A long time ago when I was still in the throes of crystal meth I wrote a novel called After Pandora. As a crystal meth baby, it was a crazy melange of over a hundred characters, each with a point of view. It was unprintable but there was something to it – it was talking about parts. I look back at that unreadable novel and know I was trying to say something.
These are the parts I’ve met:
There was a teenager trapped in a room with a high up window and no doors.
There was a sprite trapped inside a gremlin.
There was a ten-year-old sociopath sitting on the basement steps.
There was a girl, frozen, five years old, staring at a wall.
There was a baby, horrified at the womb and her birth.
There was a griffin, tail slapping, blue blood dripping from its click-clack beak.
There was an angel, sixty foot high, so large I could only see its feet.
There was a woman made all over of green.
I’ve met them at stages of recovery, witnessed some in action, seen others change.
In the room of the teenager, I discovered there was a door. We opened it. A chair appeared in which my therapist sat and read the paper, patient. The teenager climbed down from the window sill and, over time, left the room.
The fairy sprite that was trapped inside the gremlin we already know was delivered in the form of basic gremlin words that I misheard for years and ran from, believing it was chasing me to tell me I was shit. When at last I took Pema Chodron's advice, stopped, turned around, invited the demon in, had tea in its mouth it wobbled up to me in its hairy, butterball way, short legs and skewed teeth and I heard the voice saying help. That fairy sprite was released from its place which had begun as its safekeeping. I fixed her back inside me with a click.
The ten-year-old sociopath, we’ll call her Rosie, who sat on the stairs, her eyes on the basement flat door, I had believed was waiting for the shadow-man out of love and desire. But when I sat with her I realised that was wrong. She wasn’t waiting for him to come out or come home so as to be with him, she was on guard. If she had eyes on his whereabouts, she could protect. With some persuasion we got her into the hall where the wall of small square panes of glass allowed her to look through for a while, still keep her eyes on the movements in the basement. And then she allowed us to move her away, to believe, as we gently said over many weeks, that the danger was passed, her job was done, she could stand down. The sixty-foot angel carried her out, gathered in its enormous arms. It sat her on a cloud.
That Angel took up the baby too and held her. Is still holding her wrapped tight into its chest.
The woman made of green appeared again and again, her healing hands.
And one night I had a dream that I was walking through a house I knew and, as happens in dreams came upon a whole separate other bit that wasn’t there in waking. This other bit was the colour of absence; a beige, tan nothingness, not so much empty as neglected. Sparse furniture, the feel of an interior nobody cared about much, no effort had been made to make it look nice, it had the basics but no more. I walked through it and arrived at a space down three steps that was in almost complete darkness except I could see on its other side a huge ornate door. I stopped on the brink of that room and woke up.
In meditation and therapy I returned to that brink again and again and gradually it changed. First the fairy sprite turned up at a table at its centre, I could see her lit by a candle that blew in the breeze of an open window behind her. At the table she writes and writes and the pages fly up and fly out of the window and she is happy and determined and whenever she looks up she makes a face and sometimes she lies on the chaise longue behind her and comfortably smokes, one arm crooked behind her head, her legs outstretched and her ankles crossed, and thinks of what she is writing.
With more light I could see the ornate door more clearly. It was open sometimes and beyond it was a road. But mostly it was shut or just a bit ajar and the griffin sits in front of it and its tail slaps the steps and it raises its head and barks its click-clack sound and blue blood drips from its beak.
The sixty-foot Angel is there, so large I can only see its feet. I know it holds the baby, less horrified now, comforted, recovering from its nightmare of shock, asleep.
On the brink leading down into the room, a wide descent of three steps, sat Rosie, her back to me, the woman of green had her arm around her. I have watched her bleed and knives fall, I have seen her wrapped in green and held and known she took my place in that basement. She suffered so I wouldn’t have to. The Green Woman held her for weeks and weeks, I returned every day to the scene and for ages the scene didn’t change. The Sprite at the table, writing by candle light, the pages flying out of the window. The sixty-foot Angel, its feet so large, in its arms held to its chest, the baby. The Griffin slapping its tale and lifting its beak click-clack keeping guard at the ornate door which was ajar. Rosie bleeding knives as the Green Woman held her. And then one day she was back on her feet, she was standing legs wide, feet planted, her messy jeans and t-shirt, one hand on her hip, the other pointing at me, she was saying you. She had red eyes.
I have watched her leave that sunken room and trace her way back through the house to the place where the five-year-old stands frozen, facing a wall. I have seen her grab that five-year-old and hold her, her body ever the shield. She is sociopathic in her determination to protect. She knows only that, this five-year-old and her mission. Don’t put Rosie in charge of relationships. I have learnt that. She cares about nothing and no one but the five-year-old child and the charge of her protection. She holds her, her body a shield, the five-year-old frozen.
This is an excellent question. I'm glad someone picked up on it. I glanced up and saw. Also when it took up the baby, I was viewing the scene some distance away. But in normal every day life, when I revisit the scene in the room with the ornate door, I am up close and so only see it's enormous feet, like one of those statues in Egypt or gigantic representations of the Buddha in China or creations by the Aztecs or Mayans. That's what I see. Huge feet.
Wow! This is stunning. What a great portrayal of the different parts of us and how they protect us/help us. So glad I came across your writing. This is absolutely perfect timing!!!!!