Memories, Released
by Victoria Nakamura

My first sexual memory is from when I was five years old. I use the word memory loosely here as I still struggle to make sense of it. I can’t tell you for sure what did or didn’t happen but I can share the feelings my body has stored and that I can recall. What I do remember is my mother and I sharing a house with my dad’s brother, his partner and their young boy. There was a shared kitchen and bathroom downstairs at the back of the house. My mother occupied what would have been a downstairs living and dining room. My room was alone on the mezzanine, the stairs continued up to two rooms occupied by my uncle and his family. Anytime they needed to use the kitchen or bathroom they would have to pass my room on the way up and down the stairs. I recall my first dream in this house. I woke up and walked out of my room to the top of the stairs, there was a calm, warm light of a reddy orange sunset, I felt safe and secure. I took a jump and slowly floated like a falling leaf to the bottom of the stairs landing softly on my feet. I was super excited to tell my mum as soon as I woke that I had successfully jumped down the stairs! I then experienced the contrast of disappointment in learning that it was apparently a dream, those beautiful feelings didn’t exist outside of myself.

My uncle had a stall in the local market, selling old cameras. His stock he stored in a corner of my bedroom, black bin bags stacked high. I hated their ugly, unknown contents, unavoidable and in my face. I knew not to touch. I had a little wooden tricycle with red and white inlays on the small black wheels. I used to try to get my poor tabby cat, Bug, to sit on it so I could push her around. I remember my small wooden chair I liked to sit on in a particular way. My wooden wardrobe which also had a mirror. I used to keep cotton wool balls and tissues so I could pretend to change my dollies nappy. Once I got inside of my wardrobe and closed the door to hide, I couldn’t get back out and it fell. The fall was broken by my bed but I could not open the door to get out. Who knows how long I was in there before someone came to let me out. I don’t remember any feeling attached to this as you would expect a five year old to feel scared, it just happened, as a matter of fact. At night the light was turned off in my room with the door ajar, the light from the hallway shone through, a comfort to young me. In the night I used to sit on my little wooden chair in the particular way I liked facing the door. Sometimes sitting here or from my bed there would be the black silhouette of a man in my doorway. I felt scared and nervous. Was it my uncle, my mother’s boyfriend, one of their friends? I don’t know but I do know the tickling feeling a five year old should not. Had I made an early discovery or was it inflicted from the silhouette in my doorway? I know this is another thing I will never know the answer to and this has to be something I have to come to accept.

The smell of coffee, incense and roll up fags wafted into my room. The same music tape of mum’s boyfriend’s band on repeat. The clanging of dishes being put away or the shzz sound of furniture polish being sprayed. Cue — I know my mother is awake and most likely in a good mood, I dare to venture downstairs to see which mother awaits. A good mood means food and company, a bad mood means being sent to my room. I spent what felt like hours in my room, I used to tidy and drag the furniture into new positions. I also tried to hide £1 coins from myself, forget about them so I could feel the immense pleasure when I rediscovered them. Hungry, lonely and bored, still not knowing what awaits downstairs, in an attempt to pave the way for a positive outcome I wrote notes. “Dear Mum, I’m sorry. I love you.” I folded them into the best paper aeroplane I could fashion and lobbed it down the stairs. After a few of these were deemed cute I could come out. I believe she still has them to this day. Weird.

“I’ve got something awful I need to tell you,” says my mother, drunk. My stomach flips and drops down. A tingling rush shoots down from my elbows to my fingertips, I need to catch my breath and steady myself. What could it be? What would be the worst possible thing I can think of right now? It must be that. “What is it?” I ask with an apprehensive lump in my chest, full of dread. “Ahh it’s nothing, nevermind,” she slurs brushing me off. A fire builds inside as the dread switches into impatient rage. Again? She wouldn’t keep doing this if there was nothing, there must be something fundamental to my existence she is keeping from me.

At seventeen I took it to my father. “Maybe I’m not your dad, it could be one of my brothers. Don’t you think it was weird that you lived with one of them?” Further generalised doubt is planted, who am I and where do I come from? I later posed this question to my mother who responded by refusing to talk to me for more than a year.

In my thirties, still haunted and still not knowing I take the question to my aunts who say they’ve experienced this numerous times and it’s just the drink talking. Instead of reassuring me, it further fuels my doubt into believing they’re all in on some big secret. Perhaps to protect my mother, perhaps to protect me. Will I ever know or is this another thing I have to accept not knowing?

By the time I was fourteen we had been living in the village for four years. Not permitted the freedoms that other fourteen year olds were allowed, I still spent a lot of time in my room. I spent hours looking out the window onto the A38 and its constant stream of traffic. As far as I was concerned each vehicle contained someone living their lives and their lives must be more interesting than mine. I felt so trapped and dreamed of freedom. Suicide occured to me many times during this period as a way to end the helplessness I felt. I could be free of this, right now. In contrast I also experienced what I now describe as an innate feeling that I could make my life what I want it to be as soon as I’m old enough. Here an absolute disdain at the situations I’d had to persevere and a desire to achieve something bigger than my situation was born. Although both options represented freedom of course I’m glad I chose to endure and build a life away from this.

And I literally did this on the other side of the world! But no matter how far away I flew, my body had kept a tight hold of my stories, there was no escaping them…

May 2024
Plymouth, UK