Post by Dan on Apr 16, 2020 0:46:48 GMT -6
Dreams...
...Reality.
...Dreams of reality.
...Reality of dreams.
It is now difficult to distinguish between the difference.
Nil mo chomhairle ach ann i mo aisling. Nil mo shabhailteacht ann ach i mo chuid fantasies. Is i an da cheile a bhraitheann me sabhailte. Ta se nuair a dhispeasann me go bhfuil se ag brath ar a cheile. Agus is e sin nuair a thagann fantasies as nightmares.
Translated to English...
"My counsel has only existed in my dreams. My safety has only existed in my fantasies. It is when the two combine that I feel safe. It is when I wake that it dissipates. And it is then when my fantasies become nightmares."
Elly is a devout Catholic. Considering her abusive past, and little exposure to religion at all, this alone is remarkable. But it is her appeal to God that keeps her sane throughout a constant traumatic life, even at this young age. So it's not so much as being a "Catholic," even Elly conceded that she didn't actually know what that meant at that young age, but she did know who God was.
And it was her staunch faith that kept her faculties all the while.
Having no resource to worship in a church, Elly dreams of her faith, actually confessing sins to a priest, sometimes multiple times a day, and comes up with confessions of sins she simply makes up, in order to ask God's forgiveness and feel His protection.
The worse her traumas become the more she dreams of confession and of sins she did not commit.
She just doesn't want communion, she wants the chalice filled to the rim, she wants it all.
But soon her dreams "buailte chun bheith ina n-oiche chun nach feidir ealu" (conquered to become nightmares to allow no escape) from her troubles. "Ceard a bhi amhrain na n-ean thainig chun cinn de thunder" (What were songs of birds became ceaseless claps of thunder).
"Bhi me a thradail, a dhiol, a phairt agus ag dul timpeall an oiread le dilleacht, bhi mo chuid ag teitheadh go dti an Sciobairin ina bhriseadh o mhalartu daonna, ag cuimhneamh ar an bpointeanas fad an tsaoil."
(I had been traded, sold, bartered and passed around so much as an orphan, my fleeing to Skibbereen was a respite from human exchange, mind for the penitentiary all the while).
"Ach ar an meid ata me ag ioc as a bpinsin?"
(But for what am I paying penance?)
She sleeps at night on dreams of being that "pretty little freckled blonde girl," with each night often with another foster family she's bartered or sold to, with only the clothes on her back and never a home she could call her own. Her only possessions now were "searbh, fearg, bron agus fury."
(Bitterness, anger, resentment and fury).
Elly would begin to question her faith, and demand to see a priest, to which would go ignored.
To add insult to injury, this all occurred on the cusp of the Great Frost of 1741, a year that would become known as "The Year of the Slaughter."