What lies beneath

Underneath it all, all the jealousy, insecurity, feelings of isolation and exclusion, irritation, anger, rage, resentment, sadness, emotional pain is a little girl.

A little girl waiting to be rescued, desperate for a mother who will come to her, embrace her, who will hold her close and say it’s not her fault. A mother who with kind eyes and a warm smile will say that she is still good and blameless. That he is bad, that her father is perverted, twisted and sick.

She’s waiting for her mother to say sorry my child, I failed to protect you and keep you safe. I should have known, I should have prevented this. I could have and I didn’t and I am so so so sorry. I saw it and I did nothing to protect you. I was grossly negligent and a bad mother. He is a bad father but you my angel are good. Those are the words she is so thirsty for.

She is only five and has sores around her vagina, they don’t hurt because she is already so numb to it all. She doesn’t understand any of it. She is a little girl waiting again for her mother to look her in her little eyes, but the cold, hard angry eyes don’t look for hers as her mother cleans her. The hard eyes turn away and she believes her mother is angry with her. She believes then that she must be very very bad, that it’s all her fault, that she will be abandoned. She is damaged, defective, her essence is pure evil because her own mother won’t look at her and won’t say that it’s not her fault. She is waiting to be helped.

She waits and waits but no help comes and the world goes on. So she bottles it all up and swallows the hard, bitter pill. The help never comes and nobody rescues the little girl so she knows that she deserves it all. She will have to spend her life in shame now, in isolation, alienated, never getting too close to anyone, never fully trusting and always feeling shortchanged and miserable deep down. She is silent in big groups, awkward, alien, ugly, undeserving of love, attention and all the good things that people around her enjoy.

Her wounds run deep, they bleed and bleed and bleed from the open sores within and she puts a bandage of fantasy and denial to stop the red from leaking out for all to see. Everyone will see the red and will know how bad she is if she doesn’t. They will find out her secret and she will be sent far away and there will be nobody there At least if she keeps quiet and still, they won’t find out how bad she really is. She’ll pretend for now and she will become so good at pretending that everyone will believe that she is perfect, clever, so smiley, obliging and agreeable. She’ll pretend so hard that she will even forget herself what really happened, a deliberate kind of forgetting to maintain the delicate balance of illusion.

Until one day when the fantasy and denial can’t hold back the flood. Suddenly all the red wants to come out and it spills out. All the gooey, sticky, red, oozing liquid flows out non-stop. Little by little, sometimes it spills out gently and other times it gushes out.

She is not alone this time with the pain. I look after her now, she is not waiting anymore. I hold her close. I protect her. I tell her that she is good and blameless. I tell her story to help others who have been to the same dark places. I rip off the bandage of denial and fantasy piece by piece. In its place I use a soothing balm of lucid awareness, clarity, bold honesty, consciousness and the support of fellow warriors. I rub this powerful balm over all her wounds, filling all the darkest holes and corners. I uncover the sores and bring them into the light gently and lovingly.

You are safe now little girl. You can breathe again.