More rubble.

It is curious how apparently meaningless phrases can reach you so deep and make you understand past life experiences. I often say that my life as Katrina during WWII taught me a lot about strength... but when I say this there’s another part of me saying: “Come on, aren’t you being too benevolent? She couldn’t get over her boyfriend’s death, she couldn’t fight and stand war, she ended up cowardly committing suicide...” Yesterday, while I was watching the Spanish TV show “Big brother”, where a water-polo player who became a drug addict and almost destroyed all his family and his life, helps violent teenagers, he said: “You see, the one who carries a lot of pain inside but doesn’t use violence is the strongest”. Those words brought tears to my eyes. I’ve always said the weak only seem weak in the outside. I was a tiny woman, alone in the world, unable to make my own decisions due to life’s circumstances. I was caught in a war and recruited to fight for another country. A certain officer abused his power. My only friend died. I knew I could have killed them all, or at least try... I was up to defend myself if only he dared touch me again, no matter if I ended up killed or imprisoned. But I didn’t, though I know I had the chance. Of that, at least, I can be proud.

For some reason, I still must relive all the ordeal. It was the third time I regressed to the night I was raped, and each time there are more details, and more emotions coming out. I will bleed until my last drop of blood is shed. I know there is no other way to stop feeling anxiety, to stop feeling so depressed when this time of the year arrives, and I’m writing it all down because I’m a writer, though I wish I could also draw like a child who remembers past lives. I would draw a German officer with his head blown off, or maybe a handsome German soldier coming for my rescue. I would draw a doctor who didn’t want to help me being assaulted at gun point and being raped too. I would draw myself trying to jump from a window, but instead of jumping I would just scream and scream, and cry and cry... I still have so much pain (and rage) inside I wouldn’t even know where to begin... though it was going to be very bloody, that’s sure.

Yesterday I realized there’s so much about “broken” in this life too. Until now I thought the major issue was the sexual abuse. And that’s a hard one, of course, but there’s a lot more to it than that. It’s about loss and being alone, about broken dreams,  about the only hope I had in that life being shattered in less than a second. My future was just like that scene of the bombed city, all turned into ruins, all dark grey and destroyed, until I decided I preferred black... and I painted it black. Maybe it was my only real decision in that whole shitty life, and right or wrong, at least it was MINE.

Rubble.

I have known all my life autumn is a hard time for me in regards to depression. It is three years now since I started to remember past lives. It is not so long since I suspect the reason I get so depressed in this time of the year is my WWII life. I highly suspect it has to do with anniversaries: Johann’s death, sexual abuse before or after that (or even both), and the deep, dark abyss I fell into until my own death (suicide) three months later. I don’t know the exact dates, I only have hunches and possible real events happening in cities where I do know I lived, which could match my memories. But maybe validations are not too important now. The thing is this year is being different from previous years since I started to research reincarnation and remember past lives. I feel I’m more aware than ever before, at the same time I’m not finding time to meditate or self-regress properly, but sometimes emotions are just overwhelming... only, this time I manage to stand more like an observer, understanding what’s happening, knowing emotions are hard and don’t belong to this life, and welcoming them all the same as they need to be released and dealt with the best I can. Maybe they’re more intermittent than they used to be... I mean, years ago I used to get depressed not knowing why, and I would get deeper and deeper into that depression until I finally managed to go out one way or the other, always believing the reason was some real life problem, hormones, winter, grey and rainy days, whatever... Now I don’t suffer that kind of depression, as I’ve been dealing with my past lives for a while. But, still, there are unexpected moments when, out of the blue, I start to feel depressed again, and I only need to concentrate a bit to see myself as Katrina and receive all kind of dark impressions and feelings which somehow transcend space and time, as if I was suddenly transported to a life long gone. Everything is still there, somewhere. Hidden, frozen, a blurred image on a television which plays time and time again.   

It’s for a reason people say you can’t run away from your past lives. I was quite disconnected from reincarnation, it was ages since I last had remembered something new, when we started to paint the old flat I will soon be moving to. My usual routine was altered, I had to sleep in a bed that wasn’t mine, the workers had to cover everything with paper and plastic, we had to move furniture, and soon I had to spend all day long locked up in the bedroom, keeping an eye on them while I tried to go on with my writing or reading...

The walls were in such bad condition that some cracks and imperfections had to be made again, so soon we were caught in a "war environment" with dust and rubble everywhere. Day 5 arrived. I was exhausted from the anxiety and the lack of sleep, and the usual tension that had led to a small argument with my partner the day before. At around 7:30 am I was inside my car waiting for him, watching the blinkers reflecting in a street sign, still dark outside, when I had a flash of a city destroyed, all rubble around me, and for a moment I felt the same feelings of desolation I must have felt back then... I even had strong desires to cry. I thought, "Well, that could well have been Berlin after the war was over". Only, I know I was already dead by then, and I was in France when I died. "But then... the bombings must have been real. Maybe you really DID see a city bombed".

So, as I had no computer that day, when I arrived to the "battlefield" I sat down, took some paper and a pen, in the old-fashioned way, and wrote this:

"I've taken him to his job and while I was waiting for him a flash came to me: rubble after a bombing. It comes along with strong emotions of... sadness? No, this word is too weak. Deep desolation, terrible emptiness, feeling that this is the end of the world, that there is no way to escape so much destruction. I still don't know how close to death I was, I don't know how close the bombs had fallen... but it was close enough to claim Johann's life.

I think these memories are probably being triggered by the accumulation of similar emotions. I am sure I was also feeling physically exhausted back then, filled with fear, anxiety and preoccupation. Being in this house right now, all upside down, full of dust and rubble, surrounded by junk and old furniture, not knowing very well where I'm going to eat or sleep, with strangers around me... it must not be too different from being in a foreign country we have occupied, with military coworkers you barely know, eating on metal trays and with food scarcity, under constant stress, fearing that in any moment the French resistance will shoot us down or a bomb will fall in the middle of the building. Right now, just imagining there are airplanes flying over the area freaks me out. I'd start praying the Virgin for them to go past without attacking us. I feel constant desire to weep. I don't want to be here, though I also know I have nowhere to go, as I've never had a true home, I only want to be with Johann, and please God, don't let him come to any harm..."

I think I had never been triggered in such an intense way. It wasn’t the first time it happened to me, but it keeps feeling strange, when you feel those emotions coming from the inside, knowing there’s just nothing in my present life that could be provoking those emotions. Back then when I used to suffer from depression I had lots of worries in my head, lots of potential causes which could make me feel like that. Now those worries are not there anymore, and now I know something about my past lives... and now I just feel Katrina trying to scream, trying to find the way through all the years and the darkness so that her voice can be heard, trying to release all her pain and suffering that got stuck inside of her... in 1942.

TERRIFIED, SUNKEN-EYED, WITHERED AND DRAWN*.

The painting work was done and everything went back to normal... though I started to feel a bit of anxiety. My theory is that Johann died in August. His death was the last nail in the coffin for me, but it was a process until I killed myself, possibly in November, as it gets darker and darker and then December is a bit easier, as if a heavy burden has been lifted. Obviously, you don’t decide to kill yourself one night and the following morning you steal a gun and do it. It’s quite harder than that. I don’t have a lot of memories from those last months, but I feel I must have tried to carry on for a little while... a short while. And only thinking about it brings tears to my eyes, even when I can only imagine what those final weeks must have been like for Katrina. Yesterday night I was trying to sleep, hearing the noise of the bar below our flat, feeling my heart racing when it had no reason for that. I tried to relax, as I learned long ago, as I’ve grown used to do when I feel anxiety... and suddenly I was there again, sleeping in a poor, low bed in a corner, in the field hospital, feeling so empty, utterly alone, fighting in a war I had not chosen, fearing the touch or the proximity of the officer, feeling so, so devastated by Johann’s death, and so enraged by everything that was happening and I couldn’t control. A thought came to me, it was Katrina saying: “You said I didn’t cry, but I did, sure I did, on the floor, hiding in that deserted library, or in the toilettes... though maybe not enough... not enough”. I was completely terrified. How can you not feel anxious when you are so scared? When you are just terrified of bombings, of being abused again, of being unable to function, of being killed by your own people... as they are not really your people, they just used you instead of killing you in the spot when your city was occupied. What future did I have? Johann was my only future... and they had taken all my hope away.

The memory of watching myself in a mirror, withered and drawn, pale and thin, with grey shadows beneath my eyes, is an old one. I just couldn’t stand it any longer. And I think no one could blame me for what I did. It just breaks my heart to think I must have been no older than 20 or 22 when I decided to quit.  

* Words from the song “Berlin” by Marillion (it's about the Cold War, not WWII, but it comes handy here anyway).