“One. Two. Three. Four. Five”
The children gathered and shouted the numbers with great joy. It occurred to me how rare this form of innocence was. Each child in the classroom looked proud and only cared that they were able to count to ten correctly, with no other worries in the world. Obviously they were only five years old, however looking back on my life, my past mistakes I came to realise that I yearned for this innocence. What I would give to not know pain.
My name is Lila. My life began in a hospital with inadequate equipment, poorly paid nurses and in a time of great recession. It was because of all this that they were unable to save my mother. This inevitably ruined my Father, as he had lost the love of his life and gained his greatest burden all in one night. He blamed me for her death. I was a child, unable to understand the reasons for my fathers drunk hurtful slurs which made it easier to ignore. However with age comes understanding, and as I understood his pain, insults and feelings I spiralled into a path of self hatred.
It was in secondary school that the self loathing was catalysed by bullying. The popular girls had picked me as their pray. The lonely girl who dressed in rags, was covered in bruised and had a father who never appeared for a parents evening- wise choice. They had begun with calling me names as they past such as Bitch, Turd, Slut.. The list goes on. It then increased as the girls would grab me into the toilettes and attack me in ways that should never be experienced as a child. Finally they gathered my class and coerced them into ignoring me as if I was the bubonic plague. It got to the point that my teachers noticed, although their attempts were futile as my father wouldn’t complain, if anything he felt I deserved it, the class wouldn’t snitch and I was not in a position to tell on my pursuers, so I suffered in silence for a year.
Once that year was over, I was transferred out of my school and sent to many others. Attachments were never made as my stays in the various schools had never exceeded past six months, naturally because of this I had learned to forge differently personalities for the fun of it. In some schools I would be quiet and timid, in others I would be sarcastic and loud and sometimes I would be a delight just to see what it felt like to be liked but not attached to others. This of course was executed at home to my drunken father, at first to see whether he would notice my different personalities but then it became a fun past time. I was able to get money, beatings, love and groundings all depending on which personality I took on and how drunk that man was.
It was only until the end of my school years that I was able to escape my father, get a low paying job at minimum wage and live in a small dirty, dusty, rat filled apartment - and yet it was the only place I would call home. My neighbours were far from friendly, they were hostile and preoccupied with their own lives. This was an environment that my tendencies to become a recluse should have thrived, and yet it was my most outgoing years. Earning little money, feeding myself and living my day to day life like clockwork worked out for me until I met him. The man who changed me and took it all away.
His name was Dylan. He was my first love, he was sweet, charming and a master of deception. They say you should never trust actors, and sadly I made that mistake. He was working his way up through the theatrical world when we met, it was like a love story. Our eyes met, I dropped my purse, he picked it up and pursued me until I gave into his chains of deception.
