This was the free zone, a place where he never had and never would live, and that made it one of the only safe places I knew. He was a danger to me and I knew it, it was this knowledge that had led me to the series of mini-separations that led to the final separation. This guy was no good for me, screwed my head and heart up into a ball and spat them out, with little love or affection. And when I complained, (although by the end, I had lost even the energy or will to do that), I was told it was me that was lacking, in need of therapeutic help for wanting anything more than what was offered. What was offered was so little and I had spent so long telling myself that I had to grow accustomed to that, that by the end I was left feeling I deserved nothing from him or anyone. And if I should dare to want anything more, I better get on the phone quick sharp to my therapist before my head blew up! For two years he had shamed me for every need I expressed and labelled them all sick and co-dependent and in my shame I had believed him. There was a voice that deep down inside me that whispered I could have more though, not only that, I deserved more. This voice of self-worth born out of years of hard therapy was what had given me the courage to finally walk away once and for all. Sometimes I felt the rage bubble up inside me at the injustice in the way I had been treated, made to feel like a noose around his neck, but the rage made me feel afraid and I would usually quickly seek to bury it. Long ago I had learnt that he would outdo me on any rage-Richter-scale and scare the shit out of me. Physically threatening, he would scream my face, he knew I’d been hit as a child, yet when I cried tears of fear it only made him rage more. I had learnt to shut up and put up; taking him on in a rational argument was a losing battle but taking him on at anger, I intuitively knew would be more abusive than I had ever dared to find out. So why oh why couldn’t I get him out of my fucking mind? I had been through all the arguments in my head so many times, told myself over and over I didn’t need or want him, but there he stayed like a thorn in my brain-tissue, rusting, sore and refusing to heal. It made me wonder if this was some form of self-abuse? Just as much as staying the relationship had become. Now I had allowed myself to get out of it, I would instead screw up my own head and heart just to make up for his absence. I had got so used to feeling used and abused, I now had to do it to myself. That therapist may possibly come in handy after all. Was I crazy? I didn’t know, but it sure as hell felt like I was too much of the time. I no longer trusted myself in the world, never mind the other people in it. When occasionally I did venture out to socialise, I felt like a loose cannon; I had no idea how I was going to react from one moment to the next. I no longer knew what the social etiquette was anymore for almost any kind of situation. Recently it seemed I would constantly find myself tripping over myself - talking too fast, trying too hard, over-dressed, over-dramatic, over-enthusiastic, over-fucking-everything, then unsure and frightened returning home feeling like a fake and a fool. Lying in bed for the hours of painful self-judgment at every single damn word I had said, raking myself over and over the red hot coals of self-torment. It was easier not to go out, to stay safely at home, in my bedroom, staring at a monitor. I knew I was caught in a vicious trap, the weight of the loneliness was almost crushing me, and the self doubt only getting bigger every day, yet I had long ago lost sight of where the exit sign from this place could possibly be. So there I stayed, safe in my room, tapping an endless S.O.S. out on the keyboard wondering if anyone would hear my silent calls for help. It occurred to me that the reason I was obsessively holding onto M, was because if I didn’t, I might feel the rage that was swimming somewhere below my need for him and I was still too afraid to let that particular toxic mad-eyed kitty out of the bag. In fact I was still afraid of him, that somehow if I allowed myself to feel my anger he would magically appear, making him all right and me all wrong again, hitting the walls (usually within inches of my head) and himself until I agreed with him. I had spent five years living with that threat and maybe there was a part of me that was still unable to believe I was now free. That I could now say and feel whatever I wanted and he wasn’t there to make me feel crazy anymore. He told me that even the times I had claimed to be happy were delusions and denial - my low self-worth had believed every word, until in the end he had taken everything from me. He had fallen for me because I was strong and independent and had systematically undermined that to the point where there was almost no strength left at all, then he could leave me, safely knowing it was my problem not his. What a bastard he was. A commitment-phoebe to the highest degree, he had sabotaged the one thing he had that he had wanted, until I had become a shadow of my former self. He had left me trusting no one, had told me they were all fucked - my family, my friends, even his friends, he despaired of them all and of himself too. He didn’t have any answers, just knew how to take it all apart but no clue as to how to put it back together again. I had been left with no-one and a million questions I had never wanted to ask in the first place, all faith and trust now gone, unable to talk, walk and sometimes even breathe, amazed at how brutal he had been in dismantling everything we had had and I was left wondering if I knew how to put my world all back together again, for myself and for my children. From 'My Stories' ©Petra Creffield 2004