Sarah Hastings
The Freudian definition of id is the unorganized part of the personality structure that contains a human’s basic, instinctual drives.
Life happens. Well at least we say it does. Truth is, life did just keep happening – to me.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to bore you with some woe is me, my childhood is to blame type tale. This is simply about the day I lost my id.
I’ll tell you briefly because I have gone through far too much counseling, too many group sessions, one-to-ones, forensic therapy sessions, focusing on the action of my crime and supposedly the reasons why. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that I had to go through the various methods of therapy and I have learned a lot from them. I regret what I did and as the old cliché goes, if I could turn back the clock I would.
Here is a brief history of my life before the fatal day.
I’m a mum, and a good one at that considering I lost mine when I was four. Understandably I had no maternal instinct or inclination. I would have had a termination if it wasn’t for the fact that I was twenty three weeks pregnant when I found out I was carrying a child who would affectionately become known as my one son.
My baby girl came along ten years later.
Life was fun. I was young, performing gigs with two different bands, doing backing vocal session work in studios, working nine to five, partying and single.
The biological donor of my son (my son’s words not mine) was not interested in becoming a father.
Anyway, it wasn’t a big love affair so when he said he’d had a vasectomy (27yrs old-yeah right!) I accepted it and went on my merry way.
In my early teenage years I was raped on more than one occasion, lost my best friend in a train accident, went to boarding school, became devoted to listening to Billie Holiday and watching old black and white movies. I was in love with Axel Rose, Michael Schumacher and Robert De Niro. I needed this type of escapism because most of the men in my life were not very nice.
Looking back, being told I’m “too fat” when I was 5’8 and a size 10 wasn’t a reason to do an extra 5K on the treadmill in order to keep someone more insecure than myself happy. I was fooled with the “it’s only because I love you”.
I did not realize it then but this was all a prelude to my accepting the brutal, mental, physical and sexual abuse I would experience at a time in my life when things should have been pretty good.
I fell in love. Hook, line and the rest. He had green eyes, silver hair and loved Arsenal FC as much as I did.
I’m not exactly sure when it happened, it just did. Slowly over time. Mental before physical, then sexual after physical.
Once I had been subjected to the mental abuse for a long period of time I welcomed the physical as a Godsend because I knew it would stop, be it even at the point of death while losing consciousness. Because of the phone wire wrapped around my throat, or the unloaded gun which I believed was loaded (compliments of his mate Derek from Deptford) being held to my head . Or being pushed over a balcony from the second floor (teeth still missing). Whatever takes his fancy but, soon I know it will stop.
When the raping begins, I am devoid of all feeling.
This person, the womanizer, the degrader, the drug taking once love of my life who rapes me for fun, beats me for pleasure, who humiliates me by sleeping with my friends, next door neighbour and random innocents.
This man now controls my whole being. It is a symbiotic relationship which finally takes over and strips me of the last vestiges of the person I once was. This man, for some screwed up reason, I now think I cannot live without him, for some screwed up reason I still think I love him.
The day I lost my id was a fatal one. I stabbed him, God knows I never meant to kill him.
I went to prison. I have many labels now.
I have my id back.
Taken from Issue 17
