UNCONSCIOUS WRITINGS

 I’m going to tell you a story that you will remember every night when you go to sleep. 

A few years ago, on an ordinary night, something happened that changed my life forever. Just remembering it makes my body shiver and my ears ring.

 It was a warm spring night. It wasn’t hot enough to turn on the fan, so once I got ready for bed, I just turned off the light and went to bed. The room was completely silent, and no noise could be heard from the street. 

I couldn’t sleep. I was strangely restless. I turned sideways on my right arm and got tangled in the sheet. I started feeling relaxed, but something didn’t feel normal. The room was quieter and darker than usual. Not even a little light came through the window. But I got really tired, and I closed my eyes for the last time.

‘-Fuuuuu-‘

 I got goosebumps, and my pulse quickened. I covered my head with the sheet. I felt like someone had blown on my left ear, but I was alone. Something in me had changed. I had the feeling of wanting to take away something I had inside. I needed to turn on the light, but I was afraid to come out of my hiding place. I stuck out my arm and felt around until I found the switch for the nightstand. I took courage and suddenly uncovered myself; there was nothing and no one. It hadn’t been my imagination. Someone had been there. I could even sense its closeness. But who? And why? I had not believed in spirits or paranormal things until that moment.

That night, I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. I relived that feeling for hours, trying to understand, trying to find a rational explanation. I couldn’t either. Every time sleep overcame me, I would wake up hearing whispers in my mind.

The following night, I was terrified. I was afraid to go to bed and the same thing would happen. But I was too tired. 

I went to bed. This time, I even put a blanket over the sheet. I wanted to feel safe, covered by something thicker. I covered myself from head to toes, leaving just enough space to breathe, and took my arm out of the cocoon I had formed to turn off the light on the nightstand. I waited to see if I had heard anything. I was tense and I think any little sound would have made me jump out of bed. Nothing happened. I couldn’t resist anymore and surrendered to sleep. 

The next morning, the sun coming through the window woke me up. The cocoon had fallen apart. I slept better than ever. I yawned, stretched, and just then I touched something under the sheet. When I picked it up, I was stunned.

 There was a black pen and several sheets of paper lying on the mattress cover, which was all scratched with black ink. What had happened? The last thing I remembered was falling asleep.

I grabbed all the pages and tried to find an order. I saw my handwriting, but it was impossible for me to have written that. The text was clear and neat. I started reading with the feeling of reading something foreign. 

“Daniela was thirty years old and had a career with a great future. She didn’t know that everything was about to change. Life would give her a big surprise.”

Seeing my own name on the sheet worried me greatly. When reading, I experienced a sensation of a double voice within my mind. Mine and that of a man with a deep, hoarse voice. 

“As the days passed, she found hints that caught her attention. But on the last day, she defined her future. 

Life can be as short or as long as one wishes. You have to know how to listen and make decisions, and Daniela learned how to do it the hard way.”

 I felt goosebumps from head to toes.

“The morning of the third day was decisive. She woke up early and felt the need to miss work and stay home. As the hours passed, she began to feel bad, very bad. Her chest hurt, her ears were ringing and everything was spinning around her. She managed to lie down on the couch, but felt her soul leave her body.

 She began to beg. She begged for her life, even though there was no one to hear her. Or so she thought. 

“I promise to do anything you ask. I want to live.” She said in a low voice.

She didn’t know who she was talking to but had the instinct to seal a pact with a higher power. She felt footsteps around her that were moving away. The trembling of her body stopped and her heart rate returned to normal. 

Without knowing it, days later she had to fulfill what she promised. She felt weak; she was emaciated and her mood was no longer the same. 

When she left home, she found a note on the window of her car.

“Today, someone will have to suffer if you want to smile again”.

She was confused, but she had already experienced that there was a higher power that could change her life. With regret, she thought a lot about that request. At the end of the day, she hadn’t done anything; Her morals prevented it, but the discomfort appeared and was getting worse.

Coming back from work, she couldn’t take it anymore and did the first thing that came to mind. She closed her eyes, held on to the wheel, and ran a red light. Her negligence caused a tremendous shock. She accelerated. She wanted to escape. A few blocks later she regained her strength, her breath, and began to smile. She felt powerful. She arrived at her house in a state of total ecstasy. Something she had never felt like before. She soon understood how everything worked.

What was I reading? The double voice in my mind felt almost like a memory.

“Finally, the long-awaited last day had arrived without her noticing. It was a splendid afternoon, and she was stronger and more confident than ever. That day, she had not found any notes. She thought it was all over.

When night came, she went to dinner at her grandmother Norma’s house. Everything was going on normally until, while washing the dishes, under one of them, she found what she had been unconsciously waiting for all day. The note said:

 “You will disappear your roots to flourish”.

 She understood it almost instantly and almost knocked the dishes on the floor. Although her life was at stake, she did not believe she could fulfill this request. Just weighing the possibility of it distressed her.

She wielded a knife with all her might, returned to the dining room and found her grandmother asleep in the chair. She knew her life would end. She was not going to be able to comply with such an insane request. She kissed her on the forehead and hurried back to her house. 

The cards had been laid out. There was nothing more to do and Daniela knew what the end would be like.”

I was absorbed in reading. Thousands of questions were rushing through my mind. There was no way I could have written all that and not remember it. But I couldn’t find a rational explanation. Had I gone crazy?

 At the end of the day, I started to feel very bad; I had tachycardia, and I was short of breath. I immediately related it to the story. I tried to calm down and little by little I succeeded. That night, I woke up more than once hearing voices. I was losing my mind and couldn’t talk to anyone about it. 

A burning sensation throughout my body woke me up in the middle of the morning. When I turned on the light, I saw my arms and legs with scratches, some deeper than others.

I decided not to go to work; I called in sick, and I think I was. But no one could help me. During the day, my condition worsened; dizziness, nausea, loss of consciousness… I couldn’t go on like this and I couldn’t stop thinking about the story. I had the terrible idea that perhaps those were the steps to follow.

I staggered into the car and tried to drive to fulfill the plan. I thought I wouldn’t be able to, but I did just as I had read, and I didn’t know what happened behind me. I went back and locked myself in my room and noticed an absolute improvement within a few hours.

 It was at that moment that I knew for sure what was happening. As the days passed, I went into seclusion. I was afraid.

When I got the call from my grandmother, I knew it was my last day. I was afraid to go see her, but I wanted to say goodbye to her. I knew there was no way I could hurt her.

That night, we had dinner, we laughed, and I enjoyed her company like never before. But when midnight arrived, everything changed. Everything began to spin around me and the voices in my head stunned me. I fainted, but when I half recovered, I convinced my grandmother that she just needed to go and rest. I got up to leave, and she looked at me, worried.

 I will never forget that night. It was at that moment that I knew what I was and was not capable of doing.

Many years have passed since that moment, but every May 6 I return to her grave to leave her flowers and ask for forgiveness.

Mariela Ivón Armando © 2024

 

THERAPY

It was a cool and windy afternoon. From time to time, I could hear the roar of the clouds that threatened rain. The black can can tights under the grey wool dress and the black jacket were not enough warmth. My teeth were chattering. I adjusted my red scarf and headphones while listening to the tune of Evanescence. I felt like I was in the My Immortal video; sad, grey, and anguished.

The bus was always late, and this was no exception. I rubbed my arms to give myself some warmth as the wait became unbearable. Anxiety was eating away at me.

When it finally arrived, I got in without even looking at the driver. I had so much on my mind… so much to say, but so little desire to talk. It wouldn’t have bothered me if the bus broke down halfway and didn’t take me to my destination. But today was not a day like any other, I was convinced that it was going to be the last of therapy.

Marcela always made me wait more than half an hour for my appointment, something I hated, but I knew that the day I was late, she would complain about waiting for me.

When she finally ushered me in, we again had the moment of awkward silence where she waits for me to talk and I wait for her to say something.

“How did you feel this week?”

“Good.”

“Not really”

“It was routine, the same as always.”

“Did you feel distressed again?”

“Yes, but I’m used to it.”

I didn’t want to talk; I didn’t want to tell her the same old things so that she would change the subject, as if what I felt didn’t matter.

The pen in her right hand moved quickly over his notebook. «How much does she write?

Someday, I’m going to lose my patience and I’m going to steal her notes. It would be better if she told me what she thinks, instead of writing it down so that I never know.

“Did you work with the wheel of emotions I gave you?”

“Of course, not…”

I knew well what was happening to me and that meaningless wheel confirmed it.

“I’m sad, angry, disappointed… distraught.”

I took a deep breath and pressed my forehead.

“I have been telling you what I feel for months. There is no more or less than that. I feel exactly the same as the first day I sat here.”

Again, her pen moved at full speed over the paper. The silences were unbearable. I never knew if she stayed silent and stared at me because she wanted to make me think or if she didn’t know what to say to me.

“What did you do this week?” Again, changing topics.

“I don’t want to talk about anything else, I only think about one.” I sighed loudly. “I want to talk about the emptiness in my chest that I feel from the moment I wake up until I fall asleep, if I do.”

“Does talking about Ulysses’ departure make you feel better?”

More meaningless questions.

“No. But how am I supposed to get over it if I don’t talk about it? He left me. He left without even saying goodbye.” She stopped writing and stared at me.

“When did he leave?”

“Are you seriously asking me?!”

Incredible.

Isn’t she supposed to take notes to learn more about me and… remember it?

My vision began to bother me and the screaming in my ears became louder and unbearable. I rubbed my eyes and sat back on the couch. I tried to keep my right leg still, which seemed to have a life of its own. I didn’t want to see her. I stared at the window. I could not believe it.

What disrespect!

“Why do you ask me the same things every time I come?”

“Your answer varies week to week. I want to know which one it is today.”

“No.”

I felt the anger growing inside me, like a flame that rose little by little.

“I always tell you the same thing. Ulysses left me. He’s gone. He disappeared without even leaving a note, an explanation. I don’t know why he did it. He left his life with me just as it was. He didn’t take his clothes or anything, not even his phone. I have no way to communicate with him or find him.”

“What was your relationship with him like?”

“I don’t understand why every time I come it’s always the same. I already answered that last week. What will the next question be? Do you know where he went?” My voice was gaining volume in a way that I didn’t even know myself.

She started telling me to calm down, to try to breathe deeply, but my anger grew more and more. It was a pressure cooker ready to explode.

“Are you listening to me, Marina?”

Her pen was no longer writing. Which caused me some amusement, but not that of a joke. I pounced on her without giving her time to do anything. I snatched the pen from her hand and stuck it in her neck. She didn’t even scream. She desperately grabbed her neck with both hands, but immediately became weak and could not even get up from her seat. Her blood was gushing out. She no longer moved or tried to speak. Her body remained motionless, staring at me.

I grabbed her pink notebook, now a little stained, and sat back down in my seat. I crossed my legs and started reading.

Lack of dissociation between reality and her imagination.

Moody. 

Temporary memory loss.

Reluctance, anguish, anger. 

“Memory loss? Lack of dissociation between the real and the imaginary?”

I read, bewildered. Those couldn’t be notes about me. I continued turning the pages and several papers fell to the floor. I looked at Marcela to check that she was still there, inert, and I bent down to grab them. I didn’t know what I was seeing or reading. I saw photos of my apartment with blood stains, photos of the kitchen and bedroom. The white feather bedspread was all soaked in blood. A thousand images and intermittent memories that I did not understand passed through my mind. The last photo completely disarmed me. Ulysses lay lifeless on the bathroom floor in a pool of blood, with a kitchen knife stuck in his chest.

No! How could it be him?!

Ulysses had left months ago without leaving a trace.

He had abandoned Me!

I unfolded some pages that looked like they were photocopies and had a passport photo of me stuck in the corner. What I read seemed crazy to me. Ulysses had died from thirty-five stab wounds, one straight to the heart. My hands were shaking, I wanted to see everything as quickly as possible. I grabbed a newspaper clipping.

“… Ulises Carrasco met death at the hand of his fiancée, Marina Montez, last Saturday. …the aggressor is admitted to a neuropsychiatric hospital… she does not seem to remember anything of what happened… »

Almost like a bucket of ice water, all the memories appeared together and crowded into my mind. I remembered the beatings, the humiliation, the heartbreaking crying. He had locked me in the bathroom after beating me almost all night. As soon as he opened the door, I pushed him and ran to the kitchen and grabbed the first thing I could to defend myself. The meat cutting knife. He hit me again in the face which knocked me to the ground and stunned me, but I didn’t let go of the knife. He was determined to continue his attack; I stretched out my arm with all the strength I could and stabbed the knife into his waist. I tightened the handle and turned the blade inside, as I learned from watching Face/Off.

He tried to escape by clutching his wound, but I followed him. I didn’t give him any chance. I remembered every one of his mistreatments, every one of his beatings and humiliations. I stabbed him with the knife again and again, and when he finally fell on the bathroom floor, where I had been locked up all night, I gave him the last stab. I sat next to him, took a deep, almost triumphant breath, and rested for the first time in years.

The ringing in my ears was getting louder. I stared at the window without thinking too much. Outside, it was starting to rain.

“Marina, are you listening to me?” Marcela was staring at me with a worried expression.

She had her notebook closed and held it tightly on her lap with the pen in her right hand. «It happened again. I no longer knew what to believe. I felt dizzy, overwhelmed, and confused.

“Y…yes.”

“We’ll stop it here for today.” She handed me what seemed to be an exit permit.

I left the office bewildered, dazed. On the other side of the door, a man dressed in white was waiting for me to escort me to the bus that would take me back to the hospital. I got on and waited, sitting in the last seat while I focused on the raindrops hitting the bus windows. Each drop that fell was like a little piece of memory that entered my mind and completed the puzzle. Little by little, other people dressed in grey and black like me got on the bus. Some with a lost look, others angry and some with a smile that did not reach their eyes.

It seems to me that, in the end, this is not going to be the last session of therapy.

Mariela Ivón Armando © 2024