.

I made an effort yesterday, not to see the whites of this screen, off grey and alluring to fill.
Unfortunately.
Little amounts of whatever it was that wanted strong imagery just as i always did when younger. But shocking. Just the rule i would live by.
They did it well. But all to show was 3 or 4 low-self esteemed photos and scrawlings of people that barely knew me in a year book half empty.

Little grey worlds i wrote by. Little supernatural lifestyles in modern-day city dwellings.
I realised the reclusive, darkened characters i seemed only able to write of were what i grew up as from the age of 9 and upwards.
Some how, subconsciously, my adolescent self knew to make a mysterious approach to the new life i was thrown into. Unaware.
They didn't need to know me. But they needed to know about me.
I recall strongly, once being talked into joining a new school, wandering the small sqaure playground alone. Clutching a toy from Essex.
The other kids offered me crisps, and were amazing by my sudden materialisation. I looked at them all through unpractised eyes.
Two weeks later. They all knew i was Wiccan.
Which, virginial readers, i most certainly was not.
This, again subconsciously, helped me pinpoint and gather the small amount of other wierd children. Outcasted ones that seeked reassurance also. A boy and a girl.
The boy's name was Tom.
They too, were 'Wiccan'.
It was an unspoken cult.
The three of us would spend the break times casting spells, and pretending we could fly (down that foul yellow slide).
It wasn't long before the other 10 year olds dismissed us as 'really really wierd'.

I didn't feel at home. But i felt comfortable in what i had created.
Constantly i needed something of reassurance. When Tom and the girl (who's name i prefer not to disclose) were not enough, the small orange dinosaur toy i gripped so constantly became my agony aunt. My listening ear. My unjudging, plain faced friend.
In the one school photo of that year, i sit at the very end of the front row, the only one wearing sandles. And if you look just a tad too closely. You will see the small orange head poking out between my cupped hands. I recall his ridged plastic feel.
I don't know where Tom and the girl sat.

For some one who analyzes every little thing she does every day, these days, it is a surreal quality to be able to look back upon those years and see just how blindly and aimlessly being a child led me to act.
And how i relied on others, but never asked. Merely spoke to unseen creatures and plastic beings.

I shouldn't mention being whipped away, nor changing names, nor running for so long.
Only because i was only ever taught to shut my mouth.
If we were to be found,
My mouth was surely to be blamed.
Those childhood eyes leaking upward to the foul pattern of whatever room i may have been in at the time. Drawing bad pictures of apologies and rifling through my collectable cards, taking in whoever was around me as a distraction from the fears building up inside of me. Fears caused by home, darkness and what i saw on the television. Or in my brothers bedroom.
It was lonely to watch my mum take her boyfriend to work in our only car at 5am.
I'd hear them get up, it would disturb the sleep i'd tried so hard to force myself into after praying to some unknown force to look after my pets and family, in case i couldn't.
Scents return to me. Dark nights of moving.
I'd see the lights outside so easily, through the bed sheet pinned to the walls that acted as my curtains.

Don't forget yourself.
It's so hard to believe that was ever me.
Nor the rest. Such a fearful child. How did i ever grow into one that seeked it, or challenged herself with it?



I can't write any more.