Finding the marbles…

I keep convincing myself that tonight I’ll sleep better, going to bed tired and warm and then taking myself through all the tricks and techniques I learnt in hypnotherapy class. And, each night, for a while I do. But then the dreams kick in and I can be anywhere; in any situation; with anyone - but usually with people I used to work with back then. Each and every night they appear in my dreams.

But first I need to fall asleep. When the wine doesn’t work I take myself on a journey back through my life. Way, way back. All I have to do is sit in that warm comfortable room within my mind always knowing that I can return to my chair at any time I like. I can return to my chair at any time. Back from the blue door with the gently sloping, dusty corridor stretching into the distance behind it. I can return through the blue door and back into the room at any time that I want or need. Back from the corridor with the doors on each side. Doors slightly offset from left to right, alternating and numbered like a suburban street – 55, 53, 51, 49… 54, 52, 50, 48. The corridor of my life. My corridor. We never forget anything you know. It’s all there on record neatly filed and waiting to be rediscovered - taken out, dusted off, re-experienced. Through that door. Through the door and into that corridor. And I can come back into the room at any time I want or need.

Regression, it holds all the answers to who we are you see; and why we are who we are. I walk slowly down the corridor passing the doors on either side. I’m going down, going back. Memories of every younger me, times past but never gone. Back to the farthest door I can find. 11, 9, 7, 5. I pass through the door to my right. Here I am. Here are we.

I’m crying. It’s my birthday. The cake sits upon the table. Three blue candles in white, plastic fairy-hat holders burn on its icing sugar surface. My mum has iced the cake. I don’t want to blow them out. I want to watch them burn. I’m told to blow them out, make a wish. But I don’t want to. My cousin Gina is here. She’s laughing. I’m crying. I don’t want to blow them out. I see the candles through my tears. I’m being naughty. I’m always naughty. I slap Gina. She cries too. He’s in the room. He’s shouting again. He’s always shouting. Shouting and raging. I’m crying and raging. His shouting makes me cry more. My crying makes him shout more.

He grabs me up. It takes the wind out of me. A limp marionette, he rushes me out and into the hall. I can see the pattern of the deep green carpet and the polished brown-black of the painted cement floor as my head passes above it. I’m struggling, my arms and legs kicking out. I see the white sandals upon my feet as they thrash in the air. He looks at me – cold and harsh. He launches up the stairs. I’m going to my room.

You’re going to your room my boy.

My room - left of the bathroom at the top of the stairs with the big pine chest of drawers - but I don’t make it. As he passes the stairway window, half a dozen steps or so up, he swings me around and my head catches the thick red painted tile of the windowsill. I see the windowsill coming closer, each fleck of paint, the tiny hollows where the red has been repainted and repainted. I hear the bone ‘thunk’ as my head connects just above my eye. I feel the gouge expand as the corner of the windowsill enters the side of my head. The windowsill looks redder.

Numbing blackness.

Light. I’m in a pushchair. He’s stopped shouting. Head down, he pushes. My head feels funny and blood is dripping down my cheek. We are almost at the nursing home. Where are we? It wasn’t until years after that I knew. We go up the steps and in through the door. A dark haired nurse comes towards me. She kneels down and looks at the gouge in my head. She smiles. Her face is very close to mine. She smells nice. She cleans my face with stinging stuff. It hurts.

He fell rushing up the stairs, he says. He tripped and caught his head on the windowsill as he rushed, he says.

I say nothing.

Lucky it wasn’t a little lower. It could have been the eye, she says.

Yes, he says.

I don’t hear the words, but I hear them anyway. We aren’t speaking, but the words are there anyway.

I didn’t trip, I don’t say.

I’m alone. Out of the door, back along the corridor, touching my scar and remembering. I step back into the warm comfortable room and sit in my chair. When I open my eyes I am back in bed. I’m tired. I fall asleep… and dream of the people I used to work with back then.