Reflection's Echo

Rain fell against the glass of my bedroom window. It’d been raining all afternoon. Some first day it was back in New Hampshire — cold, dreary, and familiar. The only thing to brighten me up would be a hot cup of tea. Steadily my feet carried me to the kitchen. Aunt Margaret was asleep in her living room lounge chair. 

As I filled the tea kettle with water, placing on the stove to heat up, my eyes began dancing a bit. Not now, no flash backs please! It was difficult to push back what I didn’t want to remember, but repression had only ever brought about frustration. 

I boiled the water just enough to make the tea warm. Slowly I tipped the kettle over my tea bag. While letting it steep for a few minutes I made myself some toast. It was the only thing my appetite was in the mood for.

Pressing the cup to my lips the hot sweet taste of ginger spices and honey soothed my throat. How relaxing it was, and just the thing to make me sleepy.

Amidst the damp coolness of the day was the strong scent of flowers. I remembered it well. Between the drops of rain came a fragrance into the kitchen window — orange hawkweed it was called; also known as The Devil’s paintbrush — how convenient given the scent came from that place, that dreary awful place which gave me so many reasons to hate being back here, but I had no where else to go that would give me fighting chance to recover on my terms. 

My hand wiped the kitchen window clean. There it stood. Being back in New Hampshire was unnerving. Some things never change, and some things do; a simple phrase with so much meaning behind it, and one of my favorite movie lines too. The Matrix, ironic really, for me was like a mirror reflecting every moment I’d lived up to the day my parents committed me to that nightmare, but that reflection now was shattered as it had been for seven years. My only means of comfort was knowing I hadn’t been alone. Twelve others had been there with me; people with abilities whom were thought to be insane, if at the very least too powerful for society to accept.

Surviving it was like a child inside a prison. Learning every day to anticipate when the guards, the orderlies, would get rough, belittling, yelling or grabbing just because we were seen as a threat, wasn’t a lesson that came quick, and we had to fight. If you didn’t fight you didn’t survive. Drugged, gagged and tied up in a straight jacket unless you agreed to do what the they wanted, were the rules.

Only when the raid broke out did I finally have a chance at hope, but of everyone who’d escaped I was the only one who couldn’t. I cried, screaming, struggling to get away from the orderly who clenched me to his chest, while watching my friends run for the lives across the front lawn. Thrown back into the patted puffy pillow room, I awaited transfer to a different hospital where my new home would be for the next seven years.

All of the counseling, medications and meditations had been useless. I’d healed myself by locking away memories in a place I dared not keep the key to. My psychiatrist called it memory repression. I called it self protection.

At 21 I was released. I demanded the doctors not inform my parents. Facing them just wasn’t in my plans yet, because every time we spoke all I could remember was the day they’d committed me — they hugged me, said they loved me and then turned around leaving me there. Nine years old; I’d been nothing more than a child.

Would anything feel normal again? I’d healed myself, but a single cut would destroy my progression. What those monsters had done to us was unforgivable. Calming the chaos was easier said than done. Just squinting my eyes to make a coin spin in my hand brought a headache. Strange; after all the practice I’d done to control it the headaches still came. Thank God for Tylenol. My weary feet carried me back to my room. As I sank into the bed the pain began dissipating. I had overcome what was meant to break me, to change me. I’d come home stronger.

Now to fight! 

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