⚠️ Content Warning: This post contains descriptions of child abuse and trauma. Please take care while reading.
One of my earliest memories is the day I was divorced from my mother.
Not quite, but almost, actually.
I couldn’t find the school sweatshirt she had bought for me. Running late for school — the youngest of four — that would be me. I’m the little pain in the backside. The mess-maker. The mistake that wasn’t meant to happen. I was the gratitude I never gave my mother for existing.
I don’t remember the actual act, but I remember everything that followed.
At school, my back was sore.
I rubbed it to try and comfort myself, and my teacher noticed I wasn’t quietly working. She asked what was wrong. I innocently replied, “My back is a bit sore.” She lifted the back of my top and let out a small gasp. I would later learn that gasp was horror.
I was taken immediately from class. No idea where I was going or what I’d done wrong. My brain decided it was punishment. I must’ve been naughty. Extra naughty, knowing me.
They led me to another room. Another adult appeared. Another look at my back. Hushed tones. I couldn’t hear what they whispered to each other, but I imagined them calling my mother. Maybe she would show up and explain and then everything would be okay?
She didn’t.
Instead, I was put into a car. “We’re going to see a doctor,” they said. Maybe I was sick? I sure didn’t feel sick. Just really sore.
At the doctor’s, I was told to strip to my underwear. A man I’d never met looked inquisitively over the back of my bony frame. I remember being grateful my sister had found clean knickers for me. I stood there, not knowing what to expect next. Just every so vulnerable and totally scared.
Then I heard counting.
He was counting something on my body.
The number I remember is: 150.
That was the number of bruises on my tiny body.
I later would learn that my mother had used a Henry Hoover pipe and battered me with it, I was quite literally black and blue.
I’d be an adult when I’d discover that that day, I became an instant urban legend. The kid who was there one minute and the next?
Just, Gone.
Ready for more?
Unwearing the Mercury 