It was a beautiful summers day as I hanging washing out the back. The birds where singing and the air was filled with the scent of flowers,when my neighbour came into the garden, we shared. I had just moved into the property and we hadn’t met before. I started to speak to her while I hang the last of the washing. She leaned against the redbrick wall of the house chatted in a very casual way, between puffs on her cigarette.
She was younger than myself, as we joked her clear blue eyes sparkled and I warmed to her straight away. I asked her if she had any plans that afternoon and as she don’t. I invited her to come and have a cup of tea and sit in the sun on my balcony. As I had planed to sunbath and read that afternoon and I said she was welcome to join me.
After an hour or of general girlie chit chat about boyfriends and make up extra , I notice she was really hot in her long sleeved blouse. I reassured her that although we living in town, we weren’t over looked as this was the highest building around, as we were girlie she could take your top off and get some sun to warm her body which was healthy.
She hesitated and then took her top of. My eyes fell on the white skin of her arms and on seeing the slash scares up her arms I said. “ You didn’t want to kill yourself ,this was a cry of help.”
Her eyes fixed on me and she fell silent, for what seemed like an eternity. Then her sparkly blue eyes filled with tears “ You’re the first person in my life to understand.” Her body seemed to go limp as she started to let go of years of pain.
She talked for over three hours. Telling about her childhood, her father left when she was little. Leaving her mother to raise three children of which she was the oldest.
It wasn’t long before he stepfather moved in and how much she hated Friday’s. He would sending her mother out on the game and when they got back from school he would sexually abuse her. Telling her that if she didn’t do as he said he would sexually abuse her younger sister and brother and then beat her mother.
Over the coming months she would regularly appear and we talked. After a while she started to see that life could be different. She’d come and hide with me as she didn’t always want to go shoplifting with her mother but didn‘t feel strong enough to tell her face to face.
We didn’t just talk about her past but talked in general about cooking and many other things. She stopped self harming, as the emptiness inside started to disappear. She began to understand herself and organise her feelings, gaining inner strength and develop a new identity.
Self harming isn’t about making yourself bleed, to the person trapped inside their body feeling frightened and unable to communicate when emptiness is so endless it’s away of reminding themselves that they are still alive and can feel.
These people, are our beautiful and fragile, who need our help to find their way home.
Love to all jo x
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