I have yet to understand the source of the sheer terror I seem to have always had for thunderstorms. I have no problem dealing with lightning. In fact, I find it indescribably romantic and breathtakingly beautiful to watch lightning storms from out in the garden at night.
I’ve always been terrified of thunder. And it’s always been thunder alone. Never rain, or lighting, although the combination of all three is indeed frightening enough to have me trembling, crying and terribly panic-stricken.
In retrospect, it was via this terrifying natural occurrence that I began to trust Michael with my life.
When I was first taken in to his home, the state I was in is something I can only vaguely recall. I had no real will of my own-- no real ego. The idea of doing something for myself, or doing something out of selfishness, was a concept I did not fully grasp. Yet I know I did have a sense of self, and a sense of not necessarily selfishness, but self-preservation. Perhaps not fully accessible to me given my drugged up state, but a sense of self-preservation none the less.
Had I not, surely I would not have taken the initiative to plot out my ‘escape’, and not have ended up at the hospital that fateful day.
Regardless, when Michael first took me in, I was suspicious only by instinct. I was quiet, reserved, and didn’t know what to do with myself or how. I knew I disliked my previous situation, though not necessarily why, except for the fact that it’d become a threat to my life and so something had to be done about it.
Michael had a completely blank canvas to work with, and indeed shaped me into whatever it was he wanted me to be. Though in theory, I should resent him for this, I don’t. He did not keep me ignorant and repressed, and was in fact, the one who encouraged and supported my journey through ‘self-discovery’.
My tastes are his own, not because he forced them on me, but because I chose them to be so myself. I was encouraged to test out different options, and choose whichever I personally fancied the most. I do admit, however, that I responded very strongly to his approval or disapproval of things; the hardwired message in everything I did being ‘What would please him most?”.
That frame of thinking has been hardwired into my mind for as long as I can remember. It’s not something he forced on me. Something of importance I feel the need to point out if the fact that when I first began to live with him, I did not feel compelled to do so. I didn’t feel compelled to do anything.
I felt no affection for him, no hate, no anything. I was absolutely indifferent. When I was kept locked in my room all I did was sit and wait for the door to be opened once again, and then sit doing absolutely nothing, unless instructed otherwise. I felt no boredom, no hint of that anxious feeling of ‘I should be doing something-- I should be productive’. I felt nothing.
I don’t recall feeling curiosity, eagerness, happiness, loneliness-- only irrational terror and agitation whenever night fell, or a sense of impending doom and claustrophobia during thunderstorms.
Michael didn’t know of my fear of thunderstorms for a while, until I terribly strong one that really had me wailing. The main thought that passes through my mind during thunderstorms is that impending sense of doom, at the time coupled with claustrophobia, because I was kept locked inside my room.
It was always the feeling of an inescapable threat-- a front attack to my basic instinct of survival-- ‘I’m going to die, and I need to get out, but I can’t get out, and even if I get out, I’m going to die’.
That night, Michael must have thought I’d gravely injured myself. I really did feel I was going to die, and when he rushed in to see what was wrong, I was curled up in a corner, sobbing hysterically and shaking uncontrollably.
He kept on asking what was wrong, and I didn’t know what to say. I frankly didn’t know why I was reacting this way. I suppose he deduced it was the thunder, provided every time it hit, I jumped, and my condition worsened.
He carried me, took me to his bed, but still nothing. I clung to him out of instinct, though the action did not seem to have much of an effect on me. He whispered in my ear, calmed me down, tried to soothe me. He kissed my forehead, my cheeks, and held me closed.
It wasn’t until he held me close and tightly against him, brushed his fingers through my hair, whispering in my ear, and scratched my scalp as though spoiling a pampered house cat, that my crying finally stopped, and I felt indescribably safe, in spite of the ceaseless threat of .
It was at that precise moment that I not only began to fully trust him, but that his presence in my life suddenly began to gain a degree of importance. He wasn’t just the Doctor who’d offered to ‘care’ for me; offered to give me a home. Even that I took with great indifference. He really could keep me safe-- he really did care.
From then on he became the clear focus of everything, that hardwired service-oriented nature taking full force, not in a ‘desperate’ need to please him, at least not yet, but in a mild compliance to do so.
I did not love him at that point. I don’t quite recall when it was I fell in love with him, but it must have been when I began to feel jealousy every time he brought some woman home. I recall not caring for some time, then realizing they were stealing him away from me, then feeling terribly wounded, and shifting my behavior from mild indifference to perpetual irritation and indignation because I could not be the focus of his attention the way he was of mine.
He needed someone else, because I was not enough, and so, in fear of his taking me for granted, I became cruel in a fundamentally indifferent and uncaring way. I wouldn’t provide him with the attention he craved from me, because he could always get it somewhere else.
I’ll admit I wasn’t happy during those days, and while I would have never admitted it to myself at the time because not only did I refused to fully resent him and blame him for my unhappiness, but I also was not aware there could be anything better. I do now because that span of time when we weren’t as happy as we could have been is over, and in light of recent events, I really could not possibly be happier than I am now with the way things are
My love, you mean the world to me, and I adore you.
You make me so indescribably happy I will never be able to show how thankful I am , and how much I love you.
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