LOST
There is fog around me, deep — followed by darkness.
I don't know where to go, neither what to do.
My hair isn't long enough, my breasts too small
and my face drawn by open wounds.
The fog is always there,
it makes my life unclear,
sad and bitter.
Until that one night.
He knocks on my window,
a shadow out of nowhere.
For the first time I see no fog.
I see the sky and stars,
a clear view.
The shadow smiles.
It is odd but makes me curious
and therefore I smile too.
Long gone is the fog outside my window.
The nights are filled with stars, dreams and laughter.
The shadow becomes my best friend.
And so I cut my hair.
I die it too.
I wear longer shirts and medicine heals my wounds.
But after all they still hate me.
Despise me for being different.
YET it is MY skin.
I am still the same person.
The fog comes back.
This time inside my head.
My thoughts are unclear.
I can't see it, but I can feel it.
Every day it gets heavier.
The shadow is still there and while I sit and see,
he looks and tells.
Stories about elves, mermaids and a land full of dreams.
A land where you never have to grow up.
I laugh at him and say:
“If this is real, I shall go there and make a life of dreams, hope
and love for a living, like my own island!”
And there it was: The dream of Neverland.
A week passes by and for the first time in my life
I lead myself, driven by inspiration.
The fog is less heavy, still and there and maybe it
will never go away.
But I am learning how to live with it.
And the surrounding voices, wherever they come from, hurt less.
No matter how much they judge me, they can't hurt me any more.
In the following days the shadow disappears.
I can still hear his voice, whispering the stories of tales that
are yet to be written.
One day my mother sees me sitting at the window.
She has always accepted me for the way I am and
I love her endlessly for that.
“I have never dared to ask, but who are you talking to out there?”
The question is so honest, that nothing could have prepared me for it.
I always assumed she was seeing the shadow too.
“Did you not see it? The shadow outside my window?”
I feel stupid for asking, overwhelmed by my own emotions.
My mother shakes her head.
“You've been talking to yourself.”
Another wave of emotions hits me.
“But my hair, the change of my clothes. How?”
I don't understand.
My mother walks over and slowly takes my hand.
“You have always been a great storyteller, Devon”, she says.
“But I swear there was-”
“Someone that listened to your stories? A friend?”
The next wave of emotions hits me. Am I so alone?
“Nothing to be ashamed of. This is who you are, Devon.
A dreamer, a storyteller, a creator. It doesn't matter if it is in your head
or alive. As long as you believe it, it is true”, my mother says.
“But the kids at school, the way I look and want to change — They hate
me for that. For not just being a girl. For not being like them”, the thoughts break
out of my head. The fog inside has turned into a storm.
“So what? You don't need these people. In the last weeks you have grown and
started being yourself. Everyone who doesn't accept that isn't a friend. And it is
2020, people need to accept people.”
In this very moment of my chaotic teenage peak, I had no idea what my mother
was trying to tell me.
Only years later I realized that the shadow outside my window had
been my imagination and just the start of my creativity and life as someone I was yet to become.
And looking back it is the best thing that ever happened,
the day I started creating my own Neverland.
28.04.2022 - LC HAMILTON
