Little Girl

Once upon a time there was a little girl. And for a thousand reasons this little girl was sad. She wasn’t sad because she wanted a toy and didn’t get it. That went without question because her family didn’t have the money. She was painfully aware of that at a young age, so she never asked. No, this little girl was sad because she wanted so much more than toys. She simply wanted to be loved. She wanted someone to worry about her, to look after her. It was simple and yet others had and abundance of it. They were rich. She wanted to be rich too but love wasn’t free. It was too much for her to ask for. She was conditioned to believe a great lie. The Wrath taught her that.

She made every effort to avoid the Wrath, but to no avail. She could only get by for so long and then it would come. She would flinch in anticipation before the strike was made. The Wrath came in various forms. Sometimes, the Wrath was physical and at other times it was emotional and psychological. And most of the time it was a combination of two. Who would notice this little girl and the daily abuse she would suffer for her entire childhood? No one would, because no one would claim to know about the daily ritual. Everyone around her turned a blind eye to her bruises on the inside and out, and she went unnoticed.

As the ritual continued into her early teens, the little girl had all but shut down. She didn't trust another. She looked at an honest complement with a wry eye and wondered why anyone would bother with her. What did they want from her? She didn't believe she was worthy of love and affection from another soul. She worried she might live out her life with a hole in her heart and a head full of frightening memories. At first she tried to stay out of her own head, but with nowhere else to go, she began writing stories, volumes of stories. Each story she wrote with a different pen and each in a different journal. She found peace in her writings no matter how dark or how disturbing. And sometimes she wrote happy stories of all of her hearts desires. She smiled the entire time.

It would take her becoming a young adult before she discovered her inner strength. She never realized how strong she truly was. It wasn’t until she was removed from the ritual did she find her strength had always been there. She was not broken. She discovered she had the capacity to love and be loved. She even discovered that she had compassion for the Wrath who she recognized as a tortured soul. The Wrath believed lies too, lies from his own head. Although she had been beaten down with fists and words by the Wrath, he no longer jailed her. She set herself free.

The little girl was now a grown woman. She looked back on her childhood and found the one thing that kept her safe: Her stories. Unfortunately, she lost all of her writings from her childhood because she destroyed them. The Wrath taught her that too. Still, it was never too late to start again.

Her optimism flowed through her compelling her to move forward. The little girl inside her couldn’t wait to pick out a new journal and a new pen and begin. Once she got started it felt like the most natural thing to her. She found her strength was never lost. After all this time.