She was in the clouds again that day. Not in the airy-fairy clouds of bright blue skies and cumulus angels, no: she was in the clouds of grit and storm and grey and omnipotence. There was no telling how long it would be before she remembered that there was limitless clear sky above that, that that was not it.
That! That! That!
Something as arbitrary and forgettable and inane could snap her out of it – a gap, a glimpse – sometimes seconds later, sometimes hours or days or weeks or months. There were times when it was months, and she visits those young, frightened, certain girls from then.
There was the girl who felt least and most lonely while doing the Sign of the Cross after communion. Sanctimonious and sincere, she would long for an other to meet her behind closed eyes. She had pigtails and a God-awful fringe coated in lice oil due to the outbreak. Unlike the potential lice, this girl wanted to crawl out of her baby-soft skin, desperate to have had her nit-witty egg laid a confusing nowhere else.
Lonely and adorable and a princess.
There was the girl who thought she was opening her human legs to trust, too young to know that they were object legs being slyly, ignorantly opened to a world of discrediting violation. Her bruising was anaesthetised, airbrushed, first by herself on the inside (who wants to face such deformities?) and then by those near and those far and those wide.
Denied and fractured and fighting.
There was the girl who stayed in bed. And stayed in bed and stayed in bed. Who left a pair of clean socks outside the shower so that she could put them on before contaminating her feet with an ordinary floor. She would clamber – in socks, on tiptoes, counting, hands raw – back to bed. To stay in bed and stay in bed.
Dark and dreaming and weird.
There was the girl who had to run out of lectures midway – panicking, banging against her insides trying to escape herself – leaving a slick, humiliating layer of sweat on the lecture hall seats. She would wander around, trying to find the help she needed before trying again the next day. She would wonder, too, why these weren’t the promised best days of her life yet, and why she always had to rail against adjustments.
Frantic and foreign and learning.
There was the girl who would relish eating popcorn in bed, movie on, rain pattering the window. Safe! And cosy with the sweetest little brother to cuddle: a gift.
There was the girl who waited for her Hogwarts letter and who would read at breaktimes, in the car on the way to and from school, after dark under the covers.
There was the girl who could dance until all hours with her friends, who loved to kiss and loved to swim and hike and go home to her own bed. She was so loved and loving and hopeful amidst the scaries.
Serious and assertive and a spark.
And that! That! That offered another break in the clouds. A spark and a hope. Weird and adorable and assertive and fighting. Serious and fractured and lonely and learning. Assertive, dreaming, intimate with shame. And so much more now, so much more.
With the clouds of all kinds, she could return to herself:
Weathering the weathers,
Saying this
Learning to let go and learning to stay.
She could remember the blue sky always above –
Saying that, too –
Returning to herself.
Come fluffy cumulus
or pressurising, tumbling grey,
She could return to herself:
Sometimes for a minute, a week
Sometimes for a month or two or three
Sometimes for just one second of just one day.
❤️
❤️❤️🩹❤️