I'm Sorry, I love you

Chapter 34 - Six Weeks Later

Finally it's leaving day. I stuff my belongings into the suitcase Michael brought from home. I can't wait to have a bath, to lay back and relax. I still feel embarrassed by my behaviour and have agreed to attend weekly CBT sessions for the foreseeable future. I'd cried for two days when normality began to sink back into its rightful place. There was no boy. Never had been. I felt as though I'd lost a child all over again. I'm the last of the three girls to leave, with new girls laying in their beds. I feel for them, knowing that while my journey was relatively short, that's not always the case. My doctor had explained the antipsychotic medication I'd finally relented and taken had helped stop my disillusions. Something called Quetiapine. It had taken a few weeks to really have an impact and the side effects were awful. My face is chunkier than when I arrived here and my trousers are too tight. They left me exhausted and nauseated, barely able to lift myself from my curled up position, cardboard bowl in my lap. 

Yes, I'm grateful to feel more like myself. The dark thoughts that had been intruding my mind since I lost my child have been silenced almost completely. It's like a weight has been lifted, I can breathe again and live again - or at least as close to living as I can without them. Michael has been spending more and more time at the office - or so he says - with fleeting visits in between to see how I'm doing. I've grown to hate him more since being here, but I still feel trapped. I've nowhere to go. Mum passed away two weeks ago, the pain still raw causes me to choke at the thought. I had been too disoriented from fatigue to really acknowledge what Michael was telling me then. In truth, I'm a little relieved. I loved my mum I could never deny that, but she'd become someone so unrecognisable its almost as though she'd been dead for years, that it was a stranger who'd passed in her sleep that Michael was referring to. I've taken comfort in the fact she's no longer confused, no longer suffering. That she'll be holding my child lovingly as she held me so many years ago. Both waiting for the day I can reunite with them.

I would move there but it needs a lot of work and it would be the first place Michael would look for me. Her funeral is in a week so I've decided to wait until after I've said my goodbyes before I do anything. Before I plan my escape. However u do it, whenever I do it, it has be just right. I have to give myself time to get far enough away before he realises. I'd contemplated a woman's refuge, but again it wouldn't be too difficult for Michael to figure out where I was and cause trouble. I've really started to regret distancing myself from my friends throughout the years, having not spoken to any of them for almost an entire year. I had tried phoning them but their numbers have been changed, or maybe they've blocked me. Who knows. All I do know is I'm alone in this and I cannot be hasty.

Zipping up the suitcase I haul it onto the bed, sit beside it and wait for Michael to pick me up. I double check my prescription is safely inside my pocket, I've got to keep taking my medication until my doctor deems it safe to start weaning me off them. I swing my legs, anxiously waiting to leave. I hear Michael before I see him. I jump up raring to go. Suitcase in hand I walk forward. He puts his arms around my shoulder, it takes everything in me not to shudder and grimace beneath his touch.
"Come on then, let's get you out of here and home safe
Yes. Out of here and safe is EXACTLY where I plan to be.