WEP October Challenge - The Scream

 

The WEP Challenge is back.  Huge thanks to the organisers and participants.  A visit HERE will give access to a range of talented (so very talented) and different takes on the theme.  I do hope you will visit others and applaud them.  Names will be added over the next couple of days and a revisit is always worthwhile.

 

I have been absent from WEP for a while but have rejoined for this challenge.  Due warning, my story is dark. 

 

 

Un…

 

The farmhouse they rented was isolated.  It was also both shabby and spartan.  No phone, she had no transport and the nearest town was five miles away.

He was away for work.  Again. 

He was due home in another ten days.

She was alone.  Again.  Still. 

High summer, and outside it was blisteringly hot, dry and cloudless.  Water was at a premium and the house tanks were all but dry.  If she was to wash herself or her clothes she had to travel. She could have walked into town and caught the train to do the washing and to see friends.

She didn’t.

It was quiet at home;  baaing sheep, bird song and, twice daily, a train chuffing through, its whistle echoing across the empty paddocks.

Her earworm was louder and more intrusive than those sounds.

 

‘It's already over in my head
It's been cloudy with a chance of anxiety
Can't keep out the demons inside of me
Maybe I'm just better off dead’

She hated the song, most of which had no relevance to her or her situation.  Just the same ‘better off dead’ set the metronome to her days.  Its regular hard hitting beat was always there.  Only the volume changed.  Sometimes it was a murmur and at other times a scream.

She was unEmployed, unHappy and unNecessary.

Oh hell, let’s not beat about the bush.  She was me.

Drowning in and beaten down by that earworm I walked into town and was lucky enough to get an immediate appointment to see a doctor.

Lucky?  UnLucky. 

 

He was dismissive.  UnKind. UnHelpful.  'Snap out of it!' was the best he could offer.  When pushed he said he could refer me to a psychologist where there was at least a three month waiting list.  Cursing the wasted expenditure of money I didn’t have and couldn’t spare I walked home again to an empty and unWelcoming house. 

Maybe I'm just better off dead

Essential tasks called.  I fed the chooks, fed the cats and faced my empty days. Continuing to exist like this was unAcceptable.

Maybe I'm just better off dead

A solution was close to hand.  Twice daily (at midnight and at midday) the train ran through the bottom paddock.  It came round a bend and if I lay down on the tracks the driver would be unable to brake in time.  A short walk (less than half a mile) and my despair and pain would be over.  The midnight train would probably be best.

I thought about it.  I thought some more.  It would work.  I felt for the train driver, but the trains ran over other animals quite frequently.

Timing.  The animals at home needed my attention.  It would be unFair if my solution caused them to suffer.  Nine days left now.

Finding a solution, a solution that meant I would no longer be a burden to myself or anyone else was wonderful (the world would not miss me).  Calming.  Comforting.  Freeing.  My mind (despite that chant) was less despairing than it had been in many a long dark day and night.  I had a plan, I had the means and I had a time frame.

Waiting for the day and the hour I sat on the floor ripping pieces of paper into smaller and smaller pieces.

… better off dead

 

… better off dead

 

Maybe I AM  just better off dead

 

The pile of confetti beside me grew.  Night followed day followed day followed night.  I didn’t eat, I barely slept.  The animals were fed and watered.

Old letters, half finished pieces of writing, newspapers and bills fed the pile.  There seemed to be no end to them, as there was no end to my pain.

Maybe I'm just better off dead

 

Day eight.  So close now.

… better off dead

 

Day nine.  Less than 12 hours to endure.  I picked up the piles of confetti.  Leaving things tidy was a must.

… better off dead

… better off dead

… better off dead

 

Then I heard a car pull into the driveway.

His car.

… better off dead

 

‘You are home early. ’

‘The job took less time than we expected so I came straight home.  What have you been doing while I was away.’

‘Not a lot.’

For some reason I couldn’t sneak out and down to the train tracks when he was home. 

Fortunate?  UnFortunate? 

Action postponed but not cancelled.

I still, decades later, hear that siren call.  I can usually distract myself and shift my focus now.  And hope I always will, but cannot guarantee it.

… better off dead

… better off dead

… better off dead

 

Still there, but much quieter.

I suspect it is a part of the reason I volunteer on the crisis line.  Their circumstances, triggers and solutions may not be mine, but the pain and the despair are so very familiar.

If they can live it, I can listen.  Some people at least do not go unHeard.

 

***

Word Count:  830

tag # Sometimes no-one else will hear your screams.

Comment rather than Critique please.  I suspect I would take critique personally.

WEP June Challenge - Unravelled Yarn

The WEP (Write, Edit, Publish) Challenge so generously hosted by Denise Covey and Yolanda Renee is back.  Olga Godim and Nilanjana Bose have joined the team, providing welcome support to the doughty duo and adding to the wealth of ideas and talent.  Yolanda is not well and is taking time out.  She will be sorely missed and we all wish her a speedy and complete recovery.

 

If you visit here and click on any names with a DL next to them you will be taken to some wonderful pieces.   As always I expect to marvel at the other participant's creations yet again.

This theme has been haunting me for a while.  My piece is an exorcism, a catharsis, or something between the two.

Unravelled.

Joan was a scientist. A mathematician. A statistician.

She was an innovative cook, a gifted gardener and an embroiderer (of fabric and words). 

She was a woman of determination and courage.  Widowed in a new country with three small children (one of them very ill) she ensured that they had everything they needed and much of what they wanted.  Poverty demanded that clothes were made not bought, a necessity she turned into an art form.

She ran an unofficial women's refuge from home.  Families in crisis came to lunch and stayed for weeks.  She taught migrants English in her lunch hour.

Bobbin lace intrigued her.  So she taught herself.  Taught herself so well that she was invited to make the lace collars and cuffs for the Parliamentary Speaker when the new Parliament House in her adopted home opened.

This bobbin lace phoenix was one she designed and made for me over thirty years ago.

She was a heavy smoker who loved coffee, wine and conversation.  She had a nose like a parrot and a mop of curly hair she described as a flying doormat.  The neighbour's small son called her Mrs Bosoms.  She laughed.

She was complicated, inspirational and the woman I aspired to become.  I was the only child of her second marriage.  A marriage she refused to contract until she was certain it was right for my brothers.  At a time when it 'wasn't done' I was born out of wedlock and attended my parent's wedding celebration.  I am told I had hiccups for days.

When my father died, that inspirational woman died too.  In the weeks after his death she numbed her pain with alcohol.  Those weeks blurrily slipped into months and years.  Her medicinal doses of wine started earlier each day.  She was often very drunk before nine, and rarely completely sober.

Always an independent woman she still claimed the title.  And rang me dozens of times each day with demands for assistance and stories of persecution and woe.  There was a grain of truth to her tales, but that grain was often small, inconsequential and well hidden.

Her world shrank to exclude any source of happiness or joy.  She no longer read, cooked, gardened, or sewed.  She shunned friends and alienated those who refused to take the hint.  She also did her excellent best to set family members against each other. 

She spent her days sitting on the lounge room floor with a coffee cup, overflowing ash trays and a cask of wine beside her.

In a rare co-operative moment she agreed that she probably shouldn't drive.  I quickly sold her car, which didn't cramp her style.  The local grocer delivered her wine, her cigarettes and miniscule amounts of food.  She was characteristically resourceful in finding ways to avoid leaving home.  Did you know that you could send dentures to the dentist for repair by taxi?  Neither did I.

There were hospital stays.  Lots of hospital stays.  Alcoholic poisoning, malnutrition,  falls...  Professional input and support.  Nothing changed.

She was sad, lonely and despairing.

I was sad, angry and despairing.

Then she had a massive stroke.  She spent over nine months in hospital.  Forgive me, but I was glad.  She was safe.  She wasn't drinking.  She was eating. 

In hospital she continued her skilled manipulation of people.  One day I told her that I was very, very tired and wouldn't be in the next day.  Shortly after nine the next morning the phone rang.  It was the hospital. 'Your mother is in tears because you said you were never coming back.  You need to come in.'  I went, and was greeted with 'I thought you weren't coming in today'.

She was adamant that she wanted to go home, and although she needed 24 hour a day care, the hospital administrators helped her achieve that goal.  Significant household modifications had to be made and nursing care organised .  I was responsible for arranging both.

She had been home for nearly two hours when she had her first fall.  The next day the carer rang me again.  Mama had rung up her local supermarket and ordered delivery of both wine and cigarettes, despite being without either for nearly ten months.  The pattern continued.  The carers would ring me several times each day.  My presence at her home (two buses away) was often essential.

Ten days after she returned home the carer rang me to say that she was very far from well and refusing medical treatment.  When I got there it was obvious that she was desperately ill so I called the ambulance.  Furious she told the paramedics that I was being selfish and just wanted her out of her own home.  The hospital rang me in the small hours to say she was dying.  She died shortly after I got there without gaining consciousness.  And in our last speaking interaction we were both angry.  Which I mourn. 

When my  mother took the plunge into alcoholism she became a stranger to the truth.  A while after her death I discovered that this trait wasn't alcohol related.

For example we had always been told that her brother, a doctor, had died of an untreated melanoma.  It was implied  that he died relatively young, unmarried and childless.  Years after my mother's death a brother's exploration of the family tree revealed that our uncle had died, of a heart attack, a few years after my mother.  He had four children.  He had been a doctor.

My father was the warp to my mother's weft.  Without him her life fell into disarray.  I could not fill the gaps. 

Learning that my family history was built on a tissue of lies caused my world to lurch.  I will never know why she felt the need to fabricate a different past.  I do not and cannot know what her reasons are.  I cannot alter them. 

A shift in focus is finally helping me dispel the grief, the guilt, the anger and the confusion.  The ugly years were there, but I am now also remembering and celebrating the woman she was rather than the tragedy she became. 

Word Count 999 words.

Comment rather than critique.