Sometimes, it feels like there’s a little girl who lives inside me. At some point during my childhood, I named her Gabby. I don’t know why she has that name or why she has a different name to me, but this isn’t about me. It’s about her: the little girl whose presence I feel heavily within my chest, aching and wanting to speak. I refuse, not liking the way her voice sounds. It’s childish and embarrassing, and near impossible to accept. I seal my lips shut and tell her to write instead. The pain inside my chest gets worse.
Shaking now, my right hand picks up a pencil and tries to form a grip, but my body works against me. Rather than curl, my fingers tingle and weaken. My palm grows warm and my wrist seems to lose the firm structure of its bones. Unable to hold the pencil tightly enough to form words, I turn it over to my left hand, finding that side too weak to use also. I release the pencil and reach for my computer, hoping that my fingertips can find a way to describe the flaming conflagration ripping through my core. I start but it’s hard for my fingers to press the keys. It’s hard to connect with my hands.
I close my eyes and think of nothing, feeling a nauseating dizziness inside my head. I want to cry; I need to cry. I’m waiting and wanting but knowing I won’t. The dizziness settles and slowly, my hands form a sentence that I haven’t planned. I can’t look. I don’t want to see. Instead, I let my fingers splatter words to drip like paint down a wall. I see them written as though by a brush: anger and rage and misery; hurt and shame and disgust. Each word surrounded by others but failing to reflect how awful Gabby feels within my chest. I type and I delete, and I try again and fail
Somebody help me, I scream at the wall, startling my eyes enough to open them. I blink and blink again, and my eyes come into focus. I see three sentences filling my screen’s void of whiteness:
Why didn’t I attach like I should have?
Why am I such a bad person?
Why can’t anybody love me?
Fuck! I yell, picking up my computer and wanting to throw it through the window. Please just cry, I plead to myself, but nothing comes. It seldom does. My fingers grow weaker and my arms begin to sag. The computer fades from my awareness and suddenly, I’m hiding in an alcove beneath the stairs. My body’s so small, so very small. A Tchaikovsky piano concerto travels softly through the air. I hear her shouting. I hear her slapping. I hear my sister’s screams. Please help me! the little girl’s voice shouts. I press my hands against my ears even while knowing I have to help. My body pulls itself into a place of daylight where the screams are louder. I follow them, finding my sister in a corner. The monster’s hands are slapping my sister around the head. On her shoulders. On her back. On her curled up legs. The little girl is crying. Her nose is running. I’m frozen to the spot.
Stop! I try to shout. Please stop! I try again. Make the monster leave.
It hears my jagged breathing and the monster turns its contorted face around. I wait for it to come for me but instead, I see its shoulders slump and its life disappear. Just a shadow now, the creature steps out of my mother’s body and brushes past me, hot and cold against my flesh. The woman is exhausted, I can see by the way she stands.
We’re all exhausted, Mama.
We sit at the kitchen table – a mother with her two little girls. Mama talks about dinner as though nothing happened. By the time she’s decided on bacon and mashed potatoes, I realize that nothing did. The drama was all thanks to Tchaikovsky, whose music somehow brought strange dreams to my head. What happened wasn’t real. What’s happening right now is.
My sister crawls onto mother’s lap. Her attachment is fine. She loves her mother and her mother loves her. I’m an outsider. I return to the alcove beneath the stairs and let Tchaikovsky’s notes swirl like clouds of mosquitos around my head. At that moment, I realize I’m less than an outsider. What happened wasn’t real. I am not real. Gabby is real. She doesn’t want to be back in the shadows, but it’s the only place she can reach. Always the darkness inside me. Always where it’s black. Except for the dripping paint.
I feel her fading now, leaving my chest and stepping into the depths of the world within my head. Her absence makes me tired. I’m so very tired.