The taste of death

NOTE: Trigger warning - this post contains information about events in my life which may trigger some.

I am afraid.

Of this and that and too many things to be captured in a simple list.

Many say my fear is annoying, out of proportion, over-inflated to whatever the situation is. Over and above what it should be.

Perhaps it is, or perhaps not.

I struggle to explain, my usually reliably descriptive words faltering, smeared together like clumsily painted pictures, splotched with black holes, the leaching emotions stronger than the actual images.

How can I explain fear? Only in shards. Only like this:

A child, driven to a deserted paddock kilometres from anywhere, yanked out by aggressive hands, dumped into thigh high grass. It’s full of snakes, he says, sweaty-red faced. Just one bite and you’ll be dead in minutes, all alone. Before anyone finds you. Before anyone even knows.

The day is dusk, air sticky hot. Perfect snake weather, and she knows it. She knows how fast snakes move, how difficult to spot, their colours blending with the ground. Snakes aren’t there, until they are. Snakes strike out of nowhere, just when you think you’re safe. Just like him.

She grabs the door of the Ute, is roughly pulled away, fingers peeled off hot metal, one by one. She begs him to stay. She’s shoved.

Statue still, she watches, frozen in time as the Ute moves away, rocking gently, wheels crunching grass.

A punishment? A character test? Cruelty? I will never know; that part of the memory lost. What I do remember is my cramping feet as, tiptoe, I inched along, staying on the track crunched into the dry grass by the wheels of the Ute, knowing that home would be in the direction he’d gone. Breath held, eyes wide until they glazed, I stopped, started, shook at each shiver of grass, froze at each jump of a rabbit, knowing maybe, probably, almost certainly, I would die.

The rustle of trees, the smell of cow dung, the emptiness as fear rose from my chest into my head, settling behind my eyes. I remember dissociating, floating out the top of my head and above to watch that lonely girl. I remember an endless track against a down sliding sun full of birds like ashes.

He never came back.

I died a little inside.

Crouched on the roof, warm metal, ice blue sky, sun glare, scrunched eyes, chin to knees, ‘dad’s little helper’, frozen on the eaves. Don’t move a muscle, not even one, he said. You’ll fall, break your neck and crack open your head. And then you will be dead.

He’d coaxed me up with a “I’ll look after you, you’ll be safe” lie.

My fear of heights was born. Distrust solidified.

My mother’s screams fractured through a wall, a door slammed in raging despair, pacing feet, squeak of floorboards, a shadow looming. She will kill us, she will kill herself. She cries.

Curled on the hall floor, cheek to cool wood, a child, I wait. If she snaps, one day she will snap, and that’s the day I die.

How to help her? I must disappear so she can be happy. Wishing my guilty body smaller, I wish I’d never been born. How can I make myself unborn?

Pink sheets, yellow blankets pushed over my face, night after morning after night by huge hands. Over my mouth, over my nose. Maybe today I will smother, maybe today he will misjudge his own force or the length of time he holds those blankets over that mouth struggling to breathe. Maybe, in minutes, in one more gasp, I will die.

How much hope is in one last breath of air?

Resigned, I am tired.

Dragged up the driveway, gravel scratched knee, blood trailed leg. Stand, he says. Stand. Shoved onto the electric fence, she jerks. It’s turned up to the max, he says. Turned up so high it can stop the heart in a cow. A girl’s heart is smaller than a cow.

My heart did not stop; not the first, nor the second time. Until I felt it stop. On the third.

One beatless instant.

For a second I died.

I was glad I didn’t die, but I wasn’t glad I lived.

Pills lined up on a kitchen counter, a literal overdose waiting to happen. Shivering cold fear, silence, darkness. A death I wanted, didn’t want. A phone call, two hospitals, a conscious, unconscious space, a yellow face. A record repeated and repeated. Alone. Would I die alone?

An MRI. An adult trapped, choking, voiceless, the echo of a child’s teenage voice – will I die alone?

A cigarette butt, orange tipped. A fire, howling flames ringing like a Roman army, unstoppable, marching, marching on. Darkness punctured by exploding trees turned to fireworks. Wet hessian sacks, blocked roads, burning cattle smell, ears full of ash, lungs full of smoke, a heat beyond a summer heat. Alone in pitch dark, muffled voices dulled by roaring smoke. Once it reaches the house, in a meter it will reach the house, if it reaches, when it reaches the house, there’s nowhere to run.

And we die.

But we don’t. The wind changes, and the fire turns its face away.

Decades later, Gum trees still scare me.

A flood, an instant of stupidity and I’m swept away. The surprise power and suck and depth of water in a creek bed always shallow and long dry. Shoved toward a fence, no strength to fight and a mind too full of dying to remember – is the fence electrified?

Fire, water. The fury of a chaotic world. Both times trapped, just like at home I was trapped.

Sheer luck that I lived.

These weren’t the first, the last, the all. These things I have recorded are just some of my memories, a sprinkling of shards. Fragments of times where I thought I might die. There’s not enough paper in this world to record them all. And my words don’t do justice to the feelings.

I did not learn peace or love, security, or safety. I learnt resentment, hatred, fear, insecurity, cynicism, distrust, despair, disconnection and hyperalert. I learnt dissociation.

I learnt the world is dangerous.

I learnt the taste of fight-for-your-life terror and how it changes tastebuds until nothing tastes good.

Even sweet does not give the pleasure that it should. The taste taints everything. Relentlessly. Every social occasion, every new place, a walk down the street, the flowers in my garden, hobbies, work, relationships, nature, faith, and my medical treatment. More than most, I fear procedures, surgeries, tests, scans, and medication side effects – not the temporary last a few days or weeks ones, but the 1 in 1000 0000 ones which disable (leaving me dependent on others) and the even rarer ones which kill. If there is even one person who will die from this drug/test/treatment, I am probably that one.

When I place each new pill into my mouth, feel each vaccine filled needle puncture my skin, when I slide into the MRI machine, or await a procedure, I don’t feel nervous, anxious, afraid. I don’t feel what others might feel.

I feel a dissociation laced terror. My very existence at risk. Again. But, like a dying bird, I hide my vulnerability. Few would even guess how I really feel.

Fear is realer to me than most. I know terrible things can happen. I grew up knowing the world is not my friend.

An adult, I have someone to trust now, helping me in this frightening world. So, the terror taste has faded over time, but it never leaves, not completely. I have survived much; I am a survivor. I am brave-ish. But. In the back of my mind, I wonder…How long will my luck last?

My fears seem out of proportion to the actual risk. I get this, kind of, even if deep inside a part of me doesn’t really believe it.

I am afraid.

How can I explain fear? Only in shards. Only like this:

How else can I explain?