I, Gabrielle Marie, was born on Saint Patricks Day 1976. Only just. I made it out, forceps assisted, at 11.47pm, after a 24 hour labour.
Eeeeew, Muuuum, shut up!!! No one wants to think about that! Coming down that slippery dip – was not exactly a day at the park.
I am not here anymore so I need my Mum to tell my story. Some of what she says will really annoy me and some of it will be okay, good even. She is not as sharp as me, in both tongue and wit. But she will have a go – she did teach me from a young age after all. As I often used to say the apple does not fall far from the tree.
Mum will be right most the time. My main elements, body and mind, are gone and only memories remain. More rightly, her memories of me. She doesn’t have me there anymore to work with her. We always helped each other out. But she will do her best.
Although, don’t get me wrong, she could most definitely be an absolute cow, and miss the whole entire point of something.
And also I reserve the right to disagree with everything she says, if I ever find a way back, I will set the record straight. But until then she is going to step up for me now. Cause I can’t. Sorry Mumma.
She was also the best mum that I could have had. You will see. I said that to her many times, and to others, even though I couldn’t at the end. There is documented proof. Writing, letters, scribbles, drawings, that show the truth of me, because I never threw anything out much.
When Mumma was sorting out my stuff after I died, she found an envelope postmarked 1980. I was only four years old in 1980, so why on earth would I do that? I was a bit of a hanger-onerer, I guess. I don’t remember what it was exactly, but it must have meant something, sometime and because you could never be really sure, could you?
I did lose an awful lot of stuff along the way, not intentionally of course, but life is/was one hell of a thing to keep track of, wasn’t it? Not my fault, I wasn’t born in a tent but I did live in one, or at least, under a tarpaulin for a lot of my childhood.
Things weren’t the most important to me, after all. A means to an end, but it was certainly nice to have beautiful things and I liked collecting them. I had an eye for colour and form, but never knew where to put for best effect? I saw beauty very easily but not in the places where most others found it.
My friends know me differently to Mum. There are lots of things Mum doesn’t know about. They do. Perhaps less than some of the friends think. Perhaps more than Mum thinks, but I told Mum a lot. Just not about the most shameful bits. Oh yeah, sometimes about the very shameful, don’t like to remember that either. Yuck.
I died. I killed myself. I hung myself with a dog lead in the back yard. It wasn’t the first time I tried.
And as hard as it is to say that it was my choice, but it was not a free choice. Not by a long shot. I regret it.
I tried to tell Mumma that I made a mistake, I needed her to know that this was a mistake. An accident because of the damn booze. Remember Mumma? I always said that alcohol is the root of all evil. In my case it was true in an absolute sense.
Three weeks before I died I tried to hang myself inside the house, but I got myself back before it went too far. It really hurt and I realized I didn’t want to die. I was so drunk, I could not get my fingers to work properly and I struggled to undo the lead. I nearly didn’t make it, but realized I had to tell Mum about it.
I asked for her help. She cried. Like always. I said things like ‘Wow I am so glad that I was unsuccessful. That would have been so terrible if I had gone through with it. What a stupid thing to do. Imagine if my friends felt like it was their fault because of all the crap they have been going through! That would have been wrong and oh so bad. Oh my! what a close call. I don’t want to die Mumma. It really hurt. I am sorry. I don’t want to hurt you like this. But I knew you would want to know.’
Mum said ‘Of course it hurt. We don’t die very easily. It takes a lot to kill someone.’
Too blazè? In hindsight, most definitely. Mumma’s approach was practical, very cause and effect. She didn’t want to showed how scared she was. Mumma thought ‘Oh good, now that cat is out of the bag we can deal with it. Kind of like reaching rock bottom. You have to get there and then the only way is up isn’t it?’
No. It wasn’t. She didn’t realize that I could actually succeed in doing it. It.
So now I am really counting on Mum to understand me fully. Please know that Mumma – I am trusting you to tell everyone. Always remember what I said when I got my marbles back after that last time? I don’t want to die.
Despair had me gripped. I tried. I am in so much trouble now. This is as much trouble as I have ever been in and I am not going to get out of it very easily. Well actually never. I blew it completely. Knowing what I have done is as unbearable to me as anyone. I would not cope being there to know this about myself. Strange.
I tell my mumma do not hurry to be here with me.
Save yourself mum. Because alive is the best way to be.
You will be here soon and it really isn’t that great. I can’t do what I used to do. I didn’t think it would be like this. I thought I just wouldn’t exist any more, and now my mother has made me live on in her dumb blog. And I don’t even get to tell her to when she is wrong!!!
When I was born they placed me on my mother’s belly – a human cradle between rib and hip, where I had lived the forever till then, only now I was on the outside.
I lay together in pained exhaustion, with her.
Blessings rained golden an indelible imprint. Radiant, effervescent, joy of being alive. I made it.
Mum waited excruciatingly for them to make the announcement – but as no-one bothered, or noticed that this needed to happen – she eventually asked,
“It’s a girl isn’t it?” “Is everything ok?”
Really wishing she didn’t have to ask, as normally, surely, any new mother would be told that? Well that’s what happens in the movies, isn’t it?
You told the mother something about what she had just given birth to? In case it was kittens, or had missing fingers, toes, someone else’s baby popped out by mistake perhaps?
My Dad was not there. He denied paternity. A failure of the male that seemed just entirely ordinary to Mum at the time. Something you just had to work within. Well it’s not his fault she reasoned, he could have been charged you know. Multiple counts as I understand. No one wants the police involved. Things are bad enough.
I was lifted from my mum’s stomach cradle within minutes, and then what happened in the first three days of my life is to say the least – a blur.
I lived in the long-windowed room with all the other babies lined up in clear plastic cradles in a row facing the visitors. I was one of two un-named babies at the back of that room, not for public viewing.
For three days Mum asked to see me and was told to wait for the social worker. I think they were hoping Mum would forget about me or change her mind. They were short on babies to adopt out as the contraceptive pill had been introduced, but IVF was not yet available. There was a big baby demand for families who couldn’t have children, to get themselves babies from the unfortunates like my mum.
Mum found it hard to fight for herself, or for me. Not her fault. She just waited and waited and asked, but waited. Overly compliant to the bustling over-bearing hospital – a system that inflicted immeasurable damage on girls, for all the righteous reasons.
But Jesus … I was not going to take this. It was pretty clear to me someone had to step up and take charge.
My mother was a little girl.
I didn’t know that at the time or through any other part of my growing up, really.
She called me Gabrielle – valiantly seeking the best possible – the arch angel. Female version of. The top-ranked, most powerful in a Catholic array to look out for us both. It was her teen, whimsical way of guaranteeing our protection.
I met her, desperately eventually. As soon as she got her hands on me she said “I am keeping my baby”.
And I went home with her to the loving, raucous household to commence my life.
Chaos ensued.
.