A hairpin and a bathtub.

Day after day I have to bear superficial analyses and preconceived notions from newbies or, even worse, people without past life memories. I’ve talked about the frustration this causes me at great length, so there is no need to rub more salt in the wound. Then, one day comes when, unexpectedly, a new forum member posts something related to his own research that makes me remember an old memory. In this case, a blurred image with deep emotions that left me with some doubts. Well, not real doubts, it’s hard to have doubts at this point of the game, so I’ll just say “memories I left unverified”, but for no special reason, apart from laziness or other things keeping me busy.

I think I’ve talked about that image here before, though I’m not sure of the details I gave. But the scene is clear in my mind: I am in a bathtub, naked. It doesn’t look like a bathtub I’ve ever known in this life. It’s in the middle of the bathroom, it’s white with curves. We don’t have taps, I think we have a jar to fill it. I see the water all around me. I’m holding a sharp hairpin on my right hand, not too long. I use it to inflict some wounds on my left forearm. I see the drops of blood falling down into the water and dissolving, just like my tears. I’m married but my life has become a nightmare. I’m so very young, but I feel so alone and desperate. I feel like dying, with those little bleedings in the white of my eyes and the bruises all over my body.

Back in the waking state, you start to analyze everything with logic and distance. You start to wonder if that was possible or if you are just “fantasizing”, as many of those people who don’t have memories of their own often think. You forget about the emotions, the circumstances you were in, your desires to die. You come convinced that validating a memory is proof of something, if not for you, for everyone else. I’ve never seen a hairpin like that in my whole life, and the ones I have no way could slit anyone’s veins or make deep wounds on the skin. So, you doubt you could have done that in the past, and you doubt your sanity. You don’t give importance to the feel of the instrument in your hand in that memory, the way you gripped it hard with your fingers, with all the tension, pain, rage and hate you were feeling at that moment. It seems the look of it is more important to corroborate that memory and show the world you are not crazy and you really lived that. 

The thing is that months pass, and someone comes and casually talks about hat pins that were used in the Victorian era. You look at them and realize they are really sharp, so much that they were thought to be a good weapon. The truth is it doesn’t matter at all, but you suddenly realize your memory is more likely to be true now: hairpin or hat pin, you did hold that instrument in your hand while you were weeping in a bathtub, feeling like shit, and seriously considering suicide. You were having a quiet day at home, and suddenly such a silly finding, such a small verification, brings tears to your eyes and makes you remember the damned bathtub where you could have lost your life.

I’m not sure which my real intentions were when I hurt myself. Possibly not suicide, even though I did feel I wanted to die. Maybe it was the opposite: I wanted to feel the pain, I wanted to feel alive, as for me living was like being dead. Maybe I thought that’s what I deserved anyway. Probably that’s what my husband had forced me to believe, as I wasn’t the loving wife he wanted me to be.

While I’m thinking about those memories, I also realized a couple of days ago I fell down while I was skating in real life. I could have broken a bone. Luckily, I didn’t, but the following day I was indeed feeling as if someone had beaten me up. Was that the same feeling, the same ache I had when I was in that bathtub, and is that the reason I’m recalling those events?  

If you are unlucky enough, you’ll go to the internet and find some outsiders talking about past life memories, wondering if people just fantasize about it, or discussing the possibility alleged past life memories are just “symbolic stories our mind creates in response to our psychological issues”.

I wonder what kind of symbolism lies on wanting to slit your veins with a hat pin to stop so much suffering and bring oblivion to yourself.

THEN is when you want to cry your heart out.   

Related posts:

Hopeless.

Soul-killing.