Holidays and shadows.

A few days ago I returned home after my usual holiday season (the first of this year) at the beach. I have been quite hectic: exercise in the morning, preparing part of the lunch in advance, a couple of hours lying in the sun, walking along the shore or swimming in the water, a short break, and then more time out, relaxing both mind and body. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Lately I have been enjoying these holiday seasons more than ever before. When I was young I used to feel melancholic when I was near the beach, too many past life memories in the back of my mind, struggling to go out: my long-gone days as a British Navy officer, my days waiting for my Norwegian sailor almost in despair, the feelings of being already dead in a very different beach... No wonder holidays always depressed me.

Now those memories are not hidden, they are clear and very present, and they don’t depress me so much. Now I still love the sound of the wooden planks beneath my feet as I step on them, when I walk down the sea wall. It feels as if I am aboard a ship... a real ship manned by real men. I love to wear hats that resemble cowboy hats, because that makes me think of Colorado and the sun hurting my eyes. I also wear a beach dress with Native American people drawn on it, in memory of my family who was massacred by white men, and if I have a chance, I will gladly buy a pair of earrings with the shape of dreamcatchers for the same reason. I pretend to watch a ghostly Norwegian merchant ship on the horizon, getting near, bringing my love home again. I do all this hoping I will get more memories, something new I don’t know, or maybe some happy scene I had forgotten.

But, who knows why, this year it was the turn of the widow, so she turned up unexpectedly in the middle of my holidays, maybe reminding me I can’t escape, not yet. I have a slight idea of what could have triggered these new memories. Nothing I saw, heard, wore or watched... but just a weird feeling related to a decision: should I stay or should I go? The feeling of knowing you have to go, but not being sure what is best for you. The feeling of having no past, no option to come back to what is familiar to you, because you screwed it up and no one wants to have you near, ashamed of what they say you did, no matter if it is true or not, no matter you were declared not guilty by a judge. Being so scared of the future ahead of you, wondering if it can get any worse, as it eventually did.

So, I am suddenly in this filthy inn where a charitable couple agreed to give me a job and a bed, making clear to me that “This is no brothel”. But the meager pay they give me for serving the tables and cleaning the living room is not enough for my goals (just having a home and money to raise the daughter I had to leave behind, for God’s sake!) and I have to ignore their warning. Of course clients whisper and the charitable couple found out in the end. This is when they came to visit me in my room and told me I must go. My crying wasn’t enough to convince them otherwise, though at least it served me to buy me a week or two, so that I can think what to do next and look for another place. The worst part is I seemed to decide I’d better look for another man to give me the money and house I would never be able to have as a poor widowed woman who could barely read. Did I really think I would find a decent man in such a filthy inn, soldier and all? And would I be able to feign love for him? Well, why not, when I had been forced to fake that same love for my late husband in public for so long?

He is dead but I still hate him so much. He is the one to blame for my current situation. He is the one who turned my life into a living hell. It could have been fine: such a beautiful house, those gardens and the mare, those beautiful dresses and social meetings. But then came the slapping, the harsh words, locking me up in a bedroom, the black eye, the bathtub and the hairpin, the broken rib, the silence, the white powder. “I should be happy and this is where I am”, are my last thoughts.

When my current self had a thought about how many lies I was forced to tell, the widow almost shouted inside of me, saying that I shouldn’t judge. She won’t show me anymore if I judge, as that is what everyone does. And I know. And I do want her to bring me deep into that hell, as I feel there is so much rage and sadness and suffering down there, beyond the coldness and the falseness. Unlike Katrina, the widow is made up of so many layers, it is hard to get to the bottom. Still today it is so hard to know where the victim ends and where the murderess begins.

Coincidence or not, right after these bitter memories, I read one of the best chapters of Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3. Jamie was telling Brienne everyone is quick to judge him for slaying the mad king without even knowing what really happened. I think I must have felt like that for so long in my past life.