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“When I die, put me out with the trash. I’ll be dead, so I won’t know any different. You’ll be crying your eyes out,” and he would laugh and I’d laugh too because we both knew that I wouldn’t be crying my eyes out. I never cry.
I didn’t kill him; it wasn’t like that.
They said I was autistic, even though my psychiatrist dad had told me I definitely wasn’t. I
The best dad was the dad on Little House on the Prairie. And he was handsome.
Lol good ole Charles Ingalls
I think the villagers see a forty-two-year-old “deaf” woman walking in and out of the village and occasionally driving an ancient Fiat. They must assume I can’t work because of the deafness and that’s why I get benefits. I get benefits because Dad said I am socially deficient.
Thomas Diamond wasn’t my real dad. I was nine years old when he first told me. I didn’t even know what my real name was, but he and my mum, who was also not my mum, told me that they had found me in a forest when I was a baby.
one time when I was fourteen and an old man tried to force his mouth onto mine and crept his hand up my skirt at a bus shelter. I punched him in the face, kicked him to the ground, and stamped on his head.
Good on her. She fought back
Mum said I needed to be “socialized” because I would never leave the house or get a job if I wasn’t pushed.
he asked me if I was sad and if I missed Mum, and I reassured him that I didn’t and he wasn’t to worry about me. Dad looked at me in that funny way he had sometimes and said that I was probably lucky to be the way I was, that I could probably avoid heartache for my whole life.
He studied the human mind. He told me that my mind worked perfectly but that I was emotionally disconnected. I was his life’s work, he said. I asked him if he could reconnect the emotions and he said that all he and Mum could do was love me and hope that, one day, I would learn to love them back.
“There’s no funeral,” I said. “I cremated him myself.”
Either I don’t talk at all, or I talk too much and I say things that don’t make sense to anyone but me.
I must have blacked out. It happens when I am distressed, though it hadn’t happened in many years.
I thought your mum and dad were open with me about your circumstances, but it seems there was a lot they kept hidden from everyone.”
I knew by then that trying to burn Dad’s body was the wrong thing to do. Everyone had told me so. When I am told something once clearly, without jokes or ambiguity, I understand completely.
I have pancreatic cancer. It started out as back pain a few months ago and a consultant in Dublin confirmed it was terminal.
Our solicitor is Geoff Barrington at Shannonbridge. He knows everything he needs to know about you, and he’ll make sure you are well looked after. He knows things that you don’t know, but we’ll get to that later.
The girl smiled. “My name is Abebi.” “You don’t look like a baby.” She giggled and spelled her name. I smiled back at her.
“Sally, you are a crisis. You don’t mean to be, but if you have doubts about anything, you must ask me, okay?” “But I don’t have doubts about anything.” “That’s what I’m afraid
he should have written Open on the Day I Die on the envelope. In capital letters. Underlined.
I was an Anglican technically, but Dad and I agreed some years ago that we were atheists.
I hate it when people laugh at me.
My profession would never admit this but most of what we do is not very scientific, it is more like guesswork. Every decade or so, we come up with new labels to categorize people.
You are you. As unique and different as every other person on the planet. Your oddities are not disabilities (although we call them disabilities to get your welfare allowance), they are mere quirks of your personality.
In the outside world, you will find more people who are kind than people who are not. Seek them out.
Dad had said PTSD in his letter. I knew that meant post-traumatic stress disorder. What trauma was he talking about?
“Well, I’m theoretically heterosexual,” I said. She stared at me and gave me a confused face. “I’ve never had sex, so I can’t be one hundred percent sure.”
“Usually, when I am angry or depressed, I pull my hair out,” I said. “Oh my God! Don’t you see how that would upset them?” “I wouldn’t pull their hair out,
LMAO
I mean, it’s no surprise that you are the way you are, but I never saw any harm or malice in you—you were a bit unusual, that’s all.
What had happened to me before Mum and Dad adopted me? And how did “the nation” know all about it when I didn’t?
He was old and well-worn, missing an eye, stained and patched, but he made me feel so… something. I clutched him again, confused. Why did he have this effect on me? Why was I so immediately warmed by his presence? Why was I calling it “him” in my mind? “Toby,” I said. He didn’t reply.
I don’t know whether I fainted or drifted off to sleep. I had dreams that night, vivid, of a thin woman with long hair. I was sitting on her lap. This was strange because I never sat on anyone’s lap. It was also strange because it was the first dream I’d ever had.
Going back to reread my highlights and OMG she had dreamed about her mom.
I hung up shortly after we had done the good-bye thing that annoys me: “Good-bye,” “Bye,” “Good-bye,” “See you later,” “Yes, good-bye,” “Bye then.” So tedious.
LOL she ain't wrong. Dragged out good byes are annoying.
“Your mother, your real mother, I mean, she… died.” “What did she die of?” “She was kidnapped by a man when she was young, when she was… a child.” I had seen films and dramas about men who kidnapped young women. “Did he lock her in a cellar?” “Yes—well, no, it was an extension at the back of his house. He lived in a large house on a half acre of land in South Dublin. He kept her there for fourteen years.”
“Do you know who ‘S’ is?” I asked. Aunt Christine almost dropped Toby into the water, and I caught him just in time. “Oh God, we shouldn’t have touched him, or washed him!”
Is it from her mom's kidnapper?
Occasionally I would hear noises coming from behind the other door. Often the sound of crying or howling. Dad said that’s where he kept the ghost, and that I mustn’t worry because she could never get out. And he was right, because she never did.
I asked Dad if women were bad. He said most of them were.
I asked if my mother was the ghost who lived in that room, if she was the one who made the howling noises, and he said that she was, but that I shouldn’t worry because I wouldn’t ever have to see her.
Your birth name is Mary Norton. Norton is your birth mother’s name. We believe it would not have been her choice to use your birth father’s name.
you were a new person. You were our Sally Diamond. The reason you are a bit odd is not because there is anything wrong with your brain, but because you were raised in disturbing circumstances, until you were discovered. At the age of eleven in 1966, your mother, Denise Norton, was kidnapped by Conor Geary. He abused her mentally and sexually for the next fourteen years. As far as we are able to tell, you were born eight years after her abduction.
She refused to talk about Conor Geary but strenuously denied that he had ever sexually assaulted you, or that you witnessed any of her abuse. You would be locked in the toilet when the assaults took place. Medical examinations also suggested that he did not sexually abuse you
Your mother took her own life in May 1981 after you had spent one night in a separate room with Jean.
It is because of your very early experiences that you are sometimes socially and emotionally disconnected. Your tendency to take things literally is a hangover from your early years of social isolation in captivity. It is most fortunate that you have no memory of that time before we brought you home. I would strongly advise you to do nothing at all to try to revive those memories, as I know they could only be traumatizing.
Also, and this might disturb you, they believed they could bring Denise home after her treatment, but they would not countenance taking you. You were his child.
Wow that's sad. Because sure it was his child, but it was still a part of their daughter. Their own flesh and blood.
“You lived here with me, until he took you away, as soon as you could walk and talk and were toilet-trained. He forced me to wean you eventually, but I had no idea he’d take you from me.
“I had a family and school and friends and my own bedroom and windows. He says it’s my imagination, but I remember.” “Who says?” “The man.”
“Do you remember Toby?” He was a cute bear with a red bow around his neck. “He was mine,” she said, “and then when you were born, he was yours.
“Why is your belly so big?” “I guess I’m having another baby. You were in my belly once, the same as this one. You’re going to have a little brother or sister.”
