I was always a lonely child. I have vivid memories, like permanent story boards in my head, of being the girl on the outside of everything looking in. The world, tinged in a bright happy yellow with little sepia colored children playing together, unified in their non-questioning joy and automatic acceptance of what it is to be.
Another time, admonished and therefore ashamed I moved away from the others. ‘You stand back there if you aren’t going to take part!' The words smacked my ears as the boys and girls unclothed and began gyrating eagerly in a pool of mud on the dirty, grassy ground, her hand waving an encouraging pipe of water on their careless, bare, bouncing bodies.
Later on an older girl stood with me, her tall shoulder slightly above mine quietly propped me as I surveyed nursery school life with a sense of uninformed disorientation. The rules were never explained; I had little understanding of what was expected from me.
One grey, big day I stood small in the playground, staring down helplessly at the thick orange cup balanced in my hand, the smell of the cow’s souring milk wafting up with every tight little breath. ‘Don’t come in until you’ve drunk it’ were her instructions. Her - the teacher, the leader, the one who knew best. In the classroom darts of colour moved around as the children busied themselves with new tasks for the day, unaware of the invisible little girl lost outside.
Another time, admonished and therefore ashamed I moved away from the others. ‘You stand back there if you aren’t going to take part!' The words smacked my ears as the boys and girls unclothed and began gyrating eagerly in a pool of mud on the dirty, grassy ground, her hand waving an encouraging pipe of water on their careless, bare, bouncing bodies.
Children’s distant laughs, screams, conversations and giggles formed the air in a world in which I didn't know how to breathe. And so, unconsciously as a child I learnt how to live in suffocation.
