Miss Toulouse says goodbye to Harry ....

1973

Have you ever felt so lost?
It's like you're caught in the eye of the storm, you can see the world crashing around you but your stuck there in the middle, not knowing what to do.

As I wandered outside the hospital after discharging myself, my blood soaked nightie in a bag dangling from my wrist and grandmothers walking stick, I'm wearing clothes given to me from the hospital lost property, that are ridiculously oversized and smell of vomit

I left before my mother came, it's not that I didn't want to see her. I just know if I see her heartbroken face, I know I'll fall to pieces again. I'm barely holding on to my sanity.

So I wander home in an hypnotic state, just an empty shell of a person, unaware of life that's passing me by.

As I reach my modest little house that I so desperately tried to make a home, I realise I never really belonged here. It suddenly dawns on me I don't have the front door key, I have nothing - before I can work out how I'm going to get in, the door is swung open by Harry who's looming there like a bad smell.

His face is grey and haggard, eyes sunk with black bags, his usual cocky demeanour and smug face has gone - He starts to nervously waffle on "the hospital had said you was gone" but I walk straight past him as if he was nothing more than a tiresome ghost that insists on haunting me.

You see to me he is dead now, any love that I felt for him died with our child and he knows it.

As I walk in I see that the passage floor still has faded red stains of my blood ingrained into the wooden floor, he clearly tried to scrub it away like one of his many messes but some things in life you can't clean up, scrub away like it never happened.

Slowly I walk up the stairs grasping on to the banister, each step excruciating agony, my broken insides pulling and churning within me.

I go to my bedroom and pull out the tiny travel bag from under the bed, I take my clothes and place them in there, with my books from the sideboard, then I roll up my wedding quilt made by my grandmother and mother - I think to myself "Harry you can have the house, you can have the furniture, I won't even take a penny of OUR money but your not having my quilt".

This quilt was lovingly stitched for me, on this quilt I would lay and talk to my baby as it grew in my belly, this quilt kept me warm in a cold marriage - you can't have it.

Unbeknown to me he was standing there silently like a poisonous snake by the bedroom door watching, waiting to strike.

"Where do you think your going?" he hisses.

I carry on packing, blocking out his noise.

"I won't let you leave!" he screams, before he punches the bedroom door in an act that once upon a time would have scared me.

I don't bat eye lid at his outburst, this is all so tiresome now.

Desperation leaks into his voice as it become shrill, in the knowledge he's lost all control over me "If you leave...."

I grab my grandmother's walking stick and whip him across the face with all my might, the cracking sound of it against his flesh echoes throughout the room, then I push it into his chest where his heart should be "You'll do what Harry, beat me, hurt me, degrade me, kill me ..... it doesn't matter, none of it does, you've already done the worst thing you could do - you can't hurt me, I'm not scared of you anymore because I'd rather be dead than have to spend another moment with you, disgusting, fucking pathetic excuse of a man, that makes my skin crawl".

I push the stick hard into his chest as a warning shot, I will not take your shit lying down anymore. If you hit me, I will hit you back, you come for me, I will come back at you twice as hard.

He steps back a few steps, hands in the air as if surrendering, head down with the humiliation. I lower the stick but keep my grasp tight.

"But I'm your husband ... you can't leave me" he mumbles unable to meet my gaze.

"Not anymore Harry, you're not my problem anymore".

"Please... don't go" deceitful tears roll down his face as they have many times before, this is his last ditch attempt to trap me here with him.

But where his ploy would usually fill my heart with sympathy and make my heart melt into forgiveness - it enrages it, how dare he cry, how dare he pretend his heart is broken.

"STOP" I scream so loud that the bedroom windows crack and shatter as glass covers his quivering weaselling body, hatred and heartbreak burns at my throat like hot coal, I slam the stick to the ground and electricity travels up from the ground as if channeled from the very core of the earth up into my arm and alights my body like a match to a candle. The room shakes as if a tornado had gathered us up and carried us away. He clings desperately to the door frame but I stand firmly rooted. Furniture violently overturns, pictures fall of the wall, the walls vibrate as if my heartbreak had poured into the bricks and mortar and was tearing our house apart with us in it; I will happily kill us both.

"Enough now" her voice firm stops my rage in its tracks.

There stood behind my cowering husband is my grandmother and mother.

"That'll do now, it's time to take you home, it's time for me to explain everything" her hand outstretched, reaching to bring me back to reality. I take her hand and together, her hand over mine we slam the stick down and stop the madness I have created, that has engulfed me and Harry.

With the bang of the stick, the world resumed as if none of what I'd just done had ever occurred. Everything in its place as it was before.

Mother picked up my bag, grandmother took me by the arm to lead me to safety, away from the hurt and pain that had been absorbed in to this house, from years of abuse, like mould it had spread to every room, poisoning every breath you take.

As we walk past Harry who crumpled on the ground like a used discarded tissue, he shouts at us "She's my wife!"

Grandmother stops and laughs as if the very thought was incomprehensible "Her name is not wife, you can not own her, she's not something to possess, she's Miss Toulouse - you will address her so little man or the next time she crosses your path and I pray for your safety she doesn't, I won't stop her from killing you".

She turns and winks at me, her silent secretive way of saying "it'll all be ok".

As we walk out this house that's no longer a home, leaving this cruel life forever, a poem my grandmother use to read to me when I was a little girl dances around my mind......

From the beginning of time there has been a curse upon every woman's head.
She is created from birth to simply be wed, breed and then dead.

Their value on this earth was counted by their beauty and their ability to produce a male heir.
Intelligence, strength and resilience were attributes, that were never compared.

You see the hand women were dealt were stacked against their sex, from crib to grave.
But in darkness and from injustice, out from the shadows did emerge bold and the brave.

Women with the ability to learn and harness their inner power, as the years passed by they blossomed like flowers.

They wished to learn, to be part of life, not merely a spectator.
This threatened many peoples ideas, so they deemed them traitors.

They were slandered, cruelly punished and called the devils whores.
Blamed for deaths of livestock, children and many more.

Burnt at the stake, tortured or plunged into a murky abyss.
Mothers, daughters, sisters knocked down by society clenched fist.

They were but women who had educated themselves, herbalists and midwife's and other such things.
They believed they could be more than just a wife with a ring.

Always stand by your strong willed sister as she battles through life.
Do not make the mistakes of the past and turn a blind eye.