-
Get Published on Female First
Eleven year old Melissa pushed the point of the scissors into her little finger, just below the nail. She pressed harder until it hurt, gave a little cry and ran from the bathroom.
'What on earth's the matter with you?' asked her mother, but it was more a growl than a question.
'As if you care!' Melissa snapped, tossing her plaits. 'You never listen to me!'
Dear Diary. It's awful at home. Mum's such a bitch. Can't talk to her. She just moans. And Dad's always on her side. Well, he's just Dad. He's not bad, I suppose, but you don't talk to your father. Gross.
Dear Diary. Hey, I like how it hurts when I cut myself. I can start and stop it, and when I bleed, it's like my heart bleeds, but you can see this bleeding and it's better than hurting inside, where no-one can see, and it's real. I'm real! Something I can do. For me! Don't care what anybody says!
Dear Diary. Mum's getting worse, stomping around the place, going on about things, her face all squeezed, oh my God, she's so grumpy, and Dad doesn't say anything, just looks helpless, like that straw man in the Wizard of Oz. Why can't he stand up to her?
Dear Diary. Last night, Dad coming in, sits on my bed, looking empty sort of, and I ask why is Mum always so angry and he looks at me all serious and then he says she's a special lady but something happened to her long ago, but he won't say what, and I'm like, so? Why does she have to take it out on us? Go away, leave me alone. But he just strokes his beard. Then he smiles that way he does and says 'Shhhshhh, you're still my precious girl and I love you,' and he holds my hand and it feels like when I was a wee. I must've gone to sleep because I had the yuck nightmare again and woke up bawling my eyes out.
Dear Diary. Can't get rid of that nightmare...always the girl's face coming up from under the bed and when I think about it, I have to forget it. It's just like, you know, a thing I see behind my eyes, then it's kinda like my brain shuts off and I can't remember nothing, except I think it might be real. I dunno about that. All I know is I don't trust nobody and I hate my life.
Thirty years pass.
'Stop being so bloody patronising. Leave me alone! You've no idea what I'm going through!' Melissa screamed at Simon, her husband, sitting on the end of the bed. She pulled the blankets over her head, breathing heavily, and turned away.
To get up? To turn over, sit, put feet on floor, go to the toilet, shower, dry, dress, eat breakfast, and put on make-up? 'Nothing to be anxious about,' they all say. 'No need to be depressed. Just think positively.' Bullshit!
Melissa sat up, clutching the blankets to her chin, eyes blazing.
'Nothing bothers you! You sail through life like everything's a breeze. You haven't got a clue what I feel, and you don't bloody care!'
Simon cleared his throat.
'And stop stroking your beard and coughing when you don't know what to say! It drives me mad, you tiptoeing around me all the time, as if I'm going to bite you!'
'You'd better get up,' Simon replied. 'You have that appointment this morning, and we've got to get you back on your feet.' He attempted a smile. 'Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, back to your old self.'
'What're you smirking at?' Melissa snarled. 'What's so funny, eh?' She pulled the blankets over her face.
Simon left the room.
A scattered weariness nailed Melissa to the bed. A confusion of thoughts and emotions. A jumbled, joyless muddle.
She heard the door open and looked up. Simon was standing beside the bed, arms crossed, gazing down with a strange expression on his face.
'You're turning into your mother,' he whispered.
'Fuck off!' she screamed, and threw a pillow at him.
***
The office was small and sparse. A desk in one corner. Two chairs. One close to the door, where Melissa was sitting. On the other, across the room, was Dawn, the Someone To Talk To. She looked ordinary, with grey hair, like anybody's aunty.
'You're the fourth counsellor I've been to,' Melissa said.
'How did it go with the others?'
'Bad. The first was a man, who never said anything.'
Dawn nodded.
'Next was a woman who gave me strategies and exercises, but I wasn't up to them, so I stopped going.'
'Uhuh.'
'The other one was some kind of a shrink who knew a lot of long words and preached at me about how I should live my life.' Melissa tossed her head. 'Nobody has been able to help me or give me any answers.'
'I don't think I'll be able to give you any, either.'
'I beg your pardon?'
'Why do you expect me to give you answers?'
'That's your job.'
'My role is to support you to find your own answers.'
Melissa raised her eyebrows, then frowned and looked away.
Dawn continued. 'You know more about yourself than I ever will.'
Melissa folded and unfolded her arms.
Dawn smiled. 'If you're able to tell me about yourself, and I am able to listen and respond intelligently, some answers may come, but not from me.' She pointed to the carpet. 'The answers will come from your own head and they will emerge there, in the space between us.'
'Oh, really?' replied Melissa, shifting in her chair, and drumming her fingers on the armrest.
'Yes,' Dawn answered, and waited.
'My doctor says I've got depression,' Melissa muttered, after a while. 'Something to do with chemical deficiency.'
'But what do you think? What's your gut feeling?'
'My gut feeling?'
'Yes.'
'Am I allowed to have gut feelings?'
'Of course.'
'My gut feeling,' said Melissa, looking at her feet and speaking fast in a low voice, 'is that it's been with me since I was a kid and I used to be able to deal with it and get on with my life and be successful but I can't anymore and I think there're things I have to face up to though I don't know what they are and I don't want to deal with them but I know I have to and I'm shit-scared.'
'Sometimes we don't start to deal with things until we are strong enough and ready to,' Dawn replied. 'Maybe now is your time.'
Melissa glanced up quickly. Dawn was gazing at her with a soft light in her eyes.
Melissa took in her surroundings for the first time. Cream curtains. An old-fashioned light shade. A grey filing cabinet. Three certificates on the wall and a painting of a luxuriant rose bush, its velvet blooms dark red, almost black, its warmth and aroma seeming to reach into the room.
Melissa took a deep breath. 'Where do I start?'
Dawn tilted her head in a listening stance, like a sparrow. 'What pops into your mind?' she murmured.
Melissa let her head droop. Scattered images whirled in the cosmos of her brain.
Twelve years old. Dad taking her for a walk on a Sunday afternoon, sitting beside her at the park, and breaking the news.
Why? Why? How come? What do you mean it's all too hard and you can't cope anymore? Where will you live? Where will I live? Will I see you?
At school, wishing the ground would open up and swallow her. In class, bursting into tears and running from the room with the other kids and the teacher staring.
Something else, too, flashed into the space behind her eyes. It was dim, not a memory, more like the faded impression left by a forgotten, ancient nightmare.
Then a face.
A face, oh shit, an older girl, Helen, breathing funny, with big eyes, telling me I'm her favourite, and hands under...oh my God, my God!
' But Mummy I told you I don't like Helen. She's yucky.'
' Don't be stupid, Melissa! You just imagine things! She'll tuck you into bed, then read you a story, and when Daddy and Mummy come home, you'll be fast asleep!'
'Mummy, Mummy, why don't you listen to me and why won't you believe me?'
Melissa opened her eyes and looked frantically around the room.
Dawn moved her chair close, leaned forward and handed her a box of tissues.
'I never cry,' Melissa murmured, wiping her eyes.
***
'You've been crying,' said Simon, afterwards, as he led her to the car.
'Yes. Dawn was really nice, there's something about her, I felt safe... but there's a lot of stuff I'll have to work through. She wants me to start keeping a journal about my thoughts when I get upset.' She grabbed his sleeve. Simon turned to her, stretched out his arms and pulled her to him. Passers-by stepped around the sobbing middle-aged couple, raised their eye-brows, and walked on.
***
'What are you thinking about?' Simon asked Melissa, later.
They were parked beside a monument at a hill lookout, eating KFC in their car, gazing out over the city, which was barely visible through smog, although the sky was blue and the sun smiled down on the earth.
'Something Dawn said to me.' Melissa replied after a long silence. 'That I'm not responsible for my past, only for my future.'
She sighed and rested her head on Simon's shoulder.
Tagged in Bruce Costello