At 2.30 am, I wake, besieged by thoughts which have at last, escaped their confinement. They swarm over me, vengeful, hungry, sick of being silenced.

I fire up my phone to bathe myself in the glow of escapism.

An hour later I feel worse, depressed by the banality of social media. Emptiness haunts me.

The thoughts roar back and surround me, a pack of starving wolves. I know I will not escape this time. I have denied this moment for far too long. They snap at my heels, until I am cornered. Nauseous with terror, I go to the only place where I know solace.

In the bleak 4am light of my screen, I sit before my keyboard with its beloved letters worn away. A whisper of something moves through me. The truth I fear edges closer. I shiver. Courage eludes me. I light a candle and begin to write.

I knew this was coming. For weeks I could feel it in my bones. When I knew the barricades I had desperately bolstered would implode under the pressure of the choice I must make.

A crack appears in the one of the walls, it spreads, rapid, across its surface, spiderwebbing its way to the other sides. Walls reinforced with my blood, flesh, and bone. It hurts. It's almost unbearable. I bite my lip until it bleeds.

My fists clenched, I endure. It's part of the journey, in the end it will all make sense, but this part is horrible. I wasn't prepared for this, no one warned me. No one said in the aftermath of leaving, far worse would come after.

Fragments of the past cling to me, hold me hostage. The dissonance between the past and present is razor sharp. New and old clash, ugly and disconnected. I close my eyes and once more I am driving in Sweden under an endless stormy sky, lightning striking in the distance.

It's gone. It's over.

No. It's not. I am still there. I can taste the ozone in the air.

Let go.

I’m not ready. I don’t know who I am without my past. I hold still. My existence beneath me stretches across an endless abyss, taut as a wire. The past behind me, the future before. I tremble, longing to fall. Yet here I am. Writing. Fighting. Holding on.

The barriers shatter under the weight of my denial and the few feeble plants left in the parched garden of my hopes, loves, and dreams die before my eyes. I am eviscerated with anguish. I am bleak, alone. Empty. I look up and the one I cannot bear to face steps through the debris of my ruined defences.

She holds her hand out to me. The one who can give me hope, who can help me live again, who can give me purpose. I knew this was coming. I dreaded it. She is the one I must become, the final stage of the journey. She who has the strength to move past the pain, the sorrow, the lies, and the hopelessness that has been my sustenance for far too long. She who has the courage to face the unknown. To trust again. She who has the perseverance to finish what I started.

No. I am not ready. I look away from her, at what's left of my dying Self, and see myself with her eyes, how fear has turned me into a persona non grata in my own life, as I have fleeted, light through the days, careful to commit to nothing, not even a car, erasing myself until I am only one step away from vanishing.

I glare at her, defensive.

Never again. Never again will I trap myself. It hurts too much to lose it all. Walk light. Live light. That’s the only way to be safe from now on.

She waits. I ignore her and think of the 20 years of my life I piled into a shipping container hidden among an identical sea of containers. A massive metal door imprisoning my history in a tomb of darkness: Moments of happiness. Of sadness. Of all the seconds and hours that made me who I am today. Letters. Books. Photographs. My life buried alive. And it was I who buried it and drove away.

And now.

I wait.

For what?

For a reason to open the door and let the sunlight in again?

I think of my three passports, and know I should feel blessed, but instead I feel as if I belong nowhere. It hurts, this feeling of rootlessness after being deeply rooted for more than a decade.

I am not ready.

Still, she waits. I want her to go away so I can return to what's familiar. To the bleak island of uncertainty that is my only certainty in a world turned upside down, of drifting from one day to the next, thinking of nothing, just existing. Losing myself to time. Letting the days slip by. Doing what I must and nothing more.

I seek courage and look back up at her. Or, me but not me…the me I want to be. Sadness shrouds her as she offers her hand once again. I sense she thinks I will refuse her.

My time to choose is almost gone. The last of my waning self begins to disintegrate. If I don't go to her now, I shall be forever caught in the past, a phantom to my future. My chance to heal thwarted by none other than myself. How long would I last disconnected from my true Self? Not long. A year, at most before I would become someone else. Someone not me. Someone who lost herself.

I sense her presence. Strong, wise, honest, good, loyal. My true Self. The one I lost when I let another define, control and almost annihilate me. She is the only one who can save me from myself.

I realise I don't want to be trapped by past trauma and fear, forever frozen at the threshold of my future.

I lift my hand to hers. She smiles and pulls me to my feet. As I rise, the one I needed—the warrior who protected me for over a year—exhausted, breathes her last and turns to dust, the remains of a chrysalis of pain.

Light fills me. For a moment I am blind. I blink and view the world with new eyes. Everything is the same yet different. The shadows fall away. The wolves lay down to sleep, content, at last, their work done. On the other side of the ruined barrier, my future beckons.

I step through the parched earth of my dead garden. My past self’s remains stir in my wake and gently cover my vanquished hopes, loves, and dreams.

A little distance away, I kneel in the verdant soil of a new garden, waiting and made ready for me. In my hands new seeds of hope, love, trust, and dreams appear. I hesitate only for a moment to admire their golden beauty, purity, and purpose.

The warmth of the rising sun touches my shoulders. A bird sings.

I plant the seeds.

And begin to write.

Author’s Note:

For the entire month of October I will be in a secret location writing my non-fiction book The Lost Letters: The Dark World of Narcissistic Abuse (working title) for women caught in the trap of narcissistic abuse.

Its purpose is to help women understand the mind of their abuser, how they work, why they do what they do and why they tend to target successful, happy, talented, empathetic women and turn them into a broken, empty shells; how to survive the lies, gaslighting, verbal abuse, control, isolation, and constantly changing victim narrative; strategies to cope while in the relationship, ways to protect themselves, and how to get out safely; what to expect in the fallout of a breakup and how to prepare an exit strategy that works, plus gentle methods to heal the mind and heart so past trauma and triggers can be mitigated and a return to a life of peace and calm can be found again.

E A Carter