A short story about recovery

I dunno if I’ll revive this blog. I started it when I was well, and I’ve not been since about 2015. Living where I am I’ve been abused and manipulated and my PTSD has got magnitudes worse. So here’s a cathartic story about someone making a decision to move on from an abusive ex. I hope you get some release out of it.

 

CW mention of rape, implication of abuse, self medication, self harm.

The man sits on the floor, back against the sofa, legs straddling a large machine, as if to ride it to another world. “It holds great power,” he announces softly, somberly, to himself and the spirits of memory. “It has the power…”

He looks about him at the scattered papers and photographs dumped on every surface. No sense of ceremony then, no decorum, only chaotic focus, undeniable purpose; it will be done tonight. With one hand, he lifts a tumbler of whiskey, the brick-sized ice clinking pleasantly against the glass, invitingly. He smells it gently, savouring the rich honey notes, and not giving the first remotest fraction of a shit. He downs it, the ball of ice falling into his nose, stickying his moustache and causing the smell to linger long after he returns it to the table.

Enough stalling. Wiping his condensation-damp hand on his pyjamas, he chooses a photograph. He looks closely at his own face. His eyes. Hope. He remembers the feeling vaguely. He was happy then. He looks at the frisbee ring around his neck, the dimples of his smile. He looks at the woman he’s with, her red hair blown scruffily across her beaming face.

He holds it above the machine. Feels the warmth rising from it. Her eyes..

“Freak lover!” she laughs as they dance in the shallows, splashing water up each other’s legs, oblivious, uncaring.

“Damn right, you freak!” he replies, his voice amplified by bliss and adoration. “If I’m a freak lover you must be a freak, because I fucking love you, lady.” That was the day he’d noticed her period was late. He didn’t know how it would ruin him.

They kiss, all cares lost in the salted air, drowned by the incoming tide.

The corner of his mouth lifts into a snarl. “I fucking hated Porthcawl.” He drops his sacrifice to the waiting mouth. The machine purrs its approval.

He pours another drink, two fingers, a dignified dose. A pause. A shrug. A smile. A mischievous “fuck it!” as he tops it up.

He lifts it to his mouth, this time taking more time to appreciate the smell. He doesn’t know a damn thing about whiskey, but this is an important night. Courage was not to be rushed.

An A4 book taunts him from the floor beneath the table, where he left it when he started. It was … big. Not the book, that was only about 40 pages long, no more than a scrapbook. But …

“Happy Valentine’s Day, babe,” she beamed, handing him the greatest gift he’d received from a girlfriend. Fiancée. Hell, far as he was concerned, wife. They already lived together and talked like a married couple, no impressive fronting from these lovers, it was liberating. One day it would destroy him.

The man who felt the most loved person in the world leafed through the pages. On each, a small cut out picture, and some coloured pencil words. Here a picture of a ninja hug – you never saw it coming! – that she’d used for the first birthday card she’d given him. In yellow pencil above it, she spoke of how she loved his hands, those hands that held her so close, that made her feel so loved, the hands that would love her at night after working on carpentry with her father through the day, varnishing, sanding, the wax smell hanging pleasantly around him, a song of work and play.

“This… You’re the best. You’re amazing,” he whispered, overcome with love and appreciation and the knowledge that he’d found The One.

He was wrong.

He feels dramatic for reminding himself to breathe. Moreso when he realises his beard is dripping with tears. “I loved you so much once,” he muses sadly as he flips to the ninja hugs page. “If only I’d known who you really were. What you are.”

He thinks of what came later, grits his teeth and with a roar tears the book from its centrefold. A barked laugh. A pathetic whimper. A long inhale. Then his eyes harden as he holds the pages together and starts tearing.

Like a man possessed, as if his soul were contained within those loving, lying pages, determined to be free, he allows his eyes to stream freely now, gasping sobs, think of it all. The sex, the pregnancy, the lies, the entitlement, the manipulation…

The rape.

He lets loose, holding nothing back, this is it. He realises the music he’d left playing, that had begun as relaxing Japanese flutes, was now an aggressive Taiko drumbeat and he felt it coursing through him. The years of pain, the trauma, the betrayal, the loss, the breakdown, the alcoholism, everything she’d done to him, it was in those pages, behind the words, the glue that held the stick figure dancers in place, covering up what was hidden to all but him.

Half roaring, half begging for death, he throws the mound of scrap paper at the machine as one. Nothing lands in the recepticle, but that’s a problem for not now, damn it, he’s on his feet, pacing, stimming hard, tapping his head with one hand, twisting the other in the air, his breathing is ragged as the panic rushes over him like a guilty conscience, remembering Everything, all at once. He thinks of the ending of the Crow and wishes he could do that to her, lay a hand on her head and show her what she did to him. Make her feel it. Make her feel it all.

He punches the door hard enough to tear the skin from his knuckle and smear a faint line of shame against the painted wood. The pain rips through his fingers, his wrist, his elbow, fades into white noise somewhere just below the shoulder. He looks at his hand and remembers the night she’d begged him to kill her. He punches the door again, denting it this time.

Turning back to the mess he’d made of the machine, he gathers himself. “It will be done tonight…”

The shreds are gathered, and this time fed delicately into the paper shredder. He doesn’t see anything else on the table, there’s no time, and there’s no reason, and there’s no guarantee his nerve will hold out if he stops to remember everything. Stopping for only four more servings of whiskey, it’s done.

He places the glass on the table and gingerly lifts the lid on the machine to see the mess in the bin below. Standing again, he holds it up to the light. Remnants of colour and happiness and a life he was happy with looked up at him, as if confused at their new vantage point. He smiles down lovingly.

The memories are at his mercy.

He reaches in, grabs a fistful of thin paper ribbons, and kisses his sore, still bleeding knuckle, then with a yell of “FUCK OFF OUT OF MY HEAD, I DECLARE MYSELF FINALLY RID OF YOU!” he tosses it in the air like confetti, handful after handful until the bin is empty and he’s spinning in a snow globe.

The taiko drumming reaches its crescendo, he throws the bin through the door to the kitchen, back to where it belongs. It slides to a halt, upside down. The man doesn’t notice. He’s on all fours, stray ribbons alighting on his back and sticking to his hair, thumping the floor and wailing like an injured child.

He is distraught.

He is inconsolable.

He is tired.

He is strong.

He is free.