The girl sits in the playground, lost in a world of colours and drawing.
The children play around her, throwing ball, skipping, playing chasings and the girl is excluded from all of it. It’s okay though, she prefers it that way, she would rather that than the teasing.
Being alone is not so bad.
The bullying comes often and is sometimes just your garden variety, with name calling and horrible words spat in her direction but sometimes it is terrifying.
Sometimes the girl is so scared that she wishes she could curl up in a ball and disappear.
This has been one of those days.
This day the children have followed her around the school taunting her, chasing her with sticks, tripping her up, backing her into the bottom corner of the school, amongst the fire trees, their leaves so bright. They seem to jeer along with the pack. The boys hold her down, while the girls pull away her underwear because they want to see just how ‘fat’ her backside is. They kick her and spit on her, their angry faces distorted with hate for the girl, who they think they know but really do not. Their words are like arrows piercing her heart, shredding what is left of her feelings of self, leaving her naked to their discrimination. She closes her eyes, looking for solace in her own imagination but all she sees is her father, leering and hurtful and so she moves from her consciousness to a place where she feels nothing.
She is only seven years old.
It is the first time she has done this (or has a memory of it) and it feels strange but wonderful to be able to take herself away from the pain.
This will not be the last time the girl is hurt by ‘the bullies’ but it is the first that she has a tool to use against them.
The girl grows and changes and her views of the world remain the same. She is not perfect and she is damaged but what she has come to know as ‘the dead space’ has saved her from feeling bitter and sad with the humans that inhabit her life.
It has helped her through terrible times with her father and brother and now she needs it more than anything else to get her through the death of her son.
People look to her with angry eyes and their comments sting, just like the bullies’ all those years ago. She closes her eyes and wishes them away.
The only problem with being able to shut down like this is that she cannot disappear fully. When the night comes, dreams and nightmares and memories appear in front of her and lead her to a place of insomnia. The price of escaping confrontation and absolute stress is sleep.
Sleep is a comodity that the girl can trade for relief from the pain.
It is her way.
Four years on the girl needs to use the space again but for the first time she wonders how people see her when she is not fully there.
She wonders if she gives off the appearance of not caring enough.
She wonders if she should betray her soul and let the tears fall from her cheeks, the heavy heaves rack her heart and shoulders. She wonders if she should let the world see how much hurt she feels, wonders if it will make any difference or if opening herself to others will open her up to more pain than she can handle.
The few times she has stepped into this unchartered territory has felt alien and wrong and the retreat and silence, her saving grace. So, for now, this is how she copes with the challenges and the girl hopes, one day, people will understand.
Inspired by Fe’s post.
So, how do you cope with stressful situations?
Edited to add; Yesterday, when the doctor was on her third attempt at cannulating Ivy and she was begging me to have them stop, the nurse made a comment about me not seeming concerned about Ivy’s crying. It wasn’t that I didn’t care, it was that all I could do was hold her and take myself away, so as not to lose control completely. I do care. I was upset that they had to stick her three times but I had to be strong for Ivy and for me.
