Pacing Myself

Trigger Warning: this story contains themes of mental health and physical violence.

I'd rearranged the house years ago so I could walk the full length of it, living room, the wide tiled hall, through the kitchen, into the sun room without any furniture obstructing me. 

I paced up and down, up and down the house from morning till night with only a few necessary breaks. I've no idea how far I travelled in a day, week, month, year. Whilst I walked, my mind played out the past on a constant loop. 

I'd met Liam late in 2011. He oozed charm and confidence but as time went on I didn't feel safe. Who was Liam really? He was a liar on a grand scale, that much I knew. So many lies and so transparent. Sometimes he forgot the lie he'd told and I got a different version of the same event. I knew he was lying as he had a tic, as liars often do. He'd look at the floor. 

He lied about the present, I knew that, then I met an old and as it turned out, mutual friend, Lucy, who had known him for ten years. He'd never been married but he had three children by three different women and he'd been sacked several times for harrassment. Lying by omission. There'd been no flashy cars, no jobs abroad as he'd said.   

Maybe Lucy didn't know everything. Maybe he was an ex-con too. When he broke a guy's nose just for looking at me I decided enough was enough. When I said it was over Liam was very blasé about it. He stunned me by giving me a hug, then wished me well, waved me goodbye and said that was the end of it.

He lied. I'd seen the telltale glance at the floor. Someone like Liam wasn't going to let me go that easily. He called regularly, drunk, late at night. Whore, bitch, tramp, slut, tart, skank, and many more insults were flung at me. He said he followed me and my boyfriends everywhere. None of them lasted long as I couldn't relax in their company.

I only went out with girlfriends after that but I was becoming paranoid, always looking over my shoulder. He really was following me as he started sending notes to my office telling me where I'd been, but I didn't keep them. Too creepy.

Liam was never happy unless some psychological game was being played, a game he controlled. After a while the phone calls and notes stopped and I hoped that meant he'd moved on.

I'd lived with my best friend Fee for twelve years, ever since my Grandparents died. I'd inherited the house from them and had no hesitation in asking Fee to move in with me. We'd known each other since high school and we were like sisters, though I never said a word to her about Liam. Fee was a gentle, kind-hearted soul and I didn't want to use her as a shoulder to cry on. It didn't seem fair.

Then Liam left a note in my home letterbox which I didn't discover until morning. 

"Now you know how it feels to lose someone. Do you want to know how it felt to strangle Fee, to put my hands around her throat and squeeze, literally squeeze the life out of her? But you have to be punished even more. Keep looking over your shoulder, baby. You won't see me but I'll be there. Your turn next. It'll be worth waiting for. Love and kisses Liam xxx."

He was lying, just pulling my strings again. Fee had gone out the night before with a girl from college. I was sure I'd heard her come in just as I was falling asleep but nevertheless I shot up the stairs two at a time. I was staring at Fee's beautifully made bed, almost in a trance, when there was a knock at the door. It was the police. Fee was dead, strangled, posed flat on her back, as if praying, hands together, a photo of me between them. Liam had written my address on the back. She was found by a neighbour as the apartment door was wide open. I showed the police the note I'd only just read. They told me Liam's wardrobes were empty and his car was gone.

He was a fugitive but he couldn't resist leaving me one last note. It was dated two days after Fee died. He'd had the gall to hang around yet he hadn't been apprehended. He led a charmed life and I'm sure he got off on the thrill of the chase.

"How does it feel to know your actions had consequences? Fee cried like an 'ickle baby. Boo hoo. If you hadn't broken up with me she'd still be alive. Never forget that. This is all on you. Our games were fun while they lasted. I'm off now till the heat dies down but I'll be back for you and you won't see me coming. Love and kisses Liam xxx"

Liam left England on a fake passport. He was spotted in Madrid a few weeks later though he eluded capture. His details had now been passed to police forces and borders worldwide. After the horse had bolted I thought, but at least I could go to my friend's funeral without a police escort. Planning it had been the only thing keeping me sane. 

In time I learned from the police Liam was already seeing a Spanish woman when he'd first been spotted in Madrid. His luck finally ran out a few weeks later when some police officers on the beat recognised him and gave chase. Liam ran straight into oncoming traffic and was killed instantly. 

I cried no tears for him, the liar, the murderer who had taken my best friend, my sister with the kind heart, who'd always tried to see the best in people.

I was distraught when Fee died. I felt like I was going mad. I had one way glass put in all the windows plus exterior bars on them. There were cameras everywhere, inside and out. No matter that Liam was dead. I wasn't thinking clearly. I wasn't thinking at all.

Even that wasn't enough. I began to pace like an enraged tiger in a cage. It was my substitute for punching the walls, screaming, cutting myself. I deliberately lived my life in silence, no phones, no magazines or books, no internet, no-one to talk to. I didn't even open my mail or email. I considered this my punishment for all that had happened. No music, friends or visitors. That would have been disrespectful. I was constantly berating myself for what had happened. Going over and over it in minute detail. If I'd done this, if I'd not done that. I was determined there would be no antidepressants. I needed to feel all the pain. I deserved it.

Then, after exactly ten years of pacing, at 1pm on 26th June 2022 I stopped and sat down. I sat for hours. The lack of movement was strange and unsettling but I had to stop pretending and today was the day.

The pacing, and all the other things I'd subjected myself to, weren't about Fee and didn't start straight away. She wouldn't have wanted me to live the past ten years as I have done, but she died when I needed her like never before. How I missed Fee's advice, Fee's love and attention but Liam had taken her away from me so this was a decision I had to make alone. I found out something that would haunt me forever, live with me forever and I would pay for forever unless I forgave myself. I couldn't do that so I paced and stopped living.

There was a large envelope on my coffee table, thick with dust. I'd managed to make it invisible. It just wasn't there. I'd had it for so many years but not opened it. Letters could stay there forever. Those were the rules for any mail. As long as it remained unopened I didn't have to deal with it. But the day had finally arrived for the dusty letter to be opened and read. The world would be a different place afterwards.

I knew it was the anniversary and I was being pulled deeper and deeper into the past. I didn't want to remember it, didn't want to feel. Then the wind suddenly whipped up and blew through the open window, lifting the thick with dust envelope off the coffee table in a big cloud of filth and letting it drift gently to the floor at my feet. Happenstance.

It was time. I could see my hand reaching out to the envelope on the floor but I couldn't stop it. Once in my hand it was open as if someone else had intervened and done it for me. I'd never read the words that I'd written to myself ten years ago but I knew what they were about. I felt sick to my stomach.

Slowly I unfolded the sheets of paper. There was a note and then some pages that had been torn out of my diary. The note read:

"26 June 2022 is the tenth anniversary of something I despise myself for. Something I know I will bury forever and never think about again, unless I read these diary pages. The truth is difficult to accept but ten years is long enough to pretend. Now I have to take responsibility for the truth."

23rd May 2012

I had the funeral to organise as Fee had no family but she had a lot of friends. I gave the Eulogy and sobbed through every word but it was a beautiful send off. I was amazed by how much arranging it all exhausted me. Since then my energy levels have been very low but I'm sure I'll bounce back. I just need to take it easy for a while. I fall asleep in front of the TV every night then sleep a full ten hours on top. 

23rd June 2012

Saw my doctor this morning. She did a pregnancy test which was positive. I feared as much. I can't explain how it feels to know that there is something growing inside me that has the possibility of being a monster. It's Liam's. I never slept with anyone after him. I'm not sure exactly how far along I am. I'm in shock but I have to know. 

24th June 2012

I had a private scan this afternoon and was horrified to discover the fetus is 23 weeks. I'm not showing at all and I've never felt it move. 

I was given a photograph of the scan and asked if I wanted to know the sex of the child. A voice I didn't recognise as my own, said yes. Knowing it was male made having it inside me even harder.

It was a mini Liam with a shitload of Liam's DNA in it. I even did some research and found supporting evidence in a medical journal:

Killers are born with a gene that makes them more likely to commit violent acts.

That's the view of scientists from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, who have conducted tests on prisoners in neighbouring Finland - with remarkable findings.

They found that the majority of violent criminals carried the genes known as MAOA and CDH13.

Could I see myself carrying a fetus, who was potentially one half murderer, to full term? I couldn't keep it. That was an absolute. I couldn't love a baby knowing it was Liam's. It might look like him which would be even worse.      

Could I put it up for adoption? That would be passing on the problem to a family who knew nothing about the baby's antecedents. Not fair.

One more option and not long to make a decision. I'm massively anti-abortion. Always have been. A child should have an undeniable right to life. I feel as if I'm caught between a rock and a hard place. I can give birth to a potential liar and murderer, like his father, after having to carry the child inside me for a further eighteen weeks. Then I would have to bring him home, watch him, growing older, constantly looking out for signs of bad behaviour, criminal behaviour, while the boy probably began to look more and more like Liam. I'm crying as I write this as regardless of my beliefs about abortion, and I feel such a hypocrite, I do not feel this particular child has an undeniable right to life when he could potentially take away the lives of others. For that reason I have to push my beliefs to one side and go ahead with the procedure.

25th June 2012

I called the clinic first thing this morning before I could change my mind. I'm doing the right thing. Maybe I'll just have to keep saying that to myself until I believe it. As I'm so far along the clinic has booked the procedure for tomorrow. It was explained to me in great detail but I wasn't listening. I didn't want to know. If I was going to do this I was going to do it as unconsciously as possible. 

27th Jun 2012

It was done yesterday at 2pm under general anaesthetic. The more I could pretend that this wasn't happening to me the better. Just because I've had the procedure doesn't mean that my beliefs about it have changed and I will have to live with that for the rest of my life. 

30th Jun 2012

I called the clinic this morning as the bleeding should have been stopping but it was getting heavier and I was in a lot of pain.

They sent a private ambulance to collect me straight away. I was put under general anaesthetic again to investigate what might be causing it and why it was getting worse and not better. When I came to, and was awake enough to hold a conversation, one of the doctors came to talk to me. I could tell by the look on her face that it wasn't good news. It was rare for a hole to be created in the uterine wall during the abortion. It was extremely rare for the hole to be so large that the only way to stop the bleeding and ultimately save my life was for a hysterectomy to be performed. The original paperwork I had signed allowed any surgical action required to be done, without further consultation with me, so they had already removed everything.

I'm to be kept here for a few days until I am well enough to go home. I'm numb. I had never considered that doing this would leave me unable to have further children if I wanted to. 

Now I feel completely empty. It's as if my internal clock has ceased to tick. I feel I could be stuck here forever in this moment, unable to break free. I feel like I have a heavy weight on my chest and I'm finding it hard to breathe. I've been seen by the clinic psychiatrist who said it was a common reaction after what I had been through. I am severely and understandably depressed but he said they would medicate me for that. I won't be taking the tablets.

25th Jul 2012

Since I last wrote I have not left the house and I have started pacing constantly. This is my penance. I will interact with the outside world as little as possible. I will live in silence. I will not have friends. By taking a life I do not deserve to have a life so I will punish myself to the end of my days. I'm no better than Liam because by aborting his child I am also a murderer. If only I could……….

The diary ended abruptly mid sentence and I knew I hadn't written in it again. I was back in the present, sitting on my couch, with my body full of every feeling imaginable. Tears rolling down my face that were ten years too late. I cried for my little boy, for the fact that my experience of Liam had clouded my judgement and I'd made the wrong decision. The boy would be nearly ten now and oh how I regretted all those years I'd lost because I'd hated and feared Liam and his criminality so much. The child would probably have been nothing like him. Nurture versus nature? I couldn't name him could I? Then I plainly heard in my head, Luke, and the floodgates well and truly opened. I cried for hours and hours. I didn't ever want to stop. I had ten years of tears to cry. I'd never thought of him as my little boy, just Liam's and as a result I'd lost the chance to hold my living, breathing baby son in my arms. 

When the sobbing finally stopped I felt cleansed. I would find some way of honouring Luke's memory and his Auntie Fee's. I could go into the garden and plant a tree. I could go anywhere and do anything that I wanted. There would be no more pacing and I would get rid of all the ridiculous security on the house. Nothing can undo what I did but I can forgive myself and fill my life with love and kindness towards myself and others. It's what Fee would want me to do.

I was putting the folded sheets back in the envelope when I realised there was something else in there. It was my scan picture. I had no recollection of having kept it. I just stared at it in disbelief. 

I put it in a frame to keep on my bedside table and that night I kissed it and held it to my chest. I felt a mixture of sadness and happiness as I said, "I will always love you Luke, wherever you are."