A Little Dandelion

(Trigger warnings for mental health issues, trauma, past non-sexual grooming, and mild self-harm.)

Lace’s hands twitched as they stared down at the cardigan laid out on their bed, the only sound the oscillating ceiling fan moving the humid air inside their bedroom. They had turned off their music, not thinking their indie beats would be helpful in making such a loaded decision. The sweater was a creamy white, made of a material that was almost certainly formed with synthetic micro-plastics. It was soft to the touch, not that Lace would feel it unless they wanted to be plagued with nauseous regret. 

Lace was pulled out of their contemplation, or rather the avoidance of it, by a pain in their arm. They looked down to see their arms covered in red scratch marks, their fingertips trembling close by. Huh. It had been months since they’d last done that. They hadn’t even thought about it.

They had avoided facing this so many times. Lace had ignored the cardboard shoe box they’d shoved the cardigan into placed in the back of her closet. It had been a year since they had seen her. It was best to stop themself from thinking about her. It hadn’t been until that Saturday morning of going through their clothes that they had seen it. It had been like something had possessed Lace when she had pulled out the box, laying out the sweater carefully. She didn’t deserve that, but they couldn’t stop themselves.

They used to wear it out sometimes, before they began to see the true reality of what had happened. It felt like her arms were still around them, it made her absence feel a little less excruciating. They wore it in guilt most of the time. Of course they didn’t deserve her. They should be grateful for the time she had been with them. Lace was just an ugly weed in her path she’d seen as a flower for a little while.

She had been the sun to Lace. The life force of everything, the only thing keeping them blooming. Without her, the little dandelion had wilted into a shriveled corpse. Lace had been barely living before they met her. They woke up, went to school, got satisfactory grades, talked in meaningless conversations that would lead nowhere, went home, avoided their sister, slept, and repeated a cycle of mundanity that they thought would continue for the rest of their life. Lace had almost no hobbies to speak of, they were just a seed that would never sprout.

Ms. Vale had been one of the first people to give Lace water, giving them special attention. She had looked at them like they really had a chance to succeed. She had given them a lead role in a play, confident they could handle it. Lace was her go-to student when she needed a helper, to a point where it was almost a joke. It made them…really, really happy. And they felt loved.

Lace took in a sharp inhale as they choked up, tears starting to run down her cheeks. They couldn’t do this again, they were too old for this. They were eighteen, they had an obligation to get their shit together and not get stuck in things that happened in sophomore year of high school. They grabbed a tissue, hurriedly wiping her eyes. Lace tried to maintain control, but when they looked down with her blurred vision and saw the vanilla-colored fabric, they broke down.

It had taken Lace years to finally understand what had happened to them. To be taught that their relationship with Ms. Vale had not been normal, had not been okay. They repeated words that their chorus teacher had told them in private. The boundaries between a teacher and student exist and are enforced for a reason. To that day, the teenager had no idea what their theatre teacher’s intentions had been. Maybe she truly had wanted to help Lace, had seen them struggling through living and done what she did because she thought she knew what was best for them, but she had been wrong. Controlling their relationships with other students, love bombing them with attention, it had all been too much. It was a slow infection of dependency, Lace’s roots growing deep into her soil, feeling like they could not survive without her. 

At the end of that year, as the people around Lace grew bitter and jealous, not having the time for them, Ms. Vale announced she had to leave. The dandelion was ripped out of the soil, the sun was blocked out, Lace’s world fell apart. They had wondered what the point of being alive was without her, she was their everything. Lace had been hospitalized for the first time in their life for their own safety. Ms. Vale had promised them that even if they weren’t their teacher, she would still care about them and be in their life. Unfortunately, that had been a lie.

Dandelions are more resilient than Lace had thought. Even in the loneliness and the betrayal, they started to carve out the beginnings of a life they wanted to live. They still blamed themselves, for getting close to her, for not being someone Ms. Vale wanted to see. The cardigan had been a secret santa gift, and at first Lace had been unhealthily attracted to it. It was their only memento of that year, the only tangible thing they had to show for the strife and trauma. Lace had cried into the fabric many times, wondering why Ms. Vale didn’t want to see them or hear from them. Eventually, their therapist had convinced them to put the sweater away where they couldn’t see it and wouldn’t think about it. That day Lace had been purging their closet, getting rid of all their clothing from high school that didn’t fit anymore. That had grown too much to be affected by something like a cardigan, but here they were, sobbing about how they were taken advantage of years ago.

Before Lace could stop themselves, they grabbed the sweater, clutching it to their heart as they tried to breathe through their pain and the tears. Why do you have to haunt me like this? Why can’t you let me go? Sometimes it felt like they could never escape their trauma, like it would cling to them like thorns and briars for the rest of their life.

Suddenly, a thought came to Lace, one they immediately felt a surge of panic thinking. Why were they keeping this gift from a shitty adult that didn’t even care about them, that had abandoned them at the first opportunity? They should just donate this symbol of their pain with the rest of their clothes and move on with their life, but Lace wondered if they were even strong enough to do that. They had grown so much since they were first unearthed from that sunny garden and left to die, but was it enough? They feared that maybe some part of them deep down needed this validation, or maybe it was a repeated reminder of a bitter pill. No adult was going to swoop into Lace’s life to make them feel better, or tell them everything they needed to hear. All the dandelion’s desperate hope for that magical person did was put them in the position to be an easy target for grooming. Lace couldn’t pretend like they could live in naivety, free of all the knowledge of how terrible the world can be. They were just tired of being a victim.

The sobbing coming from Lace slowed, their body starting to relax, or possibly just shut down. They should probably take their emergency hydroxyzine. They told themselves that they were going to be productive today, but Lace was ready to curl up on their couch under a blanket and watch the rest of Revolutionary Girl Utena. They looked down at the cardigan in their hands, hanging pathetically like it was wet. It was just a piece of cloth, probably made out of something horrible for the environment, the tiny synthetic threads someday slowly poisoning some poor ocean life. Lace wouldn’t throw it away if it was still wearable, they were an environmental science major, but they could definitely donate it. Maybe someone would find something special in it. Maybe they would get it as a gift for their significant other, or their child. It could be a thing with meaning, something that made people happy, instead of a skeleton in Lace’s closet. They carefully placed the sweater in the plastic bag already filled with their jeans that no longer fit and their clothes from their emo phase, and tied the bag shut.

Lace couldn’t be sure that they wouldn’t rip open the bag later and pull it out, they were a creature driven by their emotions that were often very impulsive. But they had done the first step, putting it in the bag. Even if that day Ms. Vale’s stupid cardigan wouldn’t stay it, one day Lace would be able to let go. It had been the same way with calls and texts with their former teacher. Healing was a process, and even if Lace’s leaves were a little shriveled and drooping at the moment, they knew soon would be their time to fully bloom.