Eclipse.
I'd like to think that there is some part of my husband that feels shame for not answering the phone when I was terrified, my life under threat. I phoned him as I was cowering under a table in the garden, I had completely lost it. My son was smashing up the house, I didn't know if or how it would ever stop. When I phoned I had needed him so much!
He didn't have his phone on him. He simply wasn't there. He didn't want to be! Who can blame him, but this wasn't about wants or feelings, this was about life and responsibility! I'd like to think that one day he will remember this and know that he made his shame more important than someone's life, that he'd let towns and cities, worlds die, rather than put his his own shame to one side - because not admitting and facing one's own shame is an absence worth being ashamed of.
Five months before therapy.
Eclipse - 2nd March 2020.
We sat in a restaurant talking about tattoos. I realised that I'd really like a solar eclipse tattoo. I see lots of moon tattoos - a line of circles, each with the moon growing and shrinking...I've never seen anyone have a solar eclipse; a line of suns, the central one black, spider web lines of white, or just black, then the gold returns, increasing.
Eclipsed...at that moment, as I described it to him, I felt what I'd said.The sun is gone.
My son was gone.
It was temporary.
Only just temporary.
Death was that close, the stars fell, my heart stopped.
No sun...
No son.
I was silent.
Around me - people eating, drinking..
A rush of noise, intrusive music that I didn't want to hear, too many people, too, too close.
His silence is louder than the end of the world, louder than any scream or cry. I hear and feel every word that has stabbed through my heart since May.
Here is where secondary fear lives. My reaction to that physical rush of adrenaline, the iron grip, constriction and breathless.
I wasn't scared of me until the words ended.
Falling into oblivion, fighting with myself, cardboard-empty-emotionless....I cannot allow...
Latter, I sit on the bed rocking backwards and forwards chanting; I refuse. I refuse. This is not a tragedy. This is memory. I refuse to be bound by your rules. I can talk about it. It happened. We survived. We did well. It was us. We fought and fought for him. I refuse to hear your version of powerlessness and tragedy. You are wrong. You are wrong. You are so wrong.
Why it hurts so much is because this isn't about our son and what happened. This is about me. This is us..This is about me now being eclipsed.
In real anger now I say, why not say well done'! Why not say, 'You were so brave, so strong!' Why the endless shame and guilt?
End it, refuse it.
Your shame isn't mine.
Sing it out!
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