Drowning in the shadows is not like her. Escaping from those shadows is not her way, walking beside them is what she does. Making airplanes out of all the papers that cut her is her move. She holds her fears in the hands and walks with them, side by side. She can climb the rainbow with everything that is trying to pull her down, and she can even settle on the layer where the sun shines. All yellow, all bright.
She stumbles. She
almost drowns in the shadows. But ‘almost’ is where she always stays. Every
time she stumbles, she remembers to tie her shoes. She opens her eyes. There
are no shadows. Only her. But then what? How do you fight or walk with the
shadows you can no longer see? Now all she can think about is how to stop all
the reminiscence. For that, opening your eyes is not enough. She needs a bigger
move. She has to open her heart.
She is eight. Her
world seems as if it is full of cotton candy and vanilla ice cream. She seems
as if she has been swallowed by a giant pink galaxy. At night, you would think
you could only hear her sweet melodies in her sweet dreams. But you know what?
The only thing you could hear would be a pen silently dropping to the paper and
scratching it softly. Her world was not filled with cotton candy and the only
ice cream she would eat was lemon ice sticks. There would be a sour yellow line
in her mouth, a stain in her shirt. She was swallowed by rainbows. She is eight
and she writes in her locked diary hoping that the key stays with her: “Dear
diary, today is Sunday. They gathered and they are having breakfast. A fancy
one with lots of laughter. I did not go to the table. And no one noticed me. No
one is aware of my absence. They are having breakfast and I am in my room
waiting for someone to remember me.” She is eight. And all she wonders about is
whether rainbows can be in black and white or not.
She is almost
fifteen. She buries herself in her books and classes. She lights candles in her
room, puts on soft melodies as she reads The Waves and she dreams of the
sunsets that are far away. She detests herself because ‘herself’ is far from
being her own. She is just a reflection of everyone’s image of her. And it is
not ‘herself’. Nowhere near. Why is she stuck in grey? Why can’t she find her
way up to the rainbow?
She is almost
twenty, and she smokes like a chimney. She feels as if the words are coming up
to her throat every time she takes a breath and colours her liver grey. What if
she is stuck in grey? What if she is swallowed by a cloud of smoke that covers
her good old rainbow? What if she is swallowed by greyness? She is almost
twenty and she drops the pen into the paper:
I still
check the monsters under my bed
There still
plays a haunted house in my head
I cannot
skip my turn when the shadows return
And rest
beside my face
Why do I
have to put on my best, golden smile
To be loved
in this age?
Somewhere, at one
point where we cannot see yet, she is out of the woods, out of the greyness.
Perhaps not all out, but she carries the grey cloud on her head, floating. For
it is not like her to drown in the shadows.
