You first showed up when I was ten.
I knew who you were but I didn’t want to know you.
I’d read about you in books. Forbidden books.  
How could I explain to my mother that I already knew your name?
I expected you later and I hated you already.

You provided me with the key to a secret club
A place of shame and disgrace.
I wasn’t allowed to talk about you.
A pact of silence between members

Mother said you might make me feel unwell
That was an understatement.
Iron spikes drove through my insides
Steel bars wrapped around me
Spears ****** down my legs.
All I knew was pain
A white-hot, blank-space hurt filling every crevice of my body.

Do you remember that time on the climbing frame with friends?  
I should have been a carefree child but I was dragging a heavy, aching body across the bars.
Or that time I collapsed at school
Head down on the desk, my body could give no more
The school nurse accusing me of faking it.  Telling me you weren’t that bad.  A good friend, really.

Or how about the time you showed up at work.
Made your presence known to everyone
It was described as careless destruction of corporate property
Leaving me humiliated, wages docked to pay for the chair you destroyed.
My inability to control you, a professional failure.
And the other club members offered no sympathy.

You were my constant companion of misery
I didn’t dare attend that party, go on that trip, take that promotion…
You were always waiting around a corner.
And so I withdrew
It became just you and I.  As you wanted.
Defeated. You had won.

Twenty-two years, I suffered in your grip
Twenty-two years of screaming into pillows; body and mind dissolving into agony
But I found a way back.
Suppressed you with chemicals.  I finally discovered me without you.
The person I was supposed to be.

Ten years I have lived without you
Ten years of rebuilding my life, relationships and career.  
I never realised how much control you had
Until that time that I was free.  I emerged.
From a sea of despair. Head now above the deep darkness
I can breathe.