A Cruel Healing -Chapter 1 - START

Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn't you - all of the expectations, all of the beliefs - and becoming who you are.
Rachel Naomi Remen

We must embrace pain and use it as fuel for our journey.
Kenji Miyazawa

It was at St Bonaventure's Roman Catholic Primary School I realised how difficult it could be to start a story. Miss Gallagher asked the class, which was I, and anyone else listening, to pick up our HB pencils. She told us to be quiet and to get our heads down to write a short story.She made it sound dead easy. However, most of the pupils looked stunned. Stewart Madden asked -What about Miss? Our teacher slowly walked away from her desk. She gazed out of the big windows which ran along one side of the classroom. Her voice any lower would have been a whisper -Quiet, I said didn't I?
If your name was Brian Dooley, Kevin Dooley, Paul Feeney, Mick Cull or Stewart Madden; teacher's never answered your questions. It was the Sean Carlin's and the Michael McCafferty's of this world whose questions the teachers were eager to answer. Michael McCafferty raised his hand; -Miss, would you like us to write with a specific subject in mind. Most of the pupils had never heard their own parents use words as subject and specific. Miss Gallagher answered Michael amiably -Michael, you enjoy running, your very good at it, use that as your subject matter. She then told the rest of us to write about a subject we excelled at. Everyone suddenly was thinking about what they were good at.Miss Gallagher addressed the class -Your favourite hobbies that you enjoy and are very good at, like football, swimming. She looked at me. -And kick the can.
Silence seeped into the classroom; it seeped into the wooden desks and chairs, into the red carbolic soap on the edge of the sink, into the blackboard duster, the hard white chalk, the teacher's strap.
The strap was used by teachers to punish children. The strap was a half inch thick leather belt 2 feet long.Children were forced before the class to raise their arms shoulder height and put their palms on display. The teacher would then swing the strap high and come down hitting the palms of the children. This could be repeated, one after another, up to 6 times.
The jotters were open; twenty nine heads on the desks chewing pencils to bits, guys staring at their black and white Adidas Samba. My head was full of start, start, start! Willing my pencil to vroom and write a story about something am good at.
Across the silence Mary Scott half smiled, her hand holding the pencil motionless. Pauline Wilson and Roselyn Devaney were quietly giggling. Laura Clark and Francis Mcillvaney joined them.This was a coping skill shared with primary pupils all around the World, to help them deal with the silence. In the silence I felt uncomfortable and anxious. I felt stupid. I could not start a story. Years later, after spending extended periods incarcerated in solitary confinement, in various prison cells, I became used to the presence of silence. I found silence to be comfortable more so than the company of friends