A Diary of Secrets. Deb Shugg

Quietly, I pad across the hall and through the laundry to the kitchen door. I wait outside the closed door trying to decide if I should open it. I can’t help it, I have to see if my mother is dead. Quietly, I turn the door knob above my head and slowly push the door open a crack. The house is silent except for the sound of the television.

       I can’t see anything so I open it a little further. Lying on the floor I see my father sleeping and as my eyes travel upwards I see my mother, bloodied, kneeling over him. With my face barely visible through the crack in the door she makes eye contact with me and screams, “Go back to bed.”

       I pull the door closed and make my way back to my bed as fast as I can.

       A few minutes later, I hear my mother telling my father to get up and go to bed and I hear him bouncing off the hallway walls as he staggers to his room.

       My mother is alive and my father has gone to bed. I hear the sounds of my mother putting the kettle on to make herself a cup of tea and I know she’s okay. I can sleep now.

      “Are you okay?” Joan asks.

      I nod.

      “Where did you go?”

      I shrug my shoulders. “Dunno.”

       18^th October

      Joan still wanted to work on my dad “issues” this week. I’d rather not but I have to trust that she knows what she’s doing.

      My dad is pretty sick at the moment and no one expects him to live for very long. I never thought his death would affect me but it does. I spent my whole childhood wishing he was dead but now he’s close to death I’m sad about it and not really feeling that okay. Now I feel guilty for wishing he was dead.

      It upsets me to think that if he needs me, he won’t be able to find me in this new house. There is nothing rational about that. He’s never been to my house no matter where I lived. I don’t understand these feelings. They create such an anxiety in me that I don’t know what to think or feel. I’ve been to see him a few times in the hospital and he looks pitiful. Nothing like the angry man I grew up knowing. I guess that’s what age and a few cerebral hemorrhages do to a person.

      I worry that because my father is an alcoholic that I might be like him. Another anxiety trigger! But right now I can’t even drink water from the tap in case it makes me sick so I know I’m not an alcoholic at the moment. But I still get anxious about it.

       I always thought that I had blue eyes. But when I looked at them they were kind of grey-green. I don’t know when I lost those blue eyes but like everything else they just seemed to disappear.

       I’m waiting for my father to die. He’s sick and old. He hasn’t always been sick or old. I don’t remember when he was young. When I look at a photo of him with me when I was a baby he scares me. It’s like looking at a picture of the devil. When I look at him in his hospital bed I don’t see a devil. I see an old man who is sick. I wonder what caused him so much pain to make him my devil. Was it me?

       My father is disappearing, like my blue eyes. One day I’ll wake up and not even remember a time when I had a father. Did I ever have a father? I whisper the words. Out loud they scare me. To have a father like mine means you don’t belong anywhere. You’re kind of stuck in a nowhere that means wherever you are, you’re in the wrong place.

       I wished he’d die when he was the devil. Then not having a father gave you somewhere to go. Then you could belong in a happy place, wherever that is. I always thought I loved him but it didn’t seem to matter to him. It didn’t make him stop being the devil even when I told him I loved him. Did he think I was lying to him? Is that what made him angry?

       Now he’s dying and I want him to stay. I don’t know why. Now that my memories are with my blue eyes it doesn’t seem to matter that he was my devil. I don’t want to be left here.

       I know I was bad when I had blue eyes. When I looked at my father who is old and sick I saw blue eyes but they weren’t mine. They were faded, like the blue had started to disappear. Perhaps he noticed that his blue eyes are fading and he wants to die because of it.

       Is he sad? Now that he’s dying what does he think about? Does he want me to love him now? Does he still feel the same as he did when he was the devil? Does he care that he’s leaving me? Does he know what happens when he’s gone?

       It’s cold on the floor. Like being dead. The floor is dead. I am dead. Only a child of the devil can survive.

       19^th October

      I guess I’m not over my father after all.

       25^th October

      Today it was my turn to ask the questions. I asked Joan how people could tell when they’d dealt with stuff. I wanted to know why the memories of my father could still affect me and how I could tell if I was getting any better.

      I found out that Joan is the consummate professional when she turned it around and asked me how I think they would know.

      Before I’d started seeing Joan I felt like I must have dealt with my stuff. I’ve been living with all this in my life forever. It’s not new stuff for me. But, if the patterns of behaviour I learned as a child are still controlling my life then maybe I haven’t dealt with it.

      Apparently, now my stupid patterns of behaviour aren’t working so well at keeping things manageable for me. Now, everything is unmanageable and completely out of my control.

      I haven’t gotten over my “stuff” at all. All I did was find a way to cope with what was going on in my childhood. Nothing ever got dealt with. I just moved on.

      Joan wanted to know if I always considered things in black or white. She’s worried that I see my “condition” as either being on or off. I’ve either dealt with it or I haven’t. I think she wants to bring a few shades of grey to my black/white, good/bad, true/false world.

      I cried as I told Joan I want to be over it. I can’t do this anymore. I want it to be over. I can’t do this anymore. No one gets it. No one gets me.

      Everyone thinks I can just snap out of this like I have a choice.