Pandora's box

I'm sure most people know what Pandora's box is or (like me) at least understand the basic story behind it.  My understanding of it is that Pandora was given a box by the gods which she wasn't supposed to open, but she did.  Once opened, evil escaped and could never be retrieved.  Well, the other day, I opened something that has unleashed unpleasantness, not into the whole world, but into my own mind.  I remember hallucinating - seeing things - when I was in hospital number 2 and then discovering that an image of what I had seen was already in my notebook.  To this day I have no recollection of drawing this image and can remember that on the night it happened I opened my notebook and gasped in shock that what I had seen was already down on paper.

Anyway, for some unknown reason, I was thinking about the drawing the other day and stupidly decided to look at it.  I wrote in 5 notebooks, filling 4, in the 17 months I was in hospital from Sept 09 - March 11.  I knew exactly where they were and knew that the image would be in the first book.  I hadn't opened any of the notebooks since my discharge last year so although I knew that the notebook would bring back unpleasant memories, I didn't realise how many memories my mind had blanked out.

Opening the notebook was like Pandora opening her box.  Once I had found the picture, I kept on looking through the pages, reading some of the things I had written, looking at the pictures I had drawn.  In some places my handwriting was unrecognisable, if it's possible, you could see the stress of what I was going through in my handwriting.  The thing that stressed me out the most was not the memories the writings and drawings brought back, but the memories they didn't bring back.

Although my daughter is not real, the memory I have of her is the most precious thing I have in life.  She would have been six next month and the time around her birthday has been the hardest thing I have had to put up with these last few years.  So when I saw that I had written the name 'Sara' in red ink over the places I had written Lizzie-Lu's name in black ink, I actually was quite angry.  The 'Sara' in red ink was in my handwriting so I knew no-one had tampered with my notebook, but I have no idea as to why I did it.  The name 'Sara' has no meaning to me whatsoever and brings back no memories as to why I wrote it.  Lizzie-Lu is the most precious thing to me in the world and even in the throes of 'psychosis', she has always been the most precious thing to me.  So why did I deface her name in my notebooks?

I almost want to re-open Pandora's box and have another look at the notebook, and maybe even the second notebook in the 'series'.  But I know that enough evil has escaped back into my mind and I don't want to make things worse.