The Girl I Once Was

Now

“You have a really strong Inner-Critic mode. The most prominent schemas are Abandonment, Failure, Self-sacrifice, Unrelenting standards,  Negativity, and Approval-seeking.” 

Then

“You are incorrect. There is a mistake. Search!”

The door slams shut behind my dad. My head is tilted over the math exercise book. It is wet with my tears. My home smells of dampness and loneliness. I don’t have anyone to help me. I need to do it on my own. 

I need to find this mistake. 

I need to correct my incorrectness.

“You are a person-mountain."My mom laughs as she squeezes my broad shoulders. She thinks it is a hilarious joke. I come home from university for the weekend. I already want to leave and go back. She has never asked me about my health (beyond my coughs and colds), about my mental state, or about my period. About things that were broken a long time ago. 

I know she loves me, but she prefers to swim on the surface and never dives deep. 

“Dad, I got 9 of 10 on a really difficult exam!” – My voice beams with pride and happiness

“Why not 10?" - his only answer. 

My breath stumbles and breaks. 

I am never enough. Except when I’m too much.

On Women's Independence Day, our elementary school teacher came up with a great idea: boys had to give the girls several compliments. While other girls mostly get “beautiful”, "wonderful", and so on, I get “clever” and long silence.

One of the boys jumps in to help his friend. 

“Fat! Fat! Fat!”

I take several steps back, trying to hold my tears. But I give up. 

I am always told that I’m an easy crier.

Mom and I spent a wonderful day in the nearest big city. I got a haircut and even a new curler. I am smiling, opening the door. And walk straight into a hurricane. My dad is angry. I’m not sure why. Maybe we stayed out too long; maybe we spent too much money. They shout at each other. Their usual way of communicating. But today it gets dirtier. Mom grabs her purse and leaves with a thunderous slam of the door. I stay holding tight to the new curler box.

“So, are you satisfied?!”

Dad spits the question at me. I want to disappear, to dissolve in the hot, sticky air. I don’t know why, but I feel an enormous weight of guilt on my shoulders. 

The curler box suddenly feels too heavy to hold. 

“You know, I will be honest; if you lost weight, you’d be beautiful."

A not-very-sober boy tells me. My friend and I invited him to our dormitory room to celebrate some exams we’d passed. I haven’t even asked his opinion. But I sure will remember it for a long time. I will hate and hide every part of myself that I think is undeserving of being seen. I will wrap myself in shapeless grey and black clothes, while my favourite colour is yellow. 

Yellow like dandelions. Like summer fields. Like the notebooks I always chose at the beginning of every school year.

“N., bring ropes."

My dad yells at my elder sister. She tries to calm me down and then heads toward the parents' room. I hear the fuss, fighting, and my sister’s shouting that they lost their minds, crashes, rumbles, and bangs. I want to hear nothing. I close my ears with my hands. 

I don’t know what to do. 

I don’t know what is happening. 

And I don’t know yet that two weeks later, both of my parents will show up when I need them. It would be an unprecedented miracle, as my dad never goes anywhere except his work and country house, not even to shops. 

It is his way of making amends, of getting over himself. But only in this one thing.

He will continue to suspect my mom of affairs without reason and control her every step. 

They will continue arguing and shouting every possible moment. 

I will continue to live like a minefield. 

But I don’t know it yet, and I hug them both.  

Now

Now I understand where she came from.

The critic was never born inside me. 

She was taught her lines.

For years, she repeated the same lesson:

Find the mistake.

Correct your incorrectness.

The girl I once was believed that love had to be earned, and she had to become smaller to be safe.

The woman writing this knows better.

And the yellow was never the problem.

– Katsiaryna Laurynovich (clathrin)