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0 By Allison Watson
I’ve been tossing and turning for the last 3 hours, the usual thing that wakes me up. During my operation, my arm was damaged and this has caused nerve damage to my hand. I can’t currently use my arm or hand and both of them are incredibly painful all the time. I’ve realised what keeps waking me in the middle of the night though. No matter what I do, I can’t sleep again until it’s light. Since the operation, the damage has made my hand feel like the blood has run out of it, like when you get a dead arm… then it starts.
Going Back In Time
I’m six again, standing in that corner where my step-mum has been punishing me, maybe for the last 24 hours or longer. When I’m being punished I’m in my socks, standing on a towel, facing the corner, with my hands on my head. I’m not allowed to move off of the towel for anything. I’m not allowed to eat, drink, sleep or use the bathroom. They are all privileges I have lost for the duration of the punishment. I’m also not allowed to move. She will often check on me and if I do, it goes in her black book.
Then on a Sunday afternoon, as these are generally Friday evening to Sunday afternoon punishments, she will count up how many times I did something wrong. She will then make me stand spread-eagled, facing the flat wall, and belt or whip me that many times. The towel’s purpose is as my toilet. As a six-year-old, it’s impossible to hold yourself for that long especially when scared. It felt extremely humiliating to wet myself then have to stand in those wet clothes on the wet towel.
I Thought I Was Dying
As time went on, the pain from having my hands on my head would feel unbearable, searing pain in my fingers. During the night I would be frantic to take them off of my head and sit down. I often would, in the early hours, when I thought it was least likely she would come down. I would just sit there on my wet towel in my own urine, shivering and crying. The pain of bringing them down was often worse as the blood coursed back through into those starved hands and arms. As a six-year-old, being left in the corner of the living room in the dark; wet, hungry, tired, frightened, thirsty and cold, I would think I was dying. Then I would wish I was, and then be disappointed when I wasn’t and it got light and I heard her moving around again.
No-one Asks To Be Born
My arm and hand right now feel like they did then. In the night it’s as if my younger self wakes, scared and frightened by that feeling. She flicks between now and being there, terrified. I can’t get rid of it as there is no current relief, so I have to just try to tell her, ‘It’s ok, we are safe now.’ Sometimes she hears me; sometimes she is too scared and the flashback carries on and on.
You can spend a lifetime trying to repair the damage done in childhood. Care for our children; they didn’t ask to be born.
Reproduced with permission, originally posted here: thisismeeupd.com
UNITED STATES
UNITED KINGDOM
