1942: Rage.

The scene where I’m standing on an empty beach, a cloudy and windy day, though not too cold, comes back over and over again. I’m quite sure it was the day I woke up from the sedation and went out to take some fresh air. Johann was dead. And I was paralyzed. I just couldn’t talk, couldn’t cry, couldn’t shout. We had dreams. We often talked about our future, “when the war is over”. I was utterly alone, hopeless, scared to death. Didn’t want to live in a world where I could get killed any moment, and not only by the enemies, but also by the hand of people who had invaded my dear Prague. I was nothing to them. They had forced me to join the Army. But I didn’t want to be there, shouldn’t be there, in a strange country where they looked at me the same way I had looked at the Germans in their tanks, with their rifles and their threats.  

I was just a shadow, a ghost. I was already dead, long before I was shot in the belly.

I feel I’m back in 1942. August, to be more exact. Anniversary of Johann’s death, as I mentioned in my last entry. When I had no specific memories, the only thing I could say was “I am depressed and I don’t know why. Probably it’s only the end of the summer”. Well, no, the end of the summer is not reason enough to be depressed. Today, I not only know the cause of this depression, I also have constant flashbacks in my mind of fragmented scenes of things that should never have happened. They come and go, they almost disappear while I’m reading something on the Internet or someone takes me out for a bit of exercise... but those memories keep being there. It’s like these plastic small televisions we had when we were kids: you look through the hole and you find the slides there, pushing a button, one after the other, pieces of a life that once were. Now it’s gone, all the people are gone, but the emotions linger and hurt, just like the first day.

Sadness. A hole in my soul. But deep inside there’s a lot of rage as well, very similar to the widow’s rage, only Katrina lacked the will to take it out. Rage is pain. A reaction to pain. But it’s no good to use violence to express your pain, violence doesn’t free you of pain, maybe it soothes pain for a while, but it has no any healing effect. I wish I knew how you get rid of pain and rage though, the secret of emotions’ alchemy. It’s a process, they say, like those stages of mourning. But it looks like it’s a damn long process, to keep affecting me eighty years later. I am still standing in that beach, staring at the sea, paralyzed, watching the darkness grow in my heart, stealing away my will to live. I let the darkness win, I didn’t fight the pain and I ignored the rage, and they never went away. And now I only have words to get it all out... words and tears that more oft than not pile in my throat just like Katrina did back then. How can I get over it? Like I once said, I’m afraid the only way to do it is to let the wounds bleed... bleed until the last drop of my blood is shed, until there’s no more pus inside... there is no other way.

Suicide (The Great Escape).

(As I promised in my latest blog entry, here is the piece I have translated regarding sexual abuse and suicide. It contains the Marillion song in full).

Sometimes I get surprised of the superficiality some talk about suicide and how some judge people who have committed suicide or have been about to do it. “Everyone gets what they deserve” or “Killing yourself is cowardice” are phrases I’ve had to hear more than once and I hope they are only a consequence of not reflecting or not knowing how to put oneself in the others’ shoes. And there are people who still think that killing yourself is equivalent to being an undefined number of years lost in the astral or facing some kind of trial in the other side for having committed an unforgivable sin.

It is likely that 90% of these people think I am insane, but I use to reply to them: “Do you remember having killed yourselves? Have you ever considered it some time? Have you fallen into such a deep depression you couldn’t see another way out? Because I do remember to have committed suicide. And I know many people who also did it. And not all of us remember what happened afterwards, between one life and the next, but obviously we came back and we didn’t burn in Hell, nor we were condemned to wander in the astral”.

Others think it is a matter of mental illness. Perhaps it is, or at least, there are electrochemical changes in the brain, that’s true. But I think circumstances are the most influential. No one can know in which circumstances a person was to decide to kill themselves. And therefore, no one, save ourselves, can judge.

The circumstances for which I decided to kill myself have to do with war, the death of a loved one, and also sexual abuse. No, it is not easy to say it. But it is much worse to live it. In a society where we are used to violence in distant countries, and bombs, shrapnel or executions of people guilty of rape accompany us while we’re having lunch, we don’t know what this really means. It is as unreal as the latest Disney animation movie. And however, it exists, it existed, and it will keep existing. And it is very likely many of us have been in similar situations and have made exactly the same decision which we are quick to judge now.

I always say it and I’ll never get tired of saying it: if we all recalled our past, the world would be very different. Because when we are talking of yourself or your relatives, then it is not so easy to speak lightly. And we’d be talking first-hand, not for what we are told by the different religions, philosophies or belief systems. 

Now I’ve got over it a bit more and it’s not so hard to talk about it, but when the feelings were burning in my inside and flooded in until they exploded, it was very useful for me to listen to a Marillion song called “The Great Escape”. This song is the culmination of a full album entitled “Brave”. This album begins with a scene which is based on a real piece of news published in the British press: a young woman standing on a bridge, about to throw herself into the space. When a police agent asked her name, the girl couldn’t even answer. Once I told a friend sometimes I had the same face that is displayed in the album cover.

A movie was filmed too, in case someone is interested.

THE GREAT ESCAPE

Heading for the great escape
Heading for the rave
Heading for the permanent holiday

Heading for the winter trip
Heading for the slide
Heading for the dignified walk away

Heading for the open road
Goodbye to all that
Heading for the automatic overload

Standing in the open boat
Standing in the swing
Waiting for the ringing and the bright light

Waiting to be recognized
Quiet applause will do
They shower you with flowers when they bury you

You're holding on, you're holding on ...

(i) the last of you
Just when I thought I'd seen the last of you
You come here scratchin' at my door
Your pain and anger's in the howling dark
Of every corridor I walk

So tell me more about the love that you rejected
Tell me more about the trust you disrespected
I still don't know, why did you hurt the very one
Why did you hurt the very one that you should have protected?

(ii) fallin' from the moon
Don't ask me why I'm doing this
You wouldn't understand
You're asking the wrong questions
You couldn't understand

A bridge is not a high place
The fifty-second floor
Icarus would know
A mountain isn't far to fall

When you've fallen from the moon

There's murder on the street
I'm ashes on the water now, somewhere far away

I have fallen, fallen from the moon

The lyrics seem to reveal the one who should protect her betrayed her trust and abused her. And the music and especially Steve Hogarth’s voice keep helping me get rid of the pain and the rage accumulated by something that should have never happened. Although, maybe, if it happens, it is down to some reason I haven’t got to understand yet.

The consequences, who knows how often, no doubt can affect you in the following lives, due to the deep emotional trauma that implies.

ADDITIONAL WORDS.

I believe three months passed since I decided to put an end to my life until I actually did it. The scene where I’m standing on an empty beach, a cloudy and windy day, though not too cold, comes back over and over again. I’m quite sure it was the day I woke up from the sedation and went out to take some fresh air. Johann was dead. And I was paralyzed. I just couldn’t talk, couldn’t cry, couldn’t shout. We had dreams. We often talked about our future together, “when the war is over”. Now I was utterly alone, hopeless, scared to death. Didn’t want to live in a world where I could get killed any moment, and not only by the enemies, but also by the hand of people who had invaded my dear Prague. I was nothing to them. They had forced me to join the Army. But I didn’t want to be there, shouldn’t be there, in a strange country where they looked at me the same way I had looked at the Germans in their tanks, with their rifles and their threats.  

I was just a shadow, a ghost. I was already dead, long before I was shot in the belly.

Music and resonance.

I say this very often: nothing is accidental. Or... coincidence doesn’t exist. We still can go a bit further, and say “We are a product of our experiences”. We reincarnationists know this very well, but sometimes it is astounding when you really corroborate this is absolutely true.

Music is one example. It is just one more resonance, but for me it is very strong. If some words in a song move me, or stay with me, get ingrained in my brain even when it is not one of my favourite bands... there is a reason. And if I don’t know that reason, it is not because there is no reason, but because I haven’t found it yet.

Months ago I used a Marillion song to illustrate some thoughts about sexual abuse and suicide in another blog (maybe I should translate it and bring it here too). A certain part of that song always meant a lot to me, it says:

So tell me more

about the love that you rejected

Tell me more about the trust you disrespected

I still don’t know

why did you hurt the very one

why did you hurt the very one

that you should have protected

Actually, when I used that song, I was thinking more about a friend who in a past life suffered sexual abuse in childhood, and not so much about my own life in World War II, as my own sexual abuses took place when I was already an adult. Not that there is a lot of difference, but I guess it’s much more heartbreaking when you are just a kid or a teenager and it is your own dad who abuses you. I always take it as the greatest betrayal you can face, and that’s what the song is about.

But there’s another song in the same album that also means a lot to me, and I didn’t know why. It says:

Runaway girl

Too bad, too bad

Runaway girl

A real wild child

So you cower in the town’s forgotten places

and you make your bed with unfamiliar faces

and at last you’ve got your freedom

but that’s all you’ve got

You’re trying to make your mind up

if you’re better off

You pretend to wait for washing in some laundromat

but you’re damned if you’ll give them

the satisfaction of you going back

You’d freeze to death before you’d share a room with them

and you’d starve before you let him

get his hands on you again

Innocent of me, I used to wonder: “Why is it that I keep being so attracted to this word “runaway”?” I also love another song by Bon Jovi that is called like that as well. As far as I can remember, I’ve never had to run away and hide. Yep, as far as I remember... I have the pleasure to remember more than the majority of people, so it’s fun to think how for others memory is really so, so short... that almost leaves them with a fish brain (the same I had before knowing about my past lives). And so, one day, I found out that I did run away, and I had to hide in dark places as the ones depicted in the song. I had to leave behind a life where I had it all... except the love of my husband, the one who should have protected me back then. And now I’ve realized why those words make tears well in my eyes every time I listen to that song... especially in the latest weeks or months when this past life of mine has been so present.

Only yesterday night, after a session of self-reiki, more memories of this past life came to me, but nothing new... just the same pain, the same anger, the same hatred, the same feeling of walls closing in around me, just like Eowyn felt in Edoras. When I asked myself how I was feeling, my answer was “Like a prisoner.” When I do self-reiki I always have this lump in my throat, but not as if you are holding back your tears, it is more as if you are being strangled... which I guess is logical as I’ve been hanged at least twice in my past lives (as far as I remember). But I guess that if I feel it it’s because there’s something else affecting me, and I think it’s not only for the pressure of the ropes or my neck breaking... I think it has to do more with the fact that in a few of my past lives I was unable to express all that pain and anger I had inside. I always remember Katrina and her strong desires of CRY, CRY, CRY, but looking back at my Black Widow life, I see her situation was not too different: I was just a prisoner in my husband’s house, I couldn’t talk to anyone about the hell I was living, the few that knew counseled me not to speak, so I found myself isolated, alone, scared, feeling more and more worthless as I couldn’t love that hideous man and I couldn’t even bear children for him... I never was a submissive woman, maybe that was the only problem I had, that I never accepted the way he treated me or the way society expected me to be. So, I often went to the backyard and sat in that wooden bench looking at the woods, with my heart filled with pain, wondering what to do to end all that suffering... something which wouldn’t mean my own death, of course, I was not up to give up my life for that hideous man my parents chose for me. And I made up my mind...

But this ultimately led me to a path of self-destruction I should have been able to avoid. I had to leave my own daughter and run away from ignorance and gossip in my town, my family’s reputation was ruined even when I was declared innocent, and I only wanted a new life. All secret, all dark, more hideous men and trying to make money far from my comfortable and rich house that could have been mine, if only there had been a little love inside. I don’t wholly understand why I ended up getting married again, probably I had no choice... or maybe I had some dark plans in my head, I wanted so much to raise my daughter and have her close. All went wrong. Terribly wrong.

Broken.

Lately I feel like I don’t need more regressions to remember or to get in past life mood, it feels weird because this way I don’t get new memories, only flashes of old places, old situations, maybe new thoughts I’m not sure of because I’m not “deep” enough... but above all, I get raw emotions, too raw, too tough, too... wild. I’m not feeling like this trying to meditate, only through self-reiki or whatever it is called, sometimes you feel nothing, sometimes it’s just… wow! Like now, like this evening… all unexpected, no, not unwanted, I guess, but I’m not impatient to know more, to feel more, it just… comes.

And it feels good, so good… no idea how it works but the best way to explain is like having an infected, rotten wound, swollen, with only a tiny hole to get inside. You take water with a syringe and you flush it all inside, and then the water comes out through the hole, cleansing the inside, draining all the pus and the worms and the black, stinking material… only, water is energy, white and shiny energy, and emotions are all the rest. They are intense emotions, but they don’t hurt anymore, you cry but you’re not crying of pain, you cry of relief, it’s like a soft summer rain pouring on you.

While seeing myself in these past situations, I was thinking something like this:

BROKEN. I love this word. I loved it when Bran (character of Game of thrones) said he had now a broken body. It sounds tough, it sounds true, you say it when something can’t be repaired, and there are moments in your life when you feel it, when you feel your soul is being broken, when you know there’s no turning back, no chance to regain hope, love or trust. When did you feel like this? Well, the first time he slapped me, the first time he raped me… and when you’re in prison and they tell you to confess. To confess what? I will never confess something I did, not being guilty. They don’t even know what happened, crimes are being ignored here while I’m the only one who is going to pay for it. Guilty of what? Of living a broken life? And for what? To change death for a life in prison? That sounds ironic, as that's what I was trying to escape from. Time takes me back to where it all started…

BROKEN.Like those words from the song by Marillion, long before Bran, the verse that says “Breaking someone up inside (is your only source of pride)". Words that resonate with you but you never know why… until now, because that’s what they did to you, that’s what the verse means, a harm that can’t be repaired, not through a whole lifetime, not even through a few lifetimes, you just broke and you started bleeding, and you’re still bleeding to death, because that’s how it feels… a sweet death, almost like a drug going through your veins and making you forever asleep, only death never comes, and you keep bleeding, ever since it all started.

A BROKEN RIB, A BROKEN EYE, A BROKEN LIFE, A BROKEN NECK, EVERYTHING BROKEN, just because he wasn’t ready to love. You didn’t love me? Ok, but you could have at least respected me. Love and respect, aren’t those the marriage vows, those we made on the altar, before God? Now I pray to God to save me but I know nothing will do, too late for that, maybe I should have put an end to it back then, that time in the bathtub… but no, it’s not me who must die. It wasn’t me who was going to die…

How much pain, how much hate, how much rage can you carry with you? All boiling inside, through a whole life and beyond. It seems no one noticed, but it was all there, beneath the sweet appearance of an innocent woman. I still hear the wound cracking, like a log that cracks in the fire, breaking. But it will stop. It has to stop.

Death (and beyond) (2).

The blog has been silent for a while, but not because I didn’t have things to tell… in fact, it’s been quite the opposite. Around two weeks ago a close relative died, and it was the first time in this life that I had this scary companion following me anywhere: death. Scary for some people… for a reincarnationist, or at least a great number of us, death is —feels— different. That’s pretty good in itself… the bad thing is we just have to play our parts and we can’t say anything to the people around us, sometimes because we have to respect others’ beliefs and —only in the closest relatives or friends of the dead person— their grief; other times because the situation is already quite weird and no one dares say anything that goes beyond the social boundaries… and other times because we just don’t want to get into trouble, into endless religious/spiritual discussions that ultimately lead nowhere.

But I’ve been wondering: if we don’t speak about death when someone dies, when do we speak about death? Does anyone speak about death? What’s the point attending the funeral services to hear the priest preaching about eternal life in Heaven if none of the attendants really believe in it? It is already too late to bring some comfort for the soul leaving… who is likely confused in the astral realm by now, wondering how it is that their body broke but they are still alive.

I had never seen a corpse before (a human corpse I mean)… not in this life. The feeling was not too different to see my own body for the first time in an OBE, I thought: “So, this is it, our physical body is really so… insignificant. We are… nothing.” In my OBE I didn’t stop more than two seconds, I had more interesting things to do than looking down at such a small bunch of bones and skin and blood (I have to clarify this is NOT the way it looked like then, as from the astral we perceive the “energetic” side of everything). And there, in the hospital room, though it was hard for me to take my eyes off of the dead body, I also lost interest quite easily. I was there only to give comfort to my partner and help him through the toughest parts of it all, and I certainly was surprised I remained so calm and peaceful… even knowing we might have been watched.

It was later that day when I started to feel quite weird. If waiting patiently for my partner to say goodbye and mourning for both of them felt like a quite natural and private moment, it wasn’t so when we arrived to the funeral parlour a few hours later. The makeup and the arrangements in the coffin, placed behind a crystal and a pair of curtains, with a huge crucifix behind and two lamps, one at each side of the coffin, made it all more similar to a terror movie. But besides that, I was so shocked to see how other people behaved in the other parlours… many were dressed in elegant and bright-coloured suits as if they were attending a wedding instead of a wake, they would chat in loud voices and laugh as if we didn’t have dead persons so near, just at the other side of the walls… Reflecting about this, I came to the conclusion that maybe I was expecting a dark and gloomy room, with the coffin in the centre and a lot of chairs around, with sad and crying people sitting on them, all wearing black, and whispering to each other. At least that’s how I remembered my past life mother's wake in the Old West. I was only a kid and I know I had to tiptoe to see her lying there… The atmosphere was so, so different.

My partner said he had been in other wakes and things were different only two decades ago. He said it was more serious back then, and there was more sadness, sometimes to the point it was a bit hypocritical in the case of these persons who turn up and don't care, but we seem to have gone to the opposite end. Now it seems that funeral services have become kind of an entertainment business, where you go to an impressive —and quite luxurious— building, where even a coffee costs you half a kidney, where everything is perfectly scheduled and standardized so that you don’t even have to think, and where guests are provided with everything they need. The deceased person is there, but it looks so artificial that I don’t think anyone feels death is there, close at hand… I can even imagine children betting with their cousins if they’ll be brave enough to sneak and take a look to the grandpa, just having so much fun as no one seems to take it seriously. For a brief moment I nearly believed people had no more fear of death, I think that is good. But pausing a while, I realized I'd have been so wrong assuming that, and I suspect this has more to do with the superficiality we've grown, and this notion of "Let's ignore death, make it look like something without importance, someone that has died is just one more occasion to have a drink with friends and we don't even need to worry about what comes next". What I saw were people turning their backs on death, faking they had lost all respect for it, but I knew that inside most of them were still paralyzed, horrified to think one day they will be the ones in the coffin, wishing life was eternal, wonderful, perfect, not full of suffering and disgraces such as death.

But none would say nothing. Most of them were there only because a funeral is a social gathering and you would be criticized if you don’t attend, they were doing it just for obligation… and I think these people shouldn’t be there. I don’t want to be exposed like that when I die. I don’t want people I haven’t seen in decades come and sit at my funeral, look at my corpse and go when they never cared for me. If I could choose, I would be cremated immediately after death, I want neither shows, nor useless ceremonies, nor meaningless prayers I don’t give a damn for. I want it to be a private moment, for my soul and the ones who loved me, that’s all. My experience tells me when you’re dead you just don’t care about your body and what you leave behind, unless you are still too attached to the material world… but anyway, I think we must not lose the respect for the dead. I think dying is a sacred moment, and as such it shouldn’t lose its transcendental meaning. But in this Western World we’re losing respect for everything. And I think that’s so, so sad.

Relationships from the past.

Quite a complicated subject. And my experience is short… but all I can say, at least so far, is: “It sucks”. Completely.

There are a few people in my current life I’ve recognized in some of my past lives. The problem is I lost contact with most of them, I never knew them enough to ask them about their beliefs in reincarnation, and even when they were open to it, it’s likely they wouldn’t remember, so… what’s the point in telling them they were such and such, and this is what happened between us, and this is why I felt like that and you acted so strange when I was near? I can tell them any tale I can imagine, as we’re friends they won’t say to me I’m crazy but silently they’ll wonder about my sanity… So, even if I met some of these people again and I was bold enough to tell them, I’m afraid it all would end up quite bad.

There’s someone I suspect she was my girlfriend in my most recent life. She’s still one of my best friends and we use to meet twice or thrice in a year. She even knows I’m quite deep into reincarnation now. But years ago she (I’ll call her G) almost lost another common friend (L) because this friend started to mention “weird” things about having met G’s brother in a past life. I don’t know the details, I don’t even know what the reasons were L was making such a claim, if she had some intuitions or it was something else (I don’t think so, we all liked paranormal topics, but we never knew much about reincarnation), but it was quite sad and horrible. And strange… So, I just can’t go now and tell G I suspect she was my girlfriend in a past life. We get along and there are no problems between us, so I don’t see the point.

But then there’s another case. When someone is open to reincarnation and does have memories, you may think “Hey, that’s great, we may find common lives and share some memories, that’s great for validations”. Yes, it is… when it happens. When it doesn’t happen, it’s just as frustrating (or more) as the former cases. The connection I have with this person is just amazing… even overwhelming sometimes, very close to “really paranormal”, as I sense I almost can think what she thinks or feel what she feels/felt in other lives. The problem is she doesn’t seem to be as intuitive as I am, and though we get along, with the exception of some minor arguments or misunderstandings (our relationship is exclusively online), I feel she just can’t understand why I tell her certain things sometimes, or why she reacts in certain ways other times… A long time ago I had memories of a few past lives with her, but recently I’m having more, and while for me it’s all so clear, it keeps being so hard to explain to her all this, and find the right words to help her without making her feel uncomfortable. Besides, I keep wondering why I remember: is it me who has to understand something? Is it only for me to understand how I feel for her? Is it for me to know the best way to help her? I don’t feel she trusts me enough… but that happened in the past too. Did I remember because I feel the same way I felt back then? Eventually I know I could accomplish great things with her in that life, but can I do it again in this life? Do I have even the right to do so? She’s been very important to me too, but maybe I’m not that important for her, and that’s alright, I’ve always known soulmates are bound to play different roles in each life, and relationships with them are rarely perfect. I'm aware what is past is past, and it's over and it doesn't have to be the same again, but the emotions linger... the emotions are so similar it's just unbelievable. Have we met again so that I can help her, or is it all accidental? Did I something wrong and now we have to sort out unresolved issues? I don’t feel this is the case, but if she doesn’t feel alright having me around, maybe I’m wrong…

Anyway, this is so weird sometimes. I have to smile when someone tells me: “Why don’t you want to have kids? That’s the best human experience you’re going to have…” I’ve never wanted kids, and there have been times in my life when I was really annoyed when I was told that. Then I found out why I don’t want to have kids. And I learned to calm down and just answer politely “I just don’t like them. I want to have my own life”, or something in the style. People rarely tell you the real truth behind having kids: you have more problems and less time for yourself, how fun! Of course, my reasons go much deeper than that: some died being too young, most of them I didn’t live enough to see them grow up, others I abandoned when I couldn’t raise them properly due to personal problems with justice… One who made it to adulthood, was decapitated in front of my eyes, seconds before being decapitated myself. And there’s only one I’ve met in my present life (as far as I know). So, nowadays, if someone asked me the same question, I’d say “Well, I don’t need to have kids, I already have one… from another life” (and then cross fingers I won't be sent to the Lunatic Asylum). This isn’t true, of course, I don’t “own” anyone and that’s never been my desire, but it’s funny how without being a parent I feel so many “paternal instincts” I didn’t even know I had. Now I understand my own father more than ever, and I see how hard it is to live faraway from your kids, and now I can talk about a love that never goes away, and a pride I’ve never felt for anyone before. It’s so, so weird… but that’s what remembering past lives has given me, and I’m truly grateful for that, even when coping with it is hard sometimes.

Stuck emotions.

Last night was one of my most dreadful watches since I created this blog. I’m quite used to fall into past life mood when it’s totally unexpected, but yesterday it was so much more than that… Sometimes I’ve said past life mood is like having this cloud above your head full of past life memories that haunt you and stalk you wherever you go. Yesterday they were also strangling me, trying to kill me while I was trying to sleep.

The worst of it all is that I started to feel physical symptoms of anxiety before even thinking about my WWII past life. Even with all these sudden changes in my current life, the uncertainty, the lack of hope for the future, my economic situation, the helpless feeling of being unable to control it, I thought I was doing alright. But then again, anxiety and depression are mostly silent and you don’t even realize you’re being trapped by them, while you’re trying to fight against imaginary enemies (or so they say) and stay alive. I try not to worry too much and spend the days doing things I like, so I was a bit surprised when I felt my heart racing out of control.

Then there came the strong emotions, the strong grief. “If you need to cry, just cry, cry, CRY”, I reminded myself… and I did, forgetting whether I had reasons or not to do it, and not caring where those reasons were coming from. The past life memories caught me unawares though… I know it’s May and I know that’s a tough month for me, always has been, when I didn’t know why, and when I did. But this year I had not thought too much about my WWII life. It seems my higher self doesn’t care about my thoughts… so it presented me with some scenes I must not forget, or perhaps scenes I must witness again and again so that I can heal. The truth is I don’t know anymore… But their clarity, strength and harshness hit me like a slap on the face. “You were trying to run away. You thought you could block yourself. You thought it was enough with a short glimpse of it. Well, here is the news: you just can’t do that. You can't escape from your own ghosts”.

And so I saw myself in this beach I’ve seen so many times before… wearing a thin cardigan and my nurse uniform skirt, cloudy and grey sky above me, windy day. It looks like I’m alone, and though I don’t know the exact date, I feel Johann is already dead, and I must have got up soon after I recovered of my sedation, after seeing his corpse lying on the stretcher. I had left my medal and my faith behind. I’m not so sure about “the other” traumatic situation, but I feel my boyfriend’s death was the last straw. I had seen enough of life (and death), I didn’t want to live anymore in a world where mad men were killing each other, I couldn’t bear so much pain, so much emptiness, and the fear to be abused again (or even suffer worse things). I just wanted to shout and let my anger out, I just wanted to cry out loud, instead of hiding and retch in a dark corner of the camp where no one could see me. Only… I just couldn’t. I can’t be 100% sure, but I doubt I shed a single tear for anything I had gone through until that moment… when I gave up. The moment I lost my soul to war.

Following the advice of one of my fellow travellers, I asked Katrina what she wanted of me, what she needed to be healed and overcome so much hatred, so much pain, so much unspoken suffering gnawing at her (me) through the years… The only answer I got is she just wanted to be loved, she only needed someone to care, to show some interest in her. And the only one who cared… was taken away from her. I don’t think she said it all. She has to speak louder. So much louder. It doesn’t hurt enough. I don’t feel the fury. I don’t feel her pain, her frustration, there’s not enough blood on my feet. CRY CRY CRY CRY CRY CRY KATRINA CRY CRY CRY CRY CRY CRY...............................

PLEASE KATRINA CRY, CRY, CRY!!!

That’s all you need to do.