The sting of tears jumping to my eyes and the sticky lump in my childish throat caused me to send an unsuccessful foot in the direction of my tormenting cousin. His quick side-step making my body tilt askew, knee twisting with the force of my missed kick.
"He did not!" I cried, off balance and fingers twisting around the doll I held tight to my chest.
"Yea he did. You're annoying and ugly and no one loves you!" My cousins' hand shot out to shove me backwards, slamming against my right shoulder and sending me tumbling with a butt-smacking lurch. Gravel shooting a dozen bee stings across my back and arms and digging grooves. "Just go away Bit" he spat at me, towering over and blocking out the sun for a moment before turning his back on my crumbling face.
He kicked some loose stones that thudded hollowly against my knees and left arm.
That was the first time my tiny heart broke.
I actually didn't know why my dad wasn't around. I didn't really question it because neither was my brothers dad. It wasn't something that was talked about. I knew other kids had mums and dads. My mum had a boyfriend, my Grandpa was around and my Uncle Colin and there were lots of guys at church and in our apartment building who I played with.
That was the first time it have ever crossed my mind to wonder about someone who was "my dad".
My little mind conjured up the scene of a "dad", looking at tiny, wrinkled, baby me- the face in the picture my mum had from when I was first born- and sticking out his tongue. "Ew" he might have said. Maybe he handed me back to mum and said, "I don't want that."
Or maybe he had never even held me. Maybe he had just looked and saw how awful I was and ran out of the hospital screaming like Animal from the muppets.
I wanted to ask someone. Maybe my mum or my brother. But then I thought, what if it's true? My brother sometimes said I was a cry baby, so he might not tell me because then I would just make that awful noise he hated. And maybe that's why mum didn't talk about a dad. She would tell us not to say mean things, and that would be a mean thing.
I hugged my doll, Annie tighter. With determination, I wiped my teary face and stood up off the rocky driveway. Sniffling and looking around to see if any of my other cousins were close by. I didn't want them to see me acting like a baby.
If my own dad thought I was ugly, maybe I should just run away, I thought. My legs, back and bum were throbbing and stinging from the fall, but I set my lips in a tight line and snuggled Annie up under my chin. I headed off in the direction of the bush. Past the house, down the hill and around the giant rock that marked the entrance of the forest.
My memories of that day from the point of leaving my grandmothers yard are quite fantastical and dream like. My adult mind questions the validity of sitting on the rotting soft wood of a stump at the edge of a swampy clump of rotting leaves and talking to a yoda-like creature. The trees most likely did not guide me or brush their limb-fingers through my hair to comfort me. I certainly could not have heard a rabbit tell me it was time to go home or watched as mushrooms sprouted out of the ground leading me to the road.
What I do know for sure is I was gone all day. It was almost dark when I made my way into the small town at the end of the island and a lady recognized me and called my grandma. I remember falling asleep to the sound of grown-ups talking about what a bold little shitty-pie I was. I didn't know what "independent streak" was, but I could hear the proud tone in my grandmas' voice, and with Annie tucked snugly under my chin, I slipped into an exhausted sleep.
It would be years before I discovered that my mum had left my father long before I was born, and that he had never, in fact, looked at my infant face. Meeting him in my teenage years helped solidify my belief that he had never, nor would have ever, said anything close to my cousins' claim.
But words are powerful things. Hearts are hard to heal.
One thing I know about my character is that I am as quick now as I was back then to run. Protect self. Fantasy or real, my first reaction is to pull back, resist, run and disappear. As soon as my heart starts to hurt, my fearful reaction is to put as much distance between me and whatever I think is going to cause pain.
Yet...
I have been learning. Slowly but surely, that it's okay.
It's okay to hurt and I don't need to run back to my forest.
I'm bringing this part of my journey out into the light because I'm pretty sure we all have some piece of us, some part of our psyche, that is still reacting to things; real or perceived, the exact same way we did when we were little. That first time our trust was broken or our faith was rocked, or we felt alone and lost and unworthy. It set us up to always resort back to that same feeling.
Maybe our outwards actions have grown up a little, but the knee-jerk emotional response is still that little broken heart.
I want to say it's okay, and maybe it's time to remember what caused it. Maybe it's time to put that memory in the palm of our hand, crush it like a brittle leaf and blow it away.
Because people will break promises, hurt you, leave you, say mean things, be angry and confuse you, do all sorts of things that you can't explain or protect yourself from.
But bottom line, at the end of the day, you're gonna be okay. I promise.
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