the cliché

[Sage d'Eath]

(Posted Image)

Got a secret, can you keep it?
Swear this one you'll save. Better lock it in your pocket,
Taking this one to the grave. If I show you, I know you won't tell what I said.
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
'Cause two can keep a secret if one of them is dead.

---

[Sage d'Eath]

August 6th, 2022

Dear Dear Diary, Please Keep My Secrets

Today, my brothers let me in on a little secret. When you have eternity to live, you tend to forget things.

All sorts of things.

Your human memories are little bits of chemical reactions up for grabs and when you have forever to forget them, you will. They told me to start this journal as a means of recording all my human memories as well as my new experiences, so I might not forget.

Honestly, there are very few moments of my life I wish to preserve. The day my mother died is one of them. And it is, as of right now, the clearest, crispest image in my brain.

The week leading up to the birth of my brother was the last real conversation I had with my mother and I think it was predominately because what she said really infuriated me. I was ten and she was well enough for the first time in weeks to be up and moving. She’d made a comment about my hair looking less than ladylike and then she made me sit down at her vanity so she could comb it out properly. As she ran the auburn strands, just a few shades darker than her own, through her hands, I was positively sour. Though I know now that she didn’t mean to, she was pulling on my hair and it really hurt.

It was then that she told me I’d have to start taking responsibility for myself, start making an effort to be more ladylike. I’d have to stop playing in the dirt and ruining my new dresses all the time. Eventually when I went looking for a spouse of standing, I’d never get far if I didn’t learn to hold my tongue.

She told me that it was a man’s world and I was merely decoration. I don’t remember being as angry at her as I was at that moment. I snatched the brush away from her and stood up in a fury, my chest heaving up and down. I was so..angry at her. So mad. Why was she so weak? I looked up at her in her nightgown, her long hair hanging loose around her shoulders and I thought she was pathetic. So I ran from her.

Later in the week, I tried to cuddle up to her, to apologize. I didn’t hate my mother. I hated my father for convincing her that she had no worth. For making her into a weak little thing. But mother was very sick and the baby was giving her trouble. I was not permitted to sleep in her room that week.

And then she went into labor. It was such a terrible experience, and I confess, it has certainly turned me off of childbirth. Who would want to give birth? The thing was killing my mother. I could hear her screams all the way down the hall, though I wasn’t permitted to go and help her. When the nurse came out of her room, she was carrying sheets soak with my mother’s blood. Call me crazy, but I don’t think one is suppose to shed that much blood. There was more screaming. My father sat outside the room on a chair, looking distraught. I almost came to him once, but decided against it.

And then when the news came that she had died, that she had lost too much blood, I was furious. The baby had died too. That night, after they changed the sheets, I slept in my mother’s bed alone and I cried myself to sleep, hating my father for allowing her to go through such a difficult pregnancy. For allowing her to die in such a terrible way.

But I will never hate my father as much as I did the next morning, when I woke to my Aunt Victoria standing over me, shaking me awake. She told me to gather my things, that I was coming to stay with her in London for a bit, but when I looked up and saw the expression on my father’s face, I knew I wasn’t going for a visit. I knew I wasn’t coming back. I refused to pack my things and he yelled at me. He told me to obey Victoria. Oh he’d never yelled at me that way. I threw myself out of the bed and stood there in my nightgown, yelling at him. His ten year old daughter yelling at him. He told me to go with Victoria now or he would send me to America. My lip quivered. America? How dare he threaten to send me to such a vile place.

I grabbed the things that were closest to me, crying as I ransacked my room. Half of the things I threw onto the floor were out of anger rather than need. I broke so many things that day. My music box that sat on top of my dresser was the first to go. It came down onto the floor with a crash and the little ballerina sputtered off the spring and rolled under my bed. Victoria was crying now as she tried to pick through my clothes. She was crying and I was upsetting her. Fuck Victoria. I screamed and threw a tantrum like a child. I was a child. Like a three year old child. She begged me to be quiet and go with her, that it would all be all right. But I wasn’t going to go quietly. I wanted him to be miserable. I wanted him to see what he’d done to her and to me. So I screamed and continued to throw things.

Victoria dragged me from the manor, kicking and screaming the entire way. I told him I hated him as I went. I told him that I hoped he burned in hell, that he’d killed her and he might as well have killed me too. I screamed every miserable thought my ten year old mind could conjure up. My English was broken, so I screamed in Gaelic. I screamed all the nasty French words I’d ever been taught. I cursed him in three different languages just so he would comprehend how much I hated him.

S.weet d'Eath