MEMBERS ONLY

Here is a girl in her favourite dress. It is a hot summer in 1975 and this girl is three and a half years old. Last week this little girl was honoured by her bigger, older, greater and wiser self as she did something she should have done years ago. Shortly after this photograph was taken, her life changed irrevocably for ever. Somebody hurt her. This little girl has carried this hurt around with her for years and years like an old bag of rocks she could not put down. The rocks have fallen out of the bag several times; when she had her first relationship, when she went to bed with a man for the first time, but sometimes for no reason at all other than the scent of freshly mown hay on a hot summer day. She has tried her hardest to keep the rocks in the bag. When the girl was 15 she took her first drink and that seemed to help for a while. But she found that she needed more and more drinks to keep the rocks in the bag. Eventually, she realised that she couldn’t carry on as she was and she stopped drinking. And that set in motion other stops. She stopped the running and finally laid down the bag that was so heavy there were permanent welts on the palms of her hands from carrying it all those years. Last week she made an official statement to the Gardaí (the Irish police force) about what had happened. It took three hours. Now she feels angry and red rage threatens to take her over and blot out everything she has achieved this far. She really doesn’t know what to do with the rage, except to acknowledge it, feel it, talk about it, write about it but none of it seems to be helping. She knows she’s at risk this week;  at risk of losing the hard-won sobriety she has fought tooth and nail for.