a story of an abused child

She is gentle and fragile. She is kind and understanding. She is love incarnated.

Her body talks for her, expressing her emotions, thoughts & worries stronger than her words. When she laughs, she laughs loudly, holding her stomach and deeply bowing her head, when she dislikes something, she frowns as though the end of the world is approaching and even if she tried, she could not, in any possible way, she could not, keep her face motionless. Her hands move swiftly around her body emphasising her stories. She would even move her legs, if only she does not need them to keep the rest of her body upright. Her emotions are strong, fertile, instantaneous, very child-like and completely visible to anybody who cares to look. She is a sensitive flower, with white petals that stay white no matter what mud she has just been through. She is completely open, like an open book, the one that the cruel would love to tear and the kind would love to comfort.

Now, to have such a face, is not that easy, because a shop-assistant that has no goods that she desires, will quickly feel offended by her frown and withdraw into hostility. The tired, the numb, the motionless, and these are many, the ones that have learned to hide anything that happens within them, would get confused and than quickly offended by her childish look and touch, and would try to do anything to stop her from being who she is. They mother her and father her or ignore her and hurt her, depending of what stage of animal to human evolution they found themselves in. And yet, she does not mean to harm - anybody.

Whenever I meet her I realise that I have never met anybody so tactile and humble in my life. When she talks her eyes are shining reflecting all the enthusiasm of her talk, when she is silent she withdraws into the depths of the silence only known to a few – to the ones who know and the ones who were abused. She would withdraw when in a presence of a group of people she doesn’t know, when in a presence of older men, men of authority, when in a presence of anybody cleverer, more beautiful and more confident – and these are many.

She does not remember her story but I do because I saw it. She spent 2 years of her toddler life in a hospital, surrounded by white coats and needles, by faceless bodies and soulless rules that would not allow her parents in, unless it is a weekend and it is a visiting hour. She says, she remembers a dog barking and the child within her scream – it is them, it is them, it is my mum and my dad and my sister arriving. I remember being extremely happy because I am gonna see her again, and I will give her a bear that I got as a present and I saved to protect her from the emptiness of a dark room, from monsters under her bad, from other children’s pain, from grown-ups insanity, from night-mares, from lone loneliness that only a child left on its-own can know, and I was there and there was a woman standing at the door barring my entry – you can not come in, she said, there is a virus in the town and we do not want it spread. You do not understand, I said in my little mind, I do not have a virus, I have her bear and I have to give it to her, it is hers to protect her from your awfully white coat, and these awfully white walls, and that awfully white bed that hides insanities of this strange world. And I run under her wide spread legs to the bed where I will see her eyes and give her what was rightfully hers.

Going out of the hospital with 2 metal rods to strengthen her legs, 2 years later, with a mother that would not allow her to do anything, scared for her every move, scared for her-own motherhood, scared for the future and the future of the future. And S was fine, she was strong, and she could do it, she could do anything if she was just allowed – but she wasn’t. She wasn’t allowed to walk, to talk, to read, to move, to act, to stretch, she was not allowed to be. And she was sent to school and she suffered because everybody seamed to do better, to know better, to be better. And children sensed the possibility of a bloody hunt and that amused them and they became hunters dreaming every possible cruelty to harm her. She is scared of needles, so they got needles and chased her around the court-yard so that they can catch her and sit on top her and put the needles into her tender skin and hear her screaming – and nobody did anything about it. Teachers, parents, passers-by, not a single grown-up raised their voice to stop this fury that had no reason and no end, to stop the sado-masochism that was carefully cultivated among these cruel little minds. And this generation was particularly cruel. Our math teacher found a fastidious pleasure in torturing her in front of the class proving to the class and himself and her how worthless she is.

I was one year younger than the rest of the class and I was not their equal. I was waiting to grow-up so that I can face them and stop the sickness that was surrounding us. And I did it, some years later, as soon as I could, after I stopped crying in the corridors waiting for somebody to notice. And she, she bared it all, burring the experiences under the thick cote of memories and losing them because they were too scary to remember. But I stayed conscious, because I was too scared that if I forgot everybody would and the story would repeat again, as it did so many times. And I saw my mum losing the control because S didn’t listen, because she was too strong to be broken apart, and I saw her changing her thrashing tools from a hand to a belt, taken off my father’s trousers, to a coat hanger or a flying ash tray if they could help her burning rage. She was unconscious of her unconsciousness and she lived surrounded by her own shadows, by her own guilt of being a mother of an abused child.

And contrary to all odds, S. did not get angry, did not need to forgive, and did not rebel, she responded with kindness unknown to human race, a quality dreamt of, by some of the most devoted Buddhist. Do not hurt anybody in front of S. – she will do anything to help the victim, to stop you, to diminish the pain. She will get-up to give you her chair no matter how much younger or fitter than she you might be. Her soft smile and soft touch and a kiss even for a stranger, and her incredible awareness of other people sufferings, sometimes feel unreal in this world of human contours that so viciously fight for their small ‘self’ forgetting the other, any-other.

She is gentle and fragile. She is kind and understanding. She is love in-personified. Her body talks for her, expressing her emotions, thoughts & worries…