Hysteria

in the dreams, the bad dreams, I relive that day, and the night before it. Scenes that still play out in my flashbacks fit together, sometimes with older images - sometimes the whole thing is set in one of those impossibly complex higgledy piggledy buildings that are the backdrops of so many of my dreams. The horrendous things that actually happened at the hospital happen to me again in the dreams. Again and again, Iain's there but saying nothing, not raising a hand, not stopping anyone, doing his bit to have a quiet life. I always have to think ahead, and remember everything I know about the hospital, the doctors, the NICE protocols, and I have to keep my wits about me, and let them - it's the surest way to keep Jaan safe, to get him out alive. Get him the best oxygen, the fastest route out, the least trauma. I was misunderstood, what a surprise. If those people could have heard a word I said as I meant it, would they really have done those things to me? Make me pay with pain, humiliation and anguish? Take away every part of me that was lovely and brave and strong and sacred.

this afternoon we had a meeting around the child at the Daisy. Three women sat across from us. Iain beside me, but away and a bit behind me, doing what he does. Being very quiet. Not a gesture, or a touch, or a word. And yet who can say he's not a gem of a husband, a real support, very understanding - I certainly can't say he is not all those things, of course he is.

The vigin the mother the crone? The three fates measuring and cutting my life out? Maybe, but if they were the three fates they were working as if they were doing a routine, a John Lewis haberdashery counter reflex action - done in seconds. They had my motherhood, the last vestiges of my Self cut and folded already. No matter what I said, they misunderstood and worked cod-psychology magic.

I'm always brave, I always do "really well" and try "really hard", do "a lot of work" ... and I did so today, like I did that day, the night before that day, and the nine months that preceded it. I didn't realise I still had a soul to sell to buy Jaan a bit more, a lot more in his life. Maybe my soul grew back?