The Thunderstorm Within
Throughout my life I have suffered intrusive thoughts and a
dirty-blame feeling which I explained to a troubled childhood of warring
parents and Dad’s mental illness. Countless creative pursuits and projects formed
a diversion including painting, and particularly novel writing. A secret
fantasy world had been a consistent force throughout my life and it felt like
an alternative reality.
For decades, a childhood familiar whom I called Aidan haunted
my imaginings. I created different versions of him, gave him various names,
drew his face, imagined his life story and wrote psychological thrillers around
him. I wrote my first ‘serious’ novel on reaching 18.
This first novel, The Lessons (initially called The Upstairs Room)
had taken 30 years to write. Only my twin Eve knew about my secret novel.
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| Notes on literary agents in my 1985 diary |
When motherhood beckoned, I put The Lessons aside. But soon after the birth of my second child, I
would start writing again. The Locked
Door, closely followed by my
third and forth novels, North Window
and Nadia. A
burning imperative kept me writing and I didn’t understand where it came from.
As I sat on the rocks on Colwyn Bay’s, I reflected
upon my terror feeling as I had launched myself at the sea. That’s when I
noticed patterns in my so-called ‘novels’.
The following is an abridged excerpt from my book Mirror Image Shattered which explains.
“I kept thinking about that eerie sensation of an
inner-ghost of myself running into the sea. It had been an
old feeling, leaving a bodily imprint. I instantly knew where it came.
I had been whimpering, ‘No, Mummy! No Mummy!’ as my four-year-old self had raced up the
garden path. I had been
short then, fresh out of toddlerhood.
Only circumstances similar to that experience could have unearthed the
memory.
A rare sort of terror.
Running north.
The sun on my back.
And the time of year, being August.
The day my identical twin, Eve had her awful accident."
The accident itself wasn’t the reason for my shock for we all knew about it. The shock came when I realized how utterly horrific the trauma had been. How could my mind squash the entire episode into such a small space to be forgotten in decades gone by?
The accident itself wasn’t the reason for my shock for we all knew about it. The shock came when I realized how utterly horrific the trauma had been. How could my mind squash the entire episode into such a small space to be forgotten in decades gone by?
These recurrent elements would take the form of broken glass, disfigured faces, characters fleeing north to a hideout, blood, deep shame and more.
The next part of my account describes what happened
when my identical twin Eve got her injury and how this formed the bridge into
an earlier more horrific past – my toddlerhood.
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