Talking with Little Me
Honestly, I don’t know what normal eight-year-old children are supposed to think. Little me was probably more contemplative and thought-driven than average. Little me was entertained simply by being left alone, in the backseat of her father’s truck. She daydreamed about designing clothes, building homes, earning scholarships, and becoming a city leader. She thought about life because she feared death. She often felt as though she was barely escaping death, or perhaps she was hiding from it. Expired. Living beyond her intended time.
When I was eight-years-old, Little me cried herself to sleep on so many nights. Little me said prayers. Long, thought-out prayers, seeking redemption or release from constant struggle and slavery. Long before I contemplated arguing in courtrooms or in front of general assemblies, I debated my own deservings with God. I pleaded to go to sleep and wake up in a new, better life. I asked, in the alternative, to be adopted by a loving, beautiful, wealthy family that could pay for Little me to take piano lessons. Little me thought about the word, “justice,” what justice would like in her life. Little me was also totally terrified of contemplating a single bad thought about her captor. Little me’s final plea with God was to receive death rather than wake up without some very serious modification to her current condition.
I did not know it back then, but… normal eight-year-old children do not ask for death. “Normal,” or typical children, anyways. Children who have normal childhoods, without toxic stress and with moderate positive, strength-growing stress. Learning to lose without losing it. Learning to share surplus, not to split rations. Learning to clean up after making a mess of all-purpose flour, not to clean up to prevent outrageous outbursts by a Captor.
Little me was searching for signs from some higher being, hopeful that there was a being more powerful than Captor, someone to save her. No one saved Little Me.
When I hear Florence and the Machine, I imagine Little Me sitting here on the bed with me, hugging her knees tightly, hopelessly staring forward with feelings of despair and anger she tries to suppress. As the music speeds up and works towards its crescendo, I imagine taking her hand lightly and trying to pull her up onto the bed with me. Dance to survive. I can see her struggle as I try to pull her up, to stand firmly on her knees, to not be in so much pain, to dance with me. In my head, it looks like dancing, but it is actually a plea. I am begging Little Me to dance with me… because every dance is a winning fight.
Perhaps I am that higher being, that older, more self-aware consciousness that Little Me needs. I know she can do it. I can feel it. I am living it. I need her to see that Captor took all he could grab from her, but he could never take her soul. She is too precious. Not precious in a way that is easily broken. Precious in a way that deserves the utmost respect and love.
We all need someone to fight for us. Sometimes there is only ourselves.
