I was always a really ***** kid. Not in a slimy way but I always just liked playing out in the trees even though I’d come home with my knees caked with ****** ***** and my hair tangled with sap that would take days to wash out and I’d have to quietly wash off with the garden hose because there would be Hell To Pay if I tracked mud in the house. It was my solace, mostly, running away into the whispering pines that surrounded my house until I was 13 and our neighbors sold it out to contractors and a family with a boy who liked to torture bugs moved in and that was the end of my hiding place. But until then I knew the fastest way to the river that hardly anyone else ever visited and I knew the best place to hide and I could climb this one fir in three seconds flat and it was wide enough that it would shelter my 9 year old shoulders. I always wore these little blue leather sandals which were a luxury because the rest of the time I had to wear orthopedic shoes because I was born with club feet that still hurt when I run too much. Even though my hands liked to dig in the dirt and I liked to feel the ground under my bare skin I was never really a tomboy. I wore this purple velvet skirt all the time and I wore my blonde hair long enough that I could sit on it. My hair has always been a security blanket for me and it’s still a defining feature now that it curls around my ears in a way that people seem to like. But at the time, pre-puberty it was always long and slightly tangled and my mom would take it in her fist and pull my head back and threaten to cut it off whenever she was angry, which was often, or when I didn’t brush it, which was almost as often. My house felt bigger then, when my chin was doorknob-level and the swings my dad built made you feel like you were flying. Our house was yellow and green and from the gardens and forests around it you could almost picture it being in some movie, some sun-drenched movie from the 70s and with my long wood-colored hair and outdated sandals I would have fit in. I’ve never looked like the rest of my family, who are all thinner, more angular somehow, and their skin was always freckled and rough. My skin has always been so clear you can see the veins running under the surface and my limbs have always been longer, softer, and I was fat for a few years until I stopped eating altogether and suffered over the calorie count of celery versus carrots and would lie in bed with my head spinning and every bone in my body aching. But that was a different time, and as a child I preferred to lie on the warm sidewalk and watch the cars pass and tell myself that if six cars passed before my mom got home I would be safe and today would be a good day. Sometimes five would pass and it would still be a good day, and sometimes ten would pass and it would be one of the worst yet, but it was a childlike game and it comforted me to think I had control over her actions. That was back when hearing the front door open at 7 made ***** rise in my throat and hearing her 160 pound footsteps on the nubbly carpet outside of my room made my body shut down before her hands even touched the door. There was a technique to turning off your mind. I learned this before I could ride a bike and it all came down to two very simple things: close your eyes, and it will be over soon. You just had to wait things out and afterwards you could run to the bathroom and watch the blood pool in the white porcelain tub and it would slide down, slightly foamy, with hot water that burned over the fresh scars that mingled with faded ones in places my own hands could never reach.
CW for ED and abuse