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NORTH WEST WORDS<br />
SPRING / SUMMER <strong>2018</strong> ISSUE 9<br />
I lay back in my creaky single bed with a cheap geometric Ikea duvet set. With love from Sweden.<br />
No effort spared in making the place cheerful. I play that game my therapist suggested to help me<br />
go to sleep. Name an animal <strong>and</strong> then follow it with the last letter of that animal. Tiger. Rabbit.<br />
Tadpole. Emu. Shit. U have got to be joking. Sighing I inevitably fall in to my never-ending narrative<br />
of the events of that night. Every time I play it over it becomes more <strong>and</strong> more excruciating.<br />
I reach for my suitcase <strong>and</strong> find my emergency contrab<strong>and</strong> joints rolled up in a pair of socks. I creak<br />
the wooden window open <strong>and</strong> sit on the edge, ignoring the wooden splinters digging into the bare<br />
skin of my thighs. As I inhale I enjoy the tingle it starts sending all over my body, <strong>and</strong> exhaling I feel<br />
the familiar sensation of numbing out. I don’t think this is what my therapist had in mind when she<br />
gave me those bullshit mindfulness breathing exercises to do. I sink into a stoned oblivion as I look<br />
out onto the Burren limestone wilderness outside.<br />
The moon is a half crescent <strong>and</strong> it is a clear night. The light is reflected onto the ground <strong>and</strong> it kind<br />
of sparkles <strong>and</strong> twinkles. A memory flashed. My 11-year-old self, watching a National Geographic<br />
documentary with my Father.<br />
‘Did you know that there are as many moons in the universe as there are grains of s<strong>and</strong> in the<br />
world.’ The grey haired mustached presenter had said earnestly into the camera, surrounded by a<br />
backdrop of an ever-moving galaxy.<br />
Cue my first existential crisis <strong>and</strong> hysterical crying. Realizing how infinitely small <strong>and</strong> unimportant I<br />
was. Dad’s reassurance that I was important to him <strong>and</strong> that I was his special moon. Every birthday<br />
card he wrote that he loved me to the moon <strong>and</strong> back. It was our little in-joke.<br />
I knew I was at Redemption House as a favor. My mother had called in a personal favor to a old<br />
college friend of hers who knew somebody. It used to be a convent for nuns, <strong>and</strong> over the years had<br />
been repurposed to a temporary home for young women in distress. With the diminishment of<br />
nuns it had been renamed Redemption house in the 70’s <strong>and</strong> established to support a growing<br />
number of Irish women needed shelter <strong>and</strong> support.<br />
An ancient framed picture of the Virgin Mary hangs directly opposite my bed. She’s flaking <strong>and</strong><br />
dusting <strong>and</strong> peeling. I fall into a groggy stupor <strong>and</strong> my mind casts to previous occupants of this<br />
room. Women forced to give up their unborn for adoption in the States as they were unmarried.<br />
Girls barely old enough to menstruate nursing their swollen bellies. And before that, nuns sacrificing<br />
their lives to a bigger purpose, bigger than what they knew anyways. Maybe they had the right idea.<br />
Would have saved me a lot of bother.<br />
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