'When someone hits you

...it's because they don't like you.'

A quote from West Wing, of all things, last night. And a story I have just been asked to review triggers, it just pulls out a memory, I read it and I thought; How would I describe what happened to me?

Psychotic, she was psychotic. So ill, and no-one helped her, or stopped her. She may have loved me, obsessively, possessively, but she was so ill. Remembering the worst time, I will never write this in a story, but I will write it here where nobody sees me.

The worst time, I'm not going to write it am I? No. Recalling her terror of 'the authorities' and her demands for silence. 'If I kill you, you die quietly...if I kill you, the neighbours never hear, understand?' Looking into the eyes of the crazy woman. You Die Quietly.

She didn't like me. That's the thing, doesn't matter who they are, if they hit you, it's because they don't like you.

I so wanted to be liked, to be loved. Why not let me go to the authorities, why not let me go to a home or social services? Because she was insane and I was hers, a doll to be dressed and loved and smashed against the walls when I did wrong.

Back in her own mind she would say, 'No-one drives me mad the way you do. No-one, not your brother, not your father, makes me angry like you.' My fault is it? You mad bullying bitch. Not my fault, I was a child.

With my father she was a coward, crying and hissing pathetically on the stairs for peace. By which she meant quiet and respectability in front of the neighbours. She was so ill, she had even stopped hoping for love. She held on to him too, though he was a monstrous bully.

The day she told me about dying quietly, she had pounced on me and bitten deep into the top of my head, my head that was ringing and stinging. I didn't mind dying as long as I died away from her, and the reason she didn't attack me again that day was because I screamed, I screamed so loud no-one could fail to hear, and she held back, waiting for, I don't know, police to break down the door or something. She needn't have been afraid, no-one was going to help me, they would all stay in their houses and pretend nothing was going on. But she held back in time for me to run out of the door and run to the park.

And lie there in the grass, looking at that blue perfect sky wanting to go to God. But he never came and the neighbours never came and the police never came and the doctors never came. No rescue for me, no help for her.

I have been wrestling with unpopularity or the fear of it all my life. I want to be loved but I despise people too. I see her now, old and ill and unable to face past or future, because in the end, what is evil? Only mistakes and illness-driven craziness. She's not to blame for her brain I guess. And she loves me, she hugs me, she adores me, I am her shining light. And I just feel pity and a desire to make everything all right though I never will, because it can't be done. She loves me.

But once upon a time she didn't like me, and she didn't like me for a long time. When someone hits you, it's because they don't like you.