The book A Prisoner by No Crime of My Own is published. This week all formats will be available (eBook, paperback, hardback and audiobook). This week I share about how memory returns.
Chapter 11 – Finding a Guru/Finding a Murder
“Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
– Dylan Thomas
. . . continued . . .
The issue of the motel room I remembered going to with my dad and his friend, Craig, as a child was always with me, particularly after the strange encounter I’d had twenty years earlier when my ex-husband took me to the motel on our night out, or any time I had stayed in a motel room. I’d pace the floors while my children slept, not knowing what the fuck was wrong with me. It was a strong invisible force and I needed to penetrate it to be whole.
In time, I told Sara about it. She, of course, wanted me to spend time exploring what was in that room, but I did not want to. That seems like a misstatement – I did not want to, but the truth of the matter was that I spent time staying away from it. Sara told me once that I made it harder on myself by not stopping and diving into that room. We spent many sessions trying to find a way to open the door in my mind to reveal the full detail of the motel room. I fought it. I fought this one hard. Then, one day, I felt as if I were going to lose my sanity. The harder I tried to keep the ugliness of that room hidden, the more it would mock me.
My children were home this Saturday afternoon. The sun was out and the last thing I wanted was to recall a memory. Seriously? Would you want to waste a beautiful Saturday on that? Neither did I but a strange phenomenon was happening. It felt like my mind was splitting and I couldn’t hold it together. I was so frightened that I had to call Sara.
She answered and I told her that she needed to send in some men in white jackets to collect me at my house. My understanding of reality was in upheaval, and I was scared.
Sara and I continued our work over the phone. We had to if I was going to make it through that day. I can still feel the panic that I was losing my sanity.
Sara asked if there was any place I could go in the house to be alone. She assured me that I wasn’t losing my mind but needed to get to a quiet place.
I went to my bedroom, closed the door, and lay down on the bed. My heart was pumping with anxiety. She told me I’d be fine and explained that my adamant denial of the memory was making the situation worse. This time I was willing to listen. Next, she asked me to walk through an exercise with her. She told me to find something in the room that I could focus on. Directly above me on the ceiling was a fan — I would place my focus there. She told me to make no judgments about what I was seeing, but just to describe to her what it was.
I started with, “I see fan blades. It is white. There are screws.”
Right beside the ceiling fan, my mind’s eye saw the inside of that motel room almost instantly. There was my father, Craig, and some blonde woman. My father slit the woman’s throat and ended her life. I explained this to Sara as I was seeing it. My soul began to empty some of the fear and violence I experienced that day some thirty years earlier.
I froze as the memory of witnessing that murder spewed out of me.
. . .