Why the silence

Small, slight and wired. A scrawny bag of nerves, she is. Three going on 40 and she doesn't even know it; just tries to play the part, wear the pretty yellow birthday dress and hold the ball as though she knows what to do with it.

What has gotten into her, anyway? One can't tell a thing from the face or sitting style of the mother just beside her, collected and ladylike and dressed quite appropriately, stylishly even in a way that evokes some sort of reality that doesn't match with the child's tension and pallor and nervousness.

I quake and crumble in the face of disapproval. I move forward through whatever a given time presents as though everyone is nurturing and caring; as if the whole world is inclined to take confessions and keep confidences. The most recent slaps of otherwise send me back inside the place I went when everyone else thought it was finally all right for me. I knew it wasn't though; I believed it could and would never be all right for me.

Where now ... ah what an enticing and delicious question that is. Where now? To the place that is mine and in which I am enough, for I am tired of renting space in other people's homes and lives. It doesn't fit to even bring anyone along.

For now there's a room and a pad of paper and I've got to tell this small person's whole damned story before I go anywhere because the world ... well, no, not the world, the world will go on spinning, but ...

Somewhere there's a girl who is being made to feel defective. Maybe later, when she enjoys some aspects of being a girl but has not even a remote interest in boys, and doesn't see what they have to do with her but thinks she needs to know, thinks she is obligated to find out ...

There's someone broken and doubting and afraid, and she needs to know the story of someone else who was just like her, only different. Always different; so different that even as she learned she had some things in common with some other people, she was still different. Someone who needed a circle instead of all the damned squares. Someone there was never a box that could fit.

Oh, but tonight I feel broken and tired, and as though it's futile. It isn't though. It's the one thing I know I can do that might just be a gift to someone. It's what I have to give.

Just a ditch along the road.