Sideways

In the first few weeks after the birth of Georgina and Jessica, I felt as if I were walking next to myself. As though some mighty hand had come down and ripped the pith out of me, taken away that essential, central part that is, somehow, me and carefully decanted it, collapsed and shivering, about two feet to the side of where my physical body, fleshy me, was standing.

As though the two parts of me, my body and . . .ack . . . my mind? my soul? my brain? . . . could no longer bear direct contact with one another but preferred to be estranged, kind of hanging around in the immediate vicinity but not on speaking terms.

I suppose that this was shock. This sly conspiracy between my mind and my body who had somehow, between themselves, decided that this situation was simply far too painful and they were going to try their damnedest to absent themselves from it. I could almost catch sideways glimpses of myself without the aid of a mirror. Or, at least, of someone who looked like me, peering into incubators, holding conversations, sobbing in a heap on the floor, buying groceries. But I often felt as though I was slightly to the side of, or slightly above, the frame of action.

I had quite a few disturbances of physical sensation in the months after the girls were born. Fluid pooled in my ankles and feet, giving me the sensation of an extra pair of feet flopping about on top of my real feet. Water felt somehow wrong, too thin, too insubstantial. I'd wash my hands or put my foot in the bath and recoil in surprise. My body felt, by turns, too large and rounded and as thin and insubstantial as a mist. I developed restless legs and kept my husband awake at night with endless twitchings of my feet.

I did return to 'myself' eventually but that strange, disconnected state has never entirely vanished.


Only one person, outside of the family and a couple of work colleagues, saw Jessica in intensive care. I didn't really want anyone to see her, some sort of misguided protective maternal instinct I suppose. Or perhaps I thought, if nobody saw her, it wouldn't really have happened.

One friend came to the hospital. I was so glad to see her. She bought Jessica a present, a tiny, tiny dress labelled up to 2lbs on its size label. She gave me a 'congratulations, it's a girl' card. Just a flicker of normality in a world that had been turned on its end. I was so very grateful for that.

She told me something that I clung on to for months. Her husband was diagnosed with cancer when we were in our early twenties and underwent months of chemotherapy. She told me, during that time, she felt as though she had stepped sideways. As though she were moving in parallel to everyday life, just slightly outside the boundaries. She could still see her 'old' life, her job, worries about paying the bills, getting hair cuts, watching television programmes, fixing meals. But it was translucent or like so much dust. She was in a strange, new place where nobody could really follow her.

But she also told me that, one day, I would take the step back towards my old life. I'm still hopeful that I might because it's lonely here, in this sideways place, where I wage a futile battle against things that were decided a very long time ago. Where that old life and its concerns seem so very, very strange. Sickeningly so.

I tried to step back again.
But I can't remember which direction I took my initial sideways step in.
And I seem to have misplaced my feet.