About Last Night - Chapter 15
'Not only do I have to tap myself with two fingers on different spots on my face, but I also have to keep repeating that I completely love and accept myself. Which is completely unacceptable.'
Dear readers,
Happy Sunday! Enjoy this week’s chapter and don’t forget to let me know your reactions :)
Catch-up on Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12 and Chapters 13 and 14.
June, 2018
I knew I’d hate tapping. Not only do I have to tap myself with two fingers on different spots on my face, under my arms, on the top of my head, but I also have to keep repeating that I completely love and accept myself. Which is completely unacceptable.
‘Sorry, Linda,’ I say, stopping with my two fingers under my nose, ‘This is ridiculous. Can we try something else?’
Linda is wearing a grey turtleneck and white trousers, looking preppy in a Diane Keaton kind of way. I imagine she is purposely dressed like that, understated but firm, giving the illusion that this is all scientific work and not a load of bollocks.
She sighs. ‘It was worth the shot. Tapping usually triggers emotions the quickest,’ she adds, more to herself. ‘How did it make you feel?’ she says, raising her voice slightly.
‘Like an idiot,’ I say.
‘Can you elaborate?’
Her insistence is starting to piss me off. ‘Feeling like an idiot is pretty standard,’ I say. ‘I don’t think I need to write an exegesis on the subject.’
‘Not unless you feel like it,’ she says, not changing her tone. ‘But what exactly made you feel like an idiot? Was it the tapping itself?’
‘No,’ I admit. It should have been the tapping, since I am imitating a monkey, but it actually felt nice. Relaxing.
‘That’s great,’ she says. ‘What was it, then?’
‘Can I have some water?’ I say, trying to dislodge a frog in my throat.
Linda rolls her eyes, gets up and pours water into a glass from the carafe on her desk and sets it on the coffee table in front of me with a clink.
‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘I don’t think you’re supposed to roll your eyes at your clients,’ I mutter under my breath.
‘Sue me,’ she says and resumes her writing opposite me. When she stops scribbling, she narrows her eyes at me. ‘Stop stalling and tell me exactly what made you feel like an idiot.’
‘Fine,’ I say. ‘It’s this stupid thing that I completely love and accept myself bullshit you want me to say.’
‘Good,’ she says as she writes in her notebook. ‘Why?’
‘Why what?’ I say exasperated.
‘Why do you think that’s stupid?’ she says, now looking at me.
‘Are you serious? How can it not be stupid?’ I say, picking imaginary lint from my sleeve.
‘Because, Helena, it’s not. And I very much want to know why do you think it is.’
I’m going to have to tell her something, or she won’t back off. She reminds me of Lucky, and I suppress a smile. He just won’t let go of his favourite toy when I try to take it away, no matter the consequences – and I have plenty of broken things around my flat to prove it.
‘How can I completely love and accept myself when I’m responsible for the death of my mother?’ I say, surprising myself as I say it. Once I finish speaking, I get a taste of metal on my tongue, guilt oozing out of me.
Linda is quiet for a moment. She takes off her glasses, puts them on the table and looks at me with eyes that are not as small in reality as they appear through the lenses. ‘I thought you said your mother died of a heart attack?’
I take a breath, before I can speak, feeling my voice wanting to choke me. I somehow manage to form words. Words I have been so afraid of.
‘She died of a broken heart. And I’m the one who broke it.’
I realise as I say the words that I’ve been rehearsing this line inside my head for decades. To finally hear myself saying it out loud, does not feel like the worst thing in the world I thought it would be. Linda’s face doesn’t become horrified. In fact, her gaze softens, as if she has finally found something to like about me.
‘Tell me everything,’ she says, putting her notebook down.
I take a moment to contemplate voicing what I have never dared to say out-loud, or to even whisper inside my head. I take another sip of water and I place the glass down on the coffee table with a shaking hand. I’ve come so far already. I must continue, no matter how painful, no matter how shameful, no matter how terrible it makes me feel.
‘When I was sixteen, I went to a festival in the woods with my friend Amy and I woke up in the woods alone. I didn’t remember what happened and how I ended up there. When I came back, I tried to kill myself. When that didn’t work, I started drinking. My mother couldn’t get through to me,’ I start with a weak voice. I clear my throat and make my voice louder.
‘We both knew I was going to leave the house that night, like all the other nights before, but she stood in the doorway, wanting to stop me.
“I’m going,” I said, trying to sound angry, but it was too late. I was filling up with nothingness like a sinking ship. She began to sob, desperate, powerless tears. I averted my gaze, not to see her cry.
“Go if you must,” Ma said, between with tears, stepping aside, as if she had changed her mind. “But remember, I love you no matter what.”
I was about to break into her arms. To tell Ma that something had happened to me at the festival, but I didn’t have the words nor the memories to say what. But the moment was gone as quickly as it came. I pushed past her and slammed the door behind me. The ability to hurt her, surprisingly satisfying but short-lived. The sadness tore at my insides as I went out to drink myself into oblivion again. I could have turned back. I could have, for one night, stayed home and cried into the arms of my mother who loved me no matter what. But drinking was easier. The only way to make the pain I couldn’t explain go away.
‘Going out’ consisted of hanging out in the supermarket car park and getting drinks from older kids. A couple of girls from my school were there that night too, flirting with a group of guys that looked seriously bad news: shaven heads, tracksuits, dogs with spiky collars, their speech made-up entirely of expletives. But I wasn’t there to judge or to save anybody. I was there to forget. And they had what I needed.
A bottle of vodka was doing the rounds, and I drank fast, waiting for oblivion to set in. One of the guys, a punk covered in tattoos who liked to spread conspiracy theories handed me a spliff. I took it and inhaled.
‘I don’t feel anything,’ I said.
‘Give it a moment,’ he said and went back to his banter.
I sat there, drinking quietly, until I started to feel giddy and a little dizzy, but in a slow-motion controlled way, and air bubbles formed in my throat. I wanted to laugh but didn’t know precisely why, when a random and perfectly laughable idea formed in my head. I turned to the punk and said: ‘Wanna fuck me?’
‘What?’ he said, stopping mid-sentence from telling his audience that we were all controlled by reptilians.
‘Do you want to fuck me?’ I said louder and the laughter got worse. Perhaps part of me thought I was speaking inside my head. I imagined my words inside a speech bubble that hovered above my head. But when the chatter stopped and he looked at me as if seeing me for the first time, I realised I may had voiced it to the entire group.
‘Yeah, all right,’ he said after a long silence and stubbed his cigarette with his boot. I noticed that his boots had steel toe caps.
He shoved me on the back seat of his car and spread my legs wide. I think the car was a Seat, but I may be wrong. What I’m not wrong about is that his car was a piece of crap. Nothing like the sexy leather seats from inside of David’s BMW. It stank of cigarette smoke, and it was full of junk. He fucked me without foreplay, and it hurt a little when he entered me, but not enough. Most of the pain came from his hip bones stabbing me.
I felt for the blood when he was done and finding it came to me as a surprise. I cried my eyes out on the back seat of his disgusting car. I could have avoided all that if only I had spoken to my mother. My loving, understanding mother.
When I was done crying I pulled my panties up and ran home. I was ready to tell Ma how sorry I was. To ask her to hug me, to ask her to forgive me. I finally had the words to tell her what I was asking forgiveness for: that I had sex with a guy I didn’t know in the back of his car. But when I opened the front door, a chill went through my bones. The house was dark and still. And Ma was not waiting up for me like she usually did. I went up to her bedroom and found her lying on her back, hands clasped together on her stomach, underneath the quilt she had made herself, cold and unmoving. As if she knew she was going to die that night.’
Out of nowhere, I start to cry, my shoulders convulsing, snot and tears mingling on my face.
‘She loved you,’ says Linda, her voice gentle as a passing cloud.
‘What?’ I say, tears wet on my face.
‘Your mother,’ says Linda. ‘She loved you no matter what. Can’t you do the same for yourself? Can’t you completely love and accept yourself?’
‘You don’t understand,’ I carry on mixing words with tears. ‘I don’t deserve to be forgiven. I have hurt her.’
‘You just have to try. You don’t need a reason to. Love against all odds, against reason, against evidence is the only love there is.’
Something begins to make sense inside of me. I think of Tom. He said he loved me, despite the broken mess that I am. I couldn’t understand him then, but I’m beginning to. Maybe he is one of the those creatures capable of unconditional love, like Ma was.
‘Repeat after me,’ insists Linda. ‘I… completely… love…and…accept…myself.’
The words slowly form and I no longer feel the full depth of my shame when they come out of my mouth. Maybe I will even believe them one day.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s chapter and join me again next week to find out what happens next!
Love,
Iulia xxx
