The Girl

There was a girl.

She was fire and sparkled with joy; light flowing within and without. Her cornflower eyes gazed upon the world with simple fawn-like wonder, taking everything in, absorbing the good, walking with her head ever bowed in a holy countenance.

Her world was small, a bubble of simple wholesomeness. The girl was good because while she was good; she was also told to be good because only by being good would good things happen to her. As a little girl, this was simple enough. Be good or lose a doll, be good or go to bed hungry. But as she grew older, goodness became muddled with happiness. Because while she tried to be good, she soon found herself not happy.

The girl asked what this meant and was told that she needed to be good, or she would make others bad. She wondered how she could possibly be bad enough to make someone else also bad. Those whom she thought wise told her she needed to choose whom she spent her time with, whom she liked, whom she loved. They said she could ruin not only her life, but others by simply looking too pretty. When she asked what this meant, there were no answers. When she asked if she were too pretty, there was only silence.

There was a girl.

Now growing into a body slightly too big for all the feeling coursing inside its awkward frame. Alone, she searched out the answers to how to be what she was, for indeed, she felt more like a what than a who. How to make her face like those in the magazines, like the goddesses of social media fame? What clothes would garner her the attention she knew she wanted, but never would admit she needed? How did she talk to the opposite sex without falling over her gangly self in total humiliation?

Then there were the other questions. The ones that would bring damnation if she asked. What did any of it feel like? Did the world go hazy like in the movies as the crescendo of a water-colored movie score played in your head? Did your fingers really linger just outside of reach before interlocking like thread on a perfectly woven tapestry? And when you kissed, was it really possible for two faces to perfectly align in synchronous harmony to create those sigh-worthy screen moments? She wanted to know, but she could not ask. She wanted to know more but knew to stay silent.

There was a girl.

Now on the cusp of what it is to be a woman, but still clinging to what it meant to be a girl. There now was a hunger, a yearning, the need for validation. She had come from somewhere, but she did not know where she was supposed to be going. She searched for answers at home, in school, in the pew at church on Sundays. It was always the same. Be good. Soon, to be good was not enough. For what did that mean? She still did not even know.

What she did know was that eyes were on her. New eyes. Eyes that did not watch her with judgment or disapproval, but eyes that called her out. They shone from the forests of existence, casting a spell that pulled her toward the haze of the unknown. They were steely hard, and pools of calm folded together in symbiotic perfection. They followed her as she drove through the green, yellow, red glow of streetlights late at night. They followed her as she walked up the stairs and through the hallways at school. They watched her on Sundays as she sang from her hymnal in church. And every time she felt those eyes upon her, the girl felt something that she had never felt before. That she mattered. It was a connection that would ground her to this world. Validate her. Answer her questions.

She finds it.

In arms with no faces, next to bodies with no hearts. But hers beats, a primeval beat – full of fervor. She knows and cares of nothing except that she is aware of being held, being connected, being recognized. There is no being good, just acceptance.

Until the morning… when she is alone.

There was a girl.

She sits in the corner, bordered by whispers and rumors. All the eyes that once turned from her, now look in disgust. And the girl now has more questions. What did she do? The eyes looked, the arms beckoned, and she went. Those that had told her to be good, now said she was bad, but what had she done wrong except to want to be seen, be accepted for who she was? The body and beauty she once took pride in, now she despised. She tried to hide it, tried to disappear between the cushions of the church pew. She walked beside her parents as they spoke to their friends, but she was lost in their shadows, a blemish on whatever the unspoken glory was she had fallen short of. Her sparkle was gone. Her confusion had metastasized into a cloud that enveloped her in everlasting darkness. The more she sought forgiveness for the goodness she had seemingly lost, the more she was pushed away… pushed toward everything she was told was not good… everything that seemed good.

There was a girl.

And there was the moon. Or was it a streetlight? The girl could not tell. But there was a light, taunting her with its silver fingers peeking through metallic blinds covering a cheap window looking into this cheap room. The arms that once held her, now pin her, push her into the metal springs of the mattress. Their shrieking metallic screams grate against the back of her brain. She feels hands scratching, clawing, pulling, as if searching for something they cannot find. Her vulnerability causes her to freeze. Her mind races, but her body is rigid as it is robbed. She hears the ticking of the clock on the nightstand… a car drives by below. Would they even help if they knew? She tries to scream at the light, but she is pulled across the wrinkled piles of twisted sheets into permanent darkness.

There was a girl.

She waits in the sterile, frigid room. All the voices from her past screaming in her weary brain. She stares at her warped, twisted reflection leering back from the dispensary. That was her true self. Ugly, damaged, used. She was a petri dish of passed around flesh, a byproduct of society, the textbook example for all Sunday schools of what not to be. The doctor tells her with indifference she faces responsibilities and choices she is not ready for. She needs to choose. Choose what? Impossible or inevitable? Outside the window the people she believed to be the ones to best exhibit goodness hurl insults at other girls like herself. They come in the name love, yet there is no sign of it. No one crosses the street to hold the girl’s hand or embrace them in kindness. Segregated by choice, separated by asphalt and picket signs.

The rumors turn to testimony as her sins are paraded during church announcements. There was no mention of attack, no use of the noun’s “victim” or “survivor.” Instead, the girl was memorialized as a reminder of what not to be as the congregation mentally labeled her in their perfect minds. All the verses hung in her face, all the names ring in her ear.

There was a girl.

Running through the darkness, gripping her belly, fleeing the anger, the pointing fingers, the gossip once more. She pulls out her phone and desperately tries every number she knows one last time… ring, ring, voicemail. No one wants to talk to trash. Ahead is the church, above her is the steeple, but she can’t go there, can she? What would they say? To them, there is no goodness left.

There is a girl.

She is an Amazon, a warrior infinite. She waded through hell and refined herself in the depths of her own mind. She clawed through the cage crafted for her, and she survived. Her words became her sword, carving a path for silenced voices. And they will scream, they will sing. The girl will speak. She will rage with a fire that is stoked by cries silenced in the darkness. Her memory propels her toward destiny and she will blaze with determination. For no matter what she is told, no matter the politics, the propaganda or the paraphernalia, there will always be…

A girl.