Right now my head is spinning. 

Right now my head is terrorised. 

Right now it’s pounding and pounding. 

High alert signals protrude into every other moment. 

Head raging. Head spinning. 

Pulsing into high alert. 

I want it to stop. 

I want it to stop. 

I cant think of anything other. 

Pounding consumes me. 

Where has imagination gone

Where has me gone

All I am is this headache. 

Raging

Raging.

I dont want you here, 

I dont want to have to write about you

To deal with responding to you

That wasnt the plan for today. 

But it’s here. 

It’s a tentacle. 

A trauma tentacle. 

Because. 

Today is June 5th. 

And the past has found its way seeping into the now. 

The door opened, because it’s today. 

The day she died, two years ago. 

The day my destroyer, the destructor, the Vampire died. 

Soulless stealer, the indiscriminate abuser, left the stage. 

My mother in role only. Never in reality. 

It was weird death and grief at the time. 

I didnt go to the funeral. I was emotionally pressurised to, but no. I didnt go. 

My own closure had already happened. I didnt need to know she was dead by seeing her coffin. She was already dead. 

I’d had to kill her many times before then. 

Because when she was alive in my life she stole, twisted, destroyed and abused. 

I killed her when I stopped being her soother and therapist. 

I killed her when she didnt get my affection

I killed her when I didnt tell her about anything. 

I killed her when I kept my joys and challenges to myself. 

I killed her, when I stopped asking for anything. 

Mini deaths that occurred before id left home. 

Yet still she would come back and destroy. 

At my own wedding, with my own children, loveless, heartless, false… 

The one I had to manage, when I was going through stuff. 

The one I felt responsible for, because she didnt take any of her own. 

So when she died. The relief was palpable. 

For, not only could she not destroy me any more. 

Everyone else was safe too. Ive heard of at least two people in the last two years who’ve been brave enough to email me stories of what she did to them in her 65+ years of entitled destruction. And thats just the brave ones. Thats just the ones who could see the patterns and realise what was going on. Or who had a direct moment, physically or verbally when they were abused by her. 

When she died….the responsibility she gave me for her, when she gave me the gift of being her emotional responsibility. That was over. 

It was always someone else’s fault. Or it was her own traumas fault. Female playing victim, with victim story. The most dangerous of all. 

I was already free when she died. But her death meant there would be no present damage, to me or to anyone else. And no more mopping up that I felt I had to do. 

She wasnt ever going to turn up at my door. 

She wasnt ever going to be at a surprise meeting. 

No more having to run away and hide. 

A headache. Aching. Raging. Spinning. 

Like im a child. Like im about to be punished. Like im in my room waiting to be told off again and again. Like im not safe again. Like ive stood up to her with the many deaths and about to be in trouble. Like im waiting to be hugged and have to brick up. Like I have to resort to that person. The small one in her orbit. The one who had to not upset her. The one who because id activated her anger by not doing what she wanted, she carried that anger into ever possible moment. Terror. Mother of Terror. 

And no im not sensitive. Fuck you. 

It was real. It was real. Impossible to describe. 

And some of you reading this know it. 

Some of you reading this who knew her also knew it. 

And thats the crazy part. You were as scared too. 

And yet I (and my sister) had to live in the midst of it. 

Trapped, scared. taken from, where school wasnt safe, where we played roles to survive. Where, there , was nothing, without it being earned, or being watched. 

You know. 

The scars were the ones I took to school. Self destroyed pained fingers. Hair I pulled out. Scratches. Self abandonment that was nothing of the sort because I did have the luxury of a self, and nor did I have a choice. No. I didnt. There is no choice when you wake up from holding your breath aged 3, and the darkness of the faint is more comforting that what you wake up to. When I want to escape every day and wake up as someone else, or dream about being compressed into something small and the dark monster overwhelms me and im in sweats and shivers and thats what I encounter most nights, with my monster in the same house. The dominator. The cult leader. All of the words. 

Yet I have a headache. Now. And the words are flowing out. 

Because its a headache I didnt realise what it was until. 

Until I read Harry Potter. 

It’s the fear headache. 

The threat headache. 

He just knew when the dementor was close, he just knew when Voldemort was close. His threat. 

The threat that only he could feel… because of being intrinsically linked to the evil of Voldemort. 

Intrinsically linked to someone who’s smile is false, who destroys not only you, but also others, and creates a death army of flying monkeys, who transforms into many roles and tries to infiltrate and regrow in many ways, and infiltrate the ministry. JK Rowling has got quite a few things wrong recently. But describing the threat headache. Describing the power that threat has on a child like Harry, she has spot on. 

Yet, Harry has his mother’s reminder and mothers love to spur him on. Yeah. Well. That wasnt what the universe chose for me. 

But thats the headache. The raw naked headache that I have today. 

A tentacle, a poisoned electric rope that appears that I could easily touch. And writing this has given it more time that I could have done. I wanted to write through this, raw and real. I didnt have to. Traumaversaries dont get much weirder than your abusers death. 

Touch me it wants. I’ll burn you. I’ll take you back to the spiral. 

Touch me James, touch my destructive poison again. 

NO. 

I see you rope. I see you headache. 

Yet. 

The threat is over. She cannot hurt me. 

She died. I am alive. 

I am feeling this with a headache and can write about it with a coffee. 

I am me, I am alive. I survived. I am free. 

I was already free, but now…. the air is clear and I can breathe. 

Her lies that tormented so many are for those who want to keep them. 

I am the boy who lived. 

The boy.

The boy. 

Who is here and is alive. 

With a headache that it clearing word by word. 

As every word carries the power back to my own heart and soul that I am here. 

I am still here. I am centre. I am power. 

I am me. I am boy living. 

And now the tears fall. 

Relief. It was over. and today. The headache had been loved through a thousand words into the sky and a thousand words into here and my fingers and heart have reminded me of me here. 

It is finished. 

The final death, isnt ever the first one. 

The final death, is sometimes the ones beyond the grave. 

The final tentacles that need swiping. 

Head ache. Warning. Forgetting that I am me.

Taking me back. 

Misremembering. 

That. I . am. Free. 

You can have two hours headache. But im going to love you to death. 

Im going to bring you into the light. You are not true. You are not here. 

You are a threat I can deal with even if it was real. But you are now gone. 

You can die too. 

Thanks for reading doesnt cut it. 

You probably need a lie down and a deep breath. 

The light is real, and bigger than what destroys, always.