Never to be erased fully

TW: Domestic abuse 

Like a chalkboard, she was a strange collage of everything ever written on her.

Tae does not remembers the first time she saw the sunrise, or the first food she ate. She can hardly remember the colour of the clothes she had when she was a child. She spent more time with the books than the other children. Hiding behind the bushes when she was forced out of the house by her mother to play a little, she was too awkward to approach the bunch of laughing children.

So she learnt the art of wandering. Since she could not go home or the playground, everything around her became an adventure only she knew about. Going down a so-called mining pit, an abandoned home, open empty grass field and everything left bare of humans.

She remembers her first book, the stories and birthday gifts from teachers and the pride of being the favorite student. She remembers crying on her first day of school. She remembers looking up to her sister to be more strong and better in everything she does.

She remembers that, but there is more.

Some of the chalk marks are darker than others and they leave impressions to last a lifetime.

Tae remembers those marks. This one is about the blinding white.

One night when everything looked normal to Tae, she remembers hiding behind a chair and crying quietly while collecting vegetables thrown on the ground. She was 6. She could not look up from under the chair as her parents shouted at the top of their voices about the things she did not understand. She remembers collecting the vegetables and a bunch of banana thrown by her father in a fit of rage which she was now collecting. “They would go to waste,” she thought.

And then everything on the chalkboard started become more blurry.

The second mark she remembers was on her birthday. It was pink. Pink, because she never liked the intensity of the colour. It was too harsh for her. Her family had a nice garden in front of their house where they grew all the vegetables and flowers. It was in every colour and a pride of everyone in the family. There were many garden tools in the house. She saw her mother trying to open her own head up with a long grass cutter. The father stopped her before it became serious. Tae was unwanted. Her mother wanted to leave her and her sisters and leave. Next day, she went to school with her sisters and not even a word was spoken again about the incident. They were a small happy family again. “Maybe it was because of my birthday,” Tae thought.

She loved the books. Whenever Tae travelled in train with her family during summer vacation, she was given a book or two to keep in check. Behind the curtain of AC seat, she drowned herself where every wrongdoing was punished, every good work was appreciated and everyone lived in a jungle and was an animal with a funky name. Her mother and father shouted more often now, louder than before, but she had her animals. Tae was a happy kid.

Tae remembers another mark. Her uncle has come to their home before the posting change in the armed forces. He brought the longest-lasting mark for Tae. It was a novel of 405 pages. The dark paged book coloured her chalkboard with a happy yellow. He was going to live with their family for 2 and a half day. She wanted to read it all. Every free second and sometimes even the time for homework went for the novel. Every dark letter took her closer to the aim she has set for herself. She blinked her eye and the deadline was over. She still had long way to go. He asked her to keep it. “I must get more books like this,” she thought.

Tae’s chalkboard is being written on and erased, but some of the marks remain when something new is written on it.

When their family moved to a new place, she found another mark. Friends. Joined at the hips with her friends, Tae was slowly becoming a rebel. At school, she was the devil for students and an angel for teachers. Tae knew the animals were just stories. At home she started asking questions. She got into a fight with her father because she knew she did nothing wrong. That marked Tae. She never backed down ever, when she was not wrong; no matter who stands in front of her. "Well, this is fun," she happily smiled to herself.

Every birthday was a nightmare and blessing mixed with her parents shouting at each other- worse than any other day and good food. She was finally understanding what it means to be drunk. Her parents were drunk.

The next mark I am going to tell you about floats in Tae’s head all the time.

Ailing from some health condition, her grandmother had arrived in their home a month ago. The shouts had gotten louder. The night I want to tell you about is the one where Tae learned life skill. The grey reality of life marked her chalkboard. After a long shouting competition, Tae’s mother locked herself in the room. No one found it odd. Sister continued with their studies and grandmother minded her own work. Father was working overnight. Restlessly Tae peered from the window and she saw her mother scratching her hand like there is not tomorrow. She started crying and went to her sisters telling them what was happening. They laughed at her and asked her to calm down. Tae, however kept crying and asking them to come take a look. When they looked, they called for the father and banged on the door asking the mother to open the door.

The mother was cutting her hands open. “Why is she doing this,” Tae sobbed to herself.

The father arrived and slapped her mother while overpowering her. He got everything under control. She saw it all. Tae never cries in front of anyone anymore. She never asks for help anymore.

Next day, the mother and father did not talk about it. They were smiling and happy, talking to the children as if nothing happened.

Tae still does not talk about what happens in her home to anyone.

Since then, Tae and her sisters followed an unwritten rule- every night hide the sharp objects.

Tae remembers feeling like an outcast. When she moved into her new school, she was a popular kid, but she never connected with anyone. Everyone knew her, adored her and respected her for being a disciplined and hardworking child, but she could not talk well. Tae was an outcast in her head. Her friends changed frequently, as they left her for new ones. Tae remembers these marks. The green color of jealousy and brown of betrayal. For the next years in her school, she struggled to survive through the brown. Sitting alone at the back bench, she declined all the offers of playing and played alone in the field. "Why am I like this?" she cried loudly in her head.

Tae never trusts anyone completely. She started understanding the term ‘Temporary’.

Tae wanted to get away from her home. She traveled far away for education. Here we talk about the rainbow. Alone in the city, Tae remembers being so homesick that she sat under the hot sun for all day long. However as time passed, she got new life skills.

·        Never trust anyone

·        Help everyone

·        Listen to everyone in the world where no one listens to anyone

·        Be clever

She got the rainbows when her friends adopted her for the life. A friend of each color, her chalkboard was in every shade of color she never wanted to erase. Every day was an adventure and she learned about the silver of life. Everything could be bleak, but still there will be some shine into your life, whatever it is. "This is what freedom tastes like!" she thought in her head.

She kept writing everything on her chalkboard and erasing it. There was a lot on it now. Some of them were erased permanently, but few of them remained even after she tried hard to remove them. Some of them got erased even when she did not want them to, but some of them stayed with her. Her chalkboard was yet to see a red.

Tae saw red when I tell you about the next mark. She fell in love. Dreaming of finally getting a home where she can be comfortable after a harsh day, she settled onto his life purring like a cat after a long day of running aimlessly. He knew about everything Tae was and more. They had long conversations, debates and silences. But Tae still had un-erased marks on her chalkboard, so she never told him what he meant to her. "He loves her" was all she could think.

Then everything on her chalkboard turned black and white. He told her he loved someone else. The black swallowed her heart and white blinded her from the world.

Tae remained drowned in the black and white for a while. Everything was slowly getting covered in that. It was all consuming. Unable to sleep, eat and properly function, she struggled to survive.

Death will remove every mark.

Tae isn’t dead, but this is the final color I know of.

A mix of blue and grey-grey blue.

She isn’t troubled by the permanent marks on her board. She cherishes them as experiences. The black and white changes her into a cool shade of blue which touches everything and makes it calm and happy. Yet she never forgets the grey of life as she survives to live another happy day.

If you want to know Tae, you’ll have to look at all the marks, partially erased and those forgotten. She is everything which was written on the chalkboard and everything which was erased.

It is erased, but she smiles as she sees the faint lines only she sees.