Plinky prompt: Start the first chapter of your memoir. Welcome to: "Somewhere in between: a memoir".

“It’s not going happen.” These were the only words I heard, nothing that was said before them and nothing that was said after them. The room was spinning and I wasn’t quite sure if it was from the copious amounts of gin I had been drinking or the words that had just fallen out of his mouth. I stood there like someone had just slapped me so hard my face had turned numb. He walked away and I looked down at the cigarette I was holding in my hand and I felt as though I had stepped outside of my physical body. I was watching myself; watching the cigarette in my hand and then I was watching myself as I stuck the glowing red ember onto the underside of my forearm. I watched myself take it away ever so slowly. There was no flinching. No screaming “shit that hurt”, there was nothing but silence. I knew the music inside the club was pumping, I could feel the vibrations running through my body, but there was no sound. All was silent as I watched myself lower the cigarette back upon the white flesh.

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia 2001. I was there with my girlfriend; we had flown there for the soul purpose of meeting a man from my Melbourne office with whom I had developed a relationship with. We used to speak everyday and over the years we had developed a friendship, which then progressed to something more, but we had never seen each other. We had never met the person on the other end of the phone. As soon as I saw him it was set in my mind that he was the one for me. He was everything and more than I had expected and as he bent down to get out of the red BMW I knew I was in love. I knew that this time I’d found the right man. This man had spent hours over the years getting to know me, he had become an expert at peeling away all those hard and tough surface layers of myself that concealed everything that was soft and vulnerable underneath and he was the only person I had allowed into the dark moments of my world. He was let into the moments where I would delve into the abyss of uncertainty where the sadness would engulf every inch of my mind, my soul and my body and he still wanted to know more. He saw all the broken and torn parts and saw them as endearing, he saw them as something that made me unique and alluring and compelling. Everything fit he had once said, everything about me was perfect and he used to call me his princess and the only thing left to be revealed was the way I looked and now, here I was and he was certain that I was not the girl for him. This man, the same man who had had called me his princess thought I was ugly. He thought I was fat. That same person, who had allowed me to place my heart in his open palm thought I was so grotesque that my personality just would not or could not overcome the fact that I was hideously fat and ugly and all I wanted to do was to find that part of myself and rip it out of my body. I wanted to find that darkness, that part of me that was so grotesque and I wanted to kill it.

I don’t remember leaving or how we got back to our hotel. I don’t remember sleeping nor do I remember how many times I stuck a cigarette out on my arm or how many times I dragged the blade of my Swiss army knife across my arm. I just remember feeling numb. My eyes transfixed on the shiny silver blade as it severed the milky white flesh of my arm revealing the rich, velvety blood. It would emerge from the wound, bursting in small bubbles upon the white flesh like a sunrise. I was mesmerised by the contrast of such rich maroon hue against the snow white of my skin. I felt as though my life had stopped and that I was no longer living and no longer a part of anything real. Instead I felt I was standing watching someone else sitting there dragging a knife across her arm and spelling out his initials over and over and getting frustrated because the blood kept blurring the jagged edges of the initials. I watched the tears sliding down her face, but I couldn’t feel them. I couldn’t taste them, they were just there. All was silent. All was calm inside my mind, this was the clearest my mind had ever been. Everything else had dropped away and I knew that I had found my addiction, my escape, my punishment for never being good enough.

That was how the self harming began. I was twenty two years old.

Plinky Prompt - "What is your weirdest pet peeve?"

Boats on the harbour

Unannounced visitors. I really do not like unannounced, uninvited visitors; even if it is my family. My home is my castle, and in my castle I like to myself. Sometimes I like to sloth around in my pjs until lunch time. When I choose to be at home, I like to be there alone. It is quiet and peaceful and safe. I like to sit out on my balcony and watch the boats sail across middle head. I like things to be still.

My family know about my little pet peeve. They also know they are not allowed to just "pop in". They know they will have to call me, and that sometimes I will say "no, I don't want visitors" and they have to accept that. I don't know why it bothers me so much, but it does. If I am at home and someone knocks on my door and I am not expecting anyone, I won't answer it... even the elderly lady from downstairs knows I won't answer, so she calls out to me through the door; just so I know it is only her.

I would like to have my childhood back. I would like to go back and do it all again knowing what it is I know now about my past. I would like to go back to that moment in time, where everything changed, and instead of keeping silent for 22 years, I would have said something.

I often wonder how differently I would have been had I have spoken up at the age of four, rather than burying the event deep down inside myself to a point where I "forgot". I wonder if I would have struggled with self esteem, obesity and depression. I wonder how differently my life would have turned out, if only I had said something.

So if I could have something I lost back, it would be my childhood. Not to have changed the events that transpired (although I wish I could) but instead to have been strong enough to have found the voice to say what had happened to me.