“I couldn’t give a flying fuck if your blood was splattered around these four walls”
I think I was nine or ten, you’ll have to forgive me, and my memory is a little hazy of these events, as I have tried to forget them. A hypnotherapist once said to me, “Put them all in a big metal chest and firmly lock it, and throw away the key”.
Sometimes the memories come back and they are vivid, time has probably distorted the actual timeline, but nevertheless, they are still there.
I had buttered my toast with the long edge of the butter knife.
The table flipped up out of the blue and she used it to push me into the rubber plant in the corner of the kitchen, a staple 1970’s interior design necessity.
The sap on the broken leaf oozed onto the sleeve of my school uniform bobbly grey jumper, sticky and white. I used the distraction and ducked underneath the table making a run for it, up the stairs and into the bedroom. She followed, the cast iron spiral staircase rattling with each step…
The punch on my left shoulder managed to dislocate it, I kicked her hard in the shins and ran out of the door for the bus. I have no idea what I did after that, it’s a blur.
My sister’s 13th Birthday party was to be held in the village hall. We were all excited to decorate it for her with streamers, balloons and make a real fuss of her. The DJ was setting up at the far end of the hall, the vicar’s bunch of keys for the church were on the buffet table to the right of me. She asked me to hold the ladder whilst she tied the balloons and streamers to the roof joists.
Someone shouted from the other side of the room, I turned my head to answer. In that split second, that I turned my head, she looked down and screamed at me to concentrate, and then I saw out of the corner of my eye, she had picked up the church keys and with a quick swing, launched them at my head. The warm blood dripped down my white t-shirt, covering it like some weird punk graffiti artwork, she pushed me towards the Belfast sink in the cold kitchen and tried to run freezing water from the tap over the wound, this didn’t stop it bleeding, so she frog marched me down the village back to the house, I was an inconvenience.
I don’t recall much after that on that day, I think my Dad drove past us and she told him I had walked into a door.
I don’t want this book to be about her, she deserves jack shite and karma is a bitch, we’ll come back to that 35 years down the line.
There are reminders in everyday life that harks back to the last few paragraphs that make you realise that you are a better person. I get my hair cut every 4 weeks; the hairdresser always asks why I have a white streak and a white circle in my mousey brown hair, and why how long I have dyed it white blonde. Anyone who has witnessed a head trauma knows it can turn your hair white.
We’ll leave it there, there is more, but it’s not about her anymore.
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