The dawn sky was giving birth to the sun and the cleanness of the air seared my lungs. The grass was far too green, so green it was almost blinding and the birds sang a different song to the one I remembered. It had taken so long but finally I had arrived. Finally I could appreciate. This seemed like a different lifetime, I wonder if perhaps I have traversed the planes of time to arrive here. It certainly feels that way. Everything is so fresh, I feel like the first woman on Earth, but I don't feel lonely, just at peace for the first time in a long while. Too long has my mind been caged, too long had I been wrapped in a chemical haze of abandonment. I know I'm no longer that frightened child of yesteryear. I'd mourned her death for a long time, clung to her violently, relentlessly, not knowing what else to do. I had needed her desperately. To hug her, to love her, to tell her everything would be okay, to heal her wounds when nobody else had been able. I still feel sorry for the girl I had been but I no longer need her.

It's hard to be depressed in such a beautiful place but as I cast my mind back over the years a cloud as black as midnight looms on the horizon, mirroring the way I feel. In its bark at the uprising of the sun it is issuing threats laden with promise. My mother had told me when she found out that I would go away to a place that dealt with such problems, that nobody need ever know. That nobody must ever know. I was
confused, the only thing I could understand was the mixed look of disgust and
disappointment on my mothers face, the way my father couldn't even look at me
never mind talk to me. I heard them talking late into the night. Words such as "shame", "adoption", "therapy" and my father's words "no daughter of mine" filtered through the
walls. No matter how hard I tried I just couldn't understand.
My body became alien to me in such a short time. Only a few months before I had
been crying myself to sleep every night thinking I was dying from some fatal disease. I had planned my funeral and wondered if anyone would miss me. I didn't think they would. Then my mother had found my stained pants under the mattress and issued the only advice she ever gave on the subject,
" Amy, you must never lie down with a boy now. "
I was none the wiser when John Turnbull had taken my pants down and had sex with me, I didn't even know what had happened. Of course I had noticed the changes in my body, the heaviness in my breasts, the nausea, but I was just happy that the dreadful bleeding had stopped. Then my mother had noticed and an invasive examination confirmed what she already knew. I was pregnant. I was confused and dazed. I was fourteen.

The latter part of my pregnancy had been spent at The Northwood Home For Unmarried Mothers. Even now in this beautiful place my blood runs cold at the thought of that horrible grey building. The saddest most desolate place in the world. A place where hearts were torn out, where babies were stolen and mothers cried. A place where life was begun and also where it was taken away. I had been the youngest there. In that bleak place nobody talked, conversation was minimal with the women keeping to themselves, too wrapped up in their own grief to acknowledge anything else. The nights were filled with the sound of a thousand sobs, but nobody seemed to hear.

The cramps had started in the early hours of the morning on the twenty sixth day of
March. Waves of pain coursed through my body, perspiration beaded my brow. I lay rigid in my bed terrified my time had come. The pain had gotten worse and I heard myself cry out. I didn't sound like myself. The wail had sounded disembodied, desperate. The nurse walked up from the other end of the corridor and I heard her shout to the other nurse
" Get the bed ready she's in labour! "
I was wheeled to "The Room" at the bottom of the ward where my pains got worse and my screaming got louder. My insides were being torn from me and I could see no end. I screamed and shouted until the midwife slapped me and told me to shut up. I was beyond hysteria. I sobbed for my mother. She didn't come. In that dim windowless room my daughter, Ann-Margaret, came wailing feet first into the world. I had been very lucky, a breech birth in those days could quite easily kill the mother.

Two days later I had awoken to find myself with a set of intravenous drips. Alien blood
was slowly finding its way into my body and saving my life, at the time I didn't thank it. I knew she would be there at my side. We got to keep our babies for six weeks before their new parents came to collect them, now I think this was more cruel than necessary . Ann- Margaret lay in a crib at the foot of my bed. I marvelled at her perfection, frantically counting her fingers and toes, kissing her tiny face, smelling the sweet scent of baby. Every second of those six weeks were precious beyond belief. I could hardly sleep, and every second that passed was a second closer to losing her. In my heart I knew there was no possibility of me keeping her, my parents refused point blank, they didn't even come to see their grand-daughter. It was about that time I started to hate them. Now I understand that they did what they thought was best.

Five weeks and four days after she was born I returned from my morning shower to find the crib empty and stripped of blankets. My clothes were laid out neatly on the bed, my suitcase was packed and my baby was gone. I saw my parents waiting outside the office at the far end of the corridor. The panic started in my stomach and raced through my body so fast I thought my head would explode. Then I was screaming. Screaming so loud I almost deafened myself. They were running up the corridor towards me, arms outstretched, faces distorted. My mother was the first to reach me, I lunged at her face, tearing her glasses off, my fingernails in her skin, my legs kicking out wildly. Someone was trying to restrain me. It was my father. I was totally out of control and his small frame could not contain me. The nurses had arrived and had formed a circle around me, my father was comforting my mother who had deep, deep bleeding gashes in her face. I spun around accusing each of them in turn. Then they were on me and no amount of kicking and punching could prevent that needle from violating my body, and then it was only darkness.

When I woke up I was in a room in a completely different wing of the institution, on my own with my arms and legs strapped firmly to the bed, I couldn't move an inch. I heard myself screaming again and someone came into the room and gave me another shot. This happened so many times I lost count, I awoke to scream and screamed to awaken, the circle was vicious. One day my screams brought nobody. I don't know how long I screamed for but it was like an eternity. Eventually no more noise would come from my raw throat, no more tears fell from my parched eyes. I felt empty, I didn't know who I was anymore. I was a body in a room tied to a bed. I didn't feel degraded, only angry, very angry. A key had turned in the door and he walked into the room. I didn't speak. He observed that I was securely strapped to the bed and then he spoke. I felt like a murderer.
" Now then Amy if you're finished with all that screaming business maybe we can have a chat. I'm going to undo your straps and I want you to promise that you'll behave. Okay?"
I nodded mutely. He began undoing the foot straps, it was a relief.
" I'm Doctor Zita, " he announced to me, " and I'm here to help. "
He undid the arm straps and I sat up. With every ounce of energy and every bit of anger in me I punched him full in the face. The satisfaction as I saw the blood dripping from his split lips and nose was overwhelming but his hurt could never match mine. The look of shock on his face added to the smugness I was feeling and before I could do anything else he was gone from the room and the door was locked before I was even off the bed. His speed was well practised and I wondered if his patients often responded to him in such a manner.

The screech of a seagull tears me back to the present day and reality. That black cloud is still cruising but doesn't spoil the day at all. The duality of nature inspires me and I feel, I don't know, sort of poetic. The darkness is always accompanied by light, and there is always darkness in light. The relationship is symbiotic, without one the other simply wouldn't exist, life as we know it would be dramatically different, but would it be better or worse? Understanding of the finer complexities of nature and human life eludes me. I don't think there are any explanations, none that we could comprehend anyway. The calmness of the sea is almost hypnotic, the rhythmic movement of the waves seductive, comforting. Like a lover or a mother.

After Doctor Zita had locked the door I had gone wild again. Had thrown a trolley
through the window and totally destroyed the bed. I'd smashed the small sink and a leak had sprung, water was everywhere. Four nurses had run into the room. Four nurses had hit the deck, had gone careering across the floor in comical positions. I had laughed aloud and made good my escape, feeling so free as I flew through the door. I ran down the corridor past iron railed window after iron railed window. I hadn't known where I was going and I hadn't cared. For eight long weeks I had been strapped to that bed. Saved even the inconvenience of taking myself to the toilet I had performed my bodily functions restrained and aided by a nurse using a bed pan. The smell of my own body odour encroaching on my senses. Although the experience had been dulled by drugs it was still too vivid and so I ran. The door at the ends of the corridor was of course locked. My kicks and thumps were futile. I turned around to look for another way out and saw them headed towards me. I could see by the looks on their faces that they meant business. I felt like a deer might feel trapped in the oncoming lights of a truck, its life hurtling to an end. Rough hands restrained me and then the vicious needle penetrated my skin. I had been
raped again. And then it was only darkness.

When I awoke I was strapped to that bed again and remained that way for a further ten weeks. When Doctor Zita came to take off the straps, again offering help, I didn't hit him, I didn't say a word when he helped me to the shower room on wobbly legs. I didn't know who I was anymore. Doctor Zita explained that I had been certified and that I would stay at the institution for at least six months and then my case would be reviewed and perhaps I would be able to go home, but it just didn't matter to me anymore, I couldn't have cared less at that point.

There were four other women in the ward that was to become my home. Each of them as mad as hatters and yet perfectly sane. There was Joyce who had killed her husband after one too many drunken beatings, she had been on the ward for eight years. May had gotten depressed after her baby was born, she had been there for seven months and was looking forward to her next review and the possibility of going home to the child she had hardly seen, the child who would hardly know her. Pauline was recovering from a nervous breakdown she had suffered when her mother died. She had been at the institution for two years with no real improvement. And then there was Maud. Maud who cut all of the buttons off her clothes, believing them to be hidden cameras that spied on her. Maud who cried out at unseen monsters. Maud who for weeks at a time never said a word to anyone and walked around with glazed, terror filled eyes. Sometimes there would be lucid periods for Maud and she became almost coherent, but most of the time she was heavily sedated
and scared.

For the first five months I wallowed in depression so black, so deep it put the night to
shame. I could see no way out of that bottomless pit, I was completely helpless. I hardly ate and my personal hygiene was deplorable, I refused to wash either my hair or my body. At one point the nurses had dragged me off to the shower room and had stood me in the shower, fully clothed, in an attempt to be rid of the smell that lingered around me and pervaded everywhere I went. I refuted the attempts of the other women to befriend me. All I wanted was to be left alone, all I wanted was to die. When my review came through and was rejected that same day I slashed my wrists with a piece of metal I had acquired. I'd watched and enjoyed the relief as my blood had pumped out, staining my night-dress and the bed clothes. For the first time in a long while I had felt satisfied and waited in anticipation of the ultimate release. It didn't come. I'd opened my eyes to see the concerned face of Joyce, it had been her who had found me, her who had saved my life.
"Now lass, it's about time we put things into perspective."
"Go away" I said , pouting like a spoilt child.
"Sit up and I'll give your hair a brush, heaven knows it could do with it. A pretty young
girl like you shouldn't allow herself to get into such a state."
She wielded the hair brush like a weapon. I let her brush my hair, let myself feel the
closeness of another human being and I cried. Long into the night as my body spasmed with sobs Joyce had held me in her arms, offering the support and comfort that only another woman can.

From that night I began to change again, I started to believe that maybe, just maybe, my life could go on. I made a huge effort with my appearance, took my medication without fuss and even refrained from assaulting the medical staff. My next review at the twelve months mark was a hope glimmering in the not too distant future, I had something to aim for. I would be almost sixteen by then and perhaps, I thought, I could persuade the authorities that the whole episode had been one big mistake and that my baby should never have been taken away. Perhaps I could get her back.
I made friends with the other women on the ward and slowly began to realise that not one of us, except Maud, and I had my doubts there, was truly insane. We had each been dealt a bad hand of cards and were trying to play the game as best we could. In the game of Poker that is our lives some of us are more fortunate than others and as I looked around me I knew that things weren't so bad for me, I had hope, of which Joyce and Maud had none, there was no light in their bleak futures, Joyce knew she'd never leave and had come to accept it a long time ago. In one of our more personal chats she had told me that living her life out at the institution had been much more appealing than living with her brute of a husband. His demise had cost her her children, who could neither understand nor forgive what she had done. Nobody ever visited or wrote letters to Joyce, she truly was alone, and
that, she said, was fine by her.

May had been denied her release at her first review and we had all felt her pain, her
desperation. Even Maud had been sadder than usual, sitting quietly on her bed rocking back and forth. May had cried for weeks and I wondered if she would ever stop. One
night, however, the crying did stop and she spoke to me, I was the only one awake, words that would stay with me for the rest of my life.
"You know Amy, we all wander through life opening doors, looking for our perfect
season, sometimes it's winter, and some are harsher than others, sometimes it's spring and we're given a glimpse of the summer that's yet to come, the summer that's full of promise. In the natural scheme of things summer's got to come, again and again, we must just make sure that we keep on opening doors."

I'd looked into her eyes and saw a wisdom beyond her years and I had known then that she would make it, to myself I questioned the existence of places where it was always winter, where the ice never melted and the bitter chill of the wind could always be felt. A paradox within a paradox. As it was May was the first of us to leave and although we missed her none of us could have been happier, she had achieved what the rest of us could only aspire to, some such as Joyce and Maud couldn't even manage that, summer would never come for them.

It got nearer to my review and I was sure that I would leave that dreadful place, all my
sessions with Doctor Zita on a Wednesday morning had been going well and I believed I had learned to answer all of his questions in the way he wanted and he had seemed
pleased. My parents had visited on several occasions and under the watchful eye of Doctor Zita I had restrained myself from gouging out their eyeballs and throwing salt into the wounds. I had played the role of the dutiful daughter, the daughter who had caused them so much pain and so much trouble. I had convinced them of my sorrow and my willingness to make amends. When they visited, to keep myself calm, I recited words to myself that I had learned from the new girl on our ward, who was an American, words that never failed to keep my anger at bay and tantalised me at the same time, "fuck you, fuck you", over and over again. I consoled myself with the possibility of saying those shocking words to their faces once I was free of this place. I thought of writing them in nice, tidy, well organised, psychologically balanced lines and sending them in a letter to the abominable Doctor Zita. I practised saying them aloud to myself while looking in the mirror, perfecting a look that would match the words. I often laughed aloud at the thought of my mother's face when I finally said them to her. We would be outside the institution and she would say something like, " Let's just go home and forget that this whole terrible thing has ever happened.", and I would say with as much venom as I could muster, "Fuck you!", before strolling off into the sunset to find my daughter. I thought I had them all fooled, but I hadn't and Doctor Zita had seen right through me. My release was denied and denied and denied. My parents stopped visiting due to my mother's illness. I hadn't gone to the funeral when she died. At that time my hatred of her was still intense and her death was like a further abandonment to me. It was only years later, shortly after my father's death, that I came to understand.

My birthdays passed in quick succession and my case ceased to be reviewed. Presidents and Prime Ministers came and went, and I watched it all in a detached way. I, like Joyce
and Pauline, had accepted that I would never leave and before I knew it I was a middle aged mad woman. Locked away in the attic, safe from normality I grew older and more cynical every day. Joyce turned into an old woman in front of my eyes, over the years she had become more than just a friend, more than just a fellow mad woman, she had become my lover, my mother, my mentor, my everything. The night she died I died too, there was nothing now. For a long time I had lived with the hope that my child would come looking for me, but it never happened, I'd given up wondering why.

At this point in my story you're probably wondering how I've arrived in this beautiful place of blue skies with dark clouds on the horizon, where birds sing and children play. Doctor Zita retired a long time ago and was replaced with a kindly, young female doctor who insisted that we call her Rose. Shortly after her take over and during one of our sessions she had made the suggestion that I might like to try and find Ann-Margaret myself. We both knew I could never leave the institution, life had changed too much, the world I had left didn't exist anymore and there was no place for me in it, but there was no reason why I shouldn't try and include Ann-Margaret in my world. Rose set the wheels in motion and I waited patiently for any news she might bring. All kinds of thoughts went through my mind, what if Ann-Margaret wanted nothing to do with me and worse still, what if she had died? Afterall anything could have happened in the last forty years, so much had changed.

It took Rose only six weeks to find my daughter and much less time to arrange for us to meet. Ann-Margaret, who was now known as Kate, would visit me at the hospital (it had stopped being called an institution a long time ago) and we could get to know each other. I could hardly wait for her visit and did not sleep for the three nights before she was due to arrive. Rose had done her best to prepare me and I was fully aware of Ann-Margaret's condition and what it meant but when her carer wheeled her into the family room all I saw was a beautiful woman, not the paraplegia and severe brain damage that had been caused by an accident in childhood. I kissed her face frantically, as I had done the day she was born, carefully wiped the drool from her mouth and gazed into her unseeing eyes, and yet I got the feeling she knew more than she was letting on. After that first meeting Rose arranged for Ann-Margaret to visit regularly, and then she arranged for today. My first day out in more than forty years. The cloud has lifted from the skies and I look to Ann- Margaret lying peacefully at my side and can't believe my luck. Here is my daughter and I couldn't be happier, all the doors to summer have opened at once.

Alustriel Zita