Here we go…a common theme in my life is evolving.
I am ten years old now. All I remember are all other bad events in my life, pain, rejection, abuse, neglect - it’s my life story. Yet somehow I was surviving.
Best get this over with.
Ten Years old, I have no memory whatsoever of the last four or five years. Its dark and I am alone yet again. I am walking along my back lane going home but don’t know where I had been. As I am nearing my back door, the youngest of three brothers who lived next door, came out of his yard into the lane. He was now between my door, and me, he had a firework in his hand. I’m scared, I try to pass him on the right, and he blocks me and points the firework at me. I walk to the left he moves to block me, again, all the time pointing the firework. By this time he has lit it, it’s a shooting star, he is laughing grotesquely. “Someone help please help, I’m going to die a terrible death!” All alone it’s pointed at my face from his out stretched arm, I can’t escape, I am staring right down a barrel, just feet away, he can’t miss, I know what is coming a big ball of flame. IMPACT! My whole face exploded in a ball of flame, as it hit me in the Adams apple. I did not know if I was alive but I could smell my flesh yet again. My chest was on fire! My face was on fire! My hair was on fire! I was in so much shock I could not help myself but I’m desperately trying to put the fire out in my hair, but I can’t.
Next thing I remember was watching myself run into the house just 15 feet away, screaming, I heard my oldest brother say, “Did he mean it?” I screamed, “YES!” It felt as if my mind was still stuck to the spot where it happened, as I watched my body scream out to my brother.
Then nothing, no memory, not until some time after. I was in class, I was very quiet, and I whispered to the teacher, “Please can I go to the toilet?” And for the first time he said, “yes.”
I’m in the toilets now. I’m looking in the mirror, I don’t know who I am, where am I, why am I looking in the mirror but I painfully slowly open my shirt. Now I remember that bad lad next door. Around my Adams apple was this horrid black skin peeled out in a kind of big jaggered circle, like the top of a volcano, that’s how I always remember it. My whole chest and neck was a horrible mass of giant bright red blisters. I’m sure now I’m crying, then nothing. My mind went blank. At least for a while...
With care
©Paul Davidson 2008