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Christina Golian's avatar

When the world came to a halt. When a space opened up in our days, full of time for thinking. I found myself falling.

I’d wished for the power of teleportation. Now that I had it, I’d give it back in a flash. What’s the point, when you don’t get to choose the destination? When the people you travel to are the ones you’ve tried so hard to leave behind.

Instead, I was ripped through time. Back to places I’d spent years pushing down. To the parts of my mind where the light doesn’t reach. To words like vinegar and smells that leave a cast. To being skinned and cut open. Twisted and pulled. By the tongue of the person who once was everything.

Falling through time and place. Landing, disorientated and bruised. My body bristling from the knowing of what was going to happen.

I needed to break free. And I needed help to do it. I needed to devour the words of other women. I needed someone to lead me safely back to these places, to explore them and see things anew. To travel new pathways. I needed to rewrite my story.

Somehow, I knew all this. The same instinct that got me out, guiding me now.

What I didn’t know is that…

I would be travelling again. Through place and time. There would be an eagle, gloriously soaring. And colour. So much colour. That memories would come seeping back through. Tiny, wonderful moments. Unlocked and unravelling. Wrapping me in their warmth.

I called it my year of freedom. It was an ending and also a beginning. In the great Sat Nav of life, I get to choose the destination.

Sometimes, I still find myself falling. But I know I can pull myself out now.

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Tracey Mayor's avatar

This piece has been quite a challenge in that I wasn't sure how to present it for the best. As I relived the moments, the memory, the words came tumbling out with such a force that I felt I needed to leave the words on the page as they fell. However, it didn't feel quite right like that and I have played around with the presentation of it but time speaks the loudest so I have to say here it is, though I feel it isn't quite there yet.

I am here now, immeasurably far from there

and I am enough.

They are there still there and they are

watching.

Waiting.

I will walk to the edge but I won’t go any further I just won’t.

I just won’t and I know it and not only that I feel it with every bone in my body.

It envelopes me in the here and now and permeates time and space reaching those that were and those that will be...

This healing force that knows no bounds.

It is this strength this knowing this visceral certainty that grounds me and simultaneously surges me onwards...

Onwards to that edge to that space so close so very close yet so far so wonderfully far from all that was...

All that I was.

So far from where they stood indeed are standing now.

Watching.

Waiting.

They who are still there, there where I was, where all that held me for so long for too long, was.

But no more no more am I bound to that for I have transcended time and space and despite the mammoth effort the inordinate passage of time I am enlivened by it invigorated and energised by it and overflowing with it as it courses intensely through my very being.

So I stand and I look and I see and we speak and attempt to move forward together yet not for I am here now, immeasurably far from there

and I am enough.

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