No Mind, No Heart, No Me Poem by Louise Tredoux

Today experienced the mental state that replays like a
video film whenever my father attacks: When father told
me I was a complete idiot, a total fool; I experienced all
the old symptoms: Constriction, suffocation, headache,
stomach ache, fear, anxiety, insecurity, stupidity, nausea,
inability to sit still and concentrate

I know this mental state – which it the one of my youth –
is always with me just ready to pop out when the old feeling
of insufficiency is triggered; is probably the cause of my
low work performance and cannot be controlled except
by desperate measures: By becoming someone else, only
by not feeling my feelings can I carry on

While Rudi is away and I have to stay with my father, I have
a chance to experience all the exhaustion and mental irritation
that blighted my youth; having to split into my evil twin – I
call her Xenia – in order to face my father’s judgment and
indictment for sin – and holding onto the conviction that
being positive, believing in love stronger than

Self-righteous justice, I can stand my father’s attacks without
giving in to the hysteria welling up; and when the pain is too
much to bear in cold blood, turning into ice-cold Xenia, the
untouchable; when Rudi is back; I will just turn back, but
while he is gone, I have to hide my real self and become
invisible; look, father, no face, no mind, no heart, no me!