Effects of The Cherryhound Italian

‘She was a silly thing' they'd say, always egging her on about it.

Her feet wouldn't walk right (tied upwards at the achilleas) and scars dug in at every angle on her skin.

'She was a silly thing' they'd say, always egging her on about it.

She'd bite straight through her lip from stress and chopped off all her long, dark hair at 3:57 am one Thursday on a whim to get people to stop always pulling at it.

'She was a silly thing' they'd say, always egging her on about it.

She'd cram her fingers down her throat one by one like caterpillars forcing their way out of ordinary ugliness, desperate to become something admired.

She was never admired.

She was never accepted.

She was never even tolerated.

~

The five letter two syllable word began to haunt her. ‘Pretty’ was the bare minimum low hanging bar she could never reach. It had nothing to do with her own personal affliction towards negative opinion of herself. She had always thought herself to be rather delightful. Her mother, however, was never quite as kind nor giving in prone to flattery—at least not to her. All the praise was busy being spent on the greater sibling.

It was like her mother had a word count that necessitated being hit every day, but only a very short, stunted limit for how many of those terms that did fly out—unhinged and so barbaric—which were allowed to be compassionate. All of these compassionate words were set aside to fill the first born to the brim with pride bordering easily on robust arrogance.

The rotund blonde and her unkempt mother would make remarks that were never subtle. Grace was not within their wheelhouse.

When the mother got remarried it was only a perfect excuse to play elevated favourites, because he was a monster who sought to devour the sweetness of the second born and her mother was all too quick to negate the facts of this happening.

Police came in and never cared, for they were tired and underpaid and seemed to think the man in question was relatable. They too understood why a child in an oversized T-shirt might boil his blood over. It was her fault for showing bare legs.

They couldn’t prove anything without a deeper penetrating sin, so every external factor was ignored.

She grew up tossed between houses that blamed her or thanked gods for doing this thing to her, claiming if it was true He would have sent the man to jail.

Homeless at times, desperate for approval at others, she fell in and out of depression convinced her body only mattered if it could become ‘pretty’ enough to be believed.

The mind was worse.

She prayed and she cried and she tried on different people to become acceptable. Something told her that if she were acceptable she might earn a family that cared for her safety. ‘Silly’ thoughts made her think if she could become someone to envy they would apologize and ask her back into their world. If she could only be ‘pretty’ they would believe her and her mother would leave the swine who tried to pillage her.

A fairy tale ending never occurred.

The wicked mother never earned penance.

The horrid sister got married young.

The monster was never vanquished.

The girl whittled down to bones and no one even blinked about it.

~

‘She was a silly thing’ they’d say, always egging her on about it.

Her family was jeering and drawing crude cartoons about her weight and her nose.

‘She was a silly thing’ they’d say, always egging her on about it.

Her family was mocking her talents and interests as ‘too feminine’ which was code for ‘too easy;’ ‘inconsequential;’ ‘wasteful.’

‘She was a silly thing’ they’d say, always egging her on about it.

Her family was dragging her by her hair, ripping it out in the process.

Her family wouldn’t allow her to eat anything unless it was given to her directly.

Her family wouldn’t allow her to leave her room or speak or sing without explicit direction.

Her family wouldn’t allow her to have friends or ever go outside or get to know new people unless they were solely on the internet.

Her family taught her how to cram her fingers down her throat when she was eight, for their own interest.

Her 'family…'

~

In the movies, parents were like pillars. They lifted their children up and supported them with love and humour. She saw these stories and every time she wept in jealousy over them. Being jealous, though, made her hate herself, because to covet is a sin.

She didn’t believe in any god, but she had no other parental figure to rely on, so she tried to behave how He would expect her to. It was a game. If she was good according to holy ordinance she could pretend it meant that she was acceptable. She could pretend that she qualified for affection. She could pretend she was worthy of someone being proud that she existed. She could pretend… But pretending is all just that.

The act fades quietly and slowly; never all at once. She had tried so hard to make up for her past that she was forgetting who she used to be.

‘Nobody wanted that girl,’ She reminded herself, ‘She was a silly thing.’

The mantra was supposed to encourage her to succeed without concerns for the fact she was never important. Unfortunately, it had negative implications that reinforced the life lessons her family had taught her.

The girl was getting tired of trying to be other people. Her body was weak and depleted and still nobody wanted her. Losing weight, they never tell you, doesn’t make people love you back. Losing weight and gaining traction doesn’t make anything happen, because who you are is the only measure of value. Who she was, was buried. The only difference now was she was buried under bones and artificial luxuries.

Material possession, though not excessive, had become her new god when pretending against an authentic sexuality to appease His ideals began to kill her.

Posters and tapestries and electrical knickknacks clung on to every surface like static cling, making her hair stand up for a different reason. She was always anxious.

She needed to find a way to come back to herself. She needed the right tools to excavate the bones. The struggle wasn’t simply collecting what she had been and cleaning it up and making it presentable enough to study, though. The real difficulty was in figuring out herself without becoming tainted by the poisonous memories that were clouding over this adventure. It was time to cut the ties from family obligations and ideals she could never live up to. It was time to grow up and understand that who she was is exactly who she was always meant to be. She had always been good enough. The one in the mirror was all the family she would ever need.