The Truth Inside by Ali Norell

Author:Ali Norell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785358371
Publisher: O-Books

Chapter 9 After

To heal the wound, you need to go into the dark night of the soul.

– Tori Amos

Parts of the immediate aftermath of Romy’s passing are still, almost four years later, difficult for me to recall. My father has a theory that this, and my ongoing PTSD related memory loss, is a result of my brain immediately “shutting down” in July 2014 in an attempt to protect me from the trauma that I was experiencing. So adept has my mind become at blocking out the events of those days that it is still physically difficult to retrieve them. What’s more, this technique has proved so successful that my brain is also skilled at erasing all sorts of other important day-to-day information. Regardless of whether or not I write notes in my diary, on a chalkboard in my kitchen or scrawl it in marker pen on my hand, my brain struggles to retrieve information of a practical nature.

Up until July 2014 I thought I had seen my fair share of dramas. Nothing in comparison to some, but I had experienced some difficult times emotionally and prided myself on being a strong person; someone who could navigate her way through a challenging life situation and, with the help of a positive outlook, come out the other side reasonably intact. I have never believed in holding grudges, will always try to see the good in people even if they have let me down and try my best (although I have not always succeeded) to leave the past behind and keep moving forwards.

Having studied literature I was familiar with the term “dark night of the soul” and after Romy died the phrase kept getting into my head. Grief seemed to me to be all encompassing. On a mental and emotional level, it really did feel as if I were sliding into a dark vortex from which there was no return and I found that there was a very real physical feeling attached to my grief. My heart physically hurt and my body had strange aches and pains. I had a constant sense of sliding downwards, accompanied by a nagging feeling of having forgotten something. I might lose myself for a minute; smile, laugh or engage with the children and then it would hit me: a feeling of restlessness, of something being left behind. Then I would remember: my daughter was dead. The initial cataclysmic feelings of desperation and horror gradually began to give way to a subtly creeping realisation that every parent’s worst nightmare was, in fact, my new reality. I was being sucked into a void of hopelessness and it was a daily struggle to keep myself from going under.

Having been refused some by my GP on the grounds that it was “too soon” and that it was better to receive counselling, “... in around three months’ time, when it will get really bad” (yes, she really did utter those words), I asked my wonderful sister-in-law Nuria to help and she spent several hours calling round various organisations.

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