He had the charming, awkward countenance of a young boy who was never loved and a failing body rejecting every new organ. It was almost terrifying to be near him, in the same way a child fears unlaced shoes; everything will come apart very soon.
That day, he rolled over in bed and his skin felt as though it may burn off. How long had he been like this? Abandoned, alone, terrified and – tired. Would more sleep be so bad?
Looking for a cold spot in his sheets, he ducked his head out from under the covers and was greeted by the night sky. A sickening white light filters in through his curtains – he could feel it on his skin. It was cooling him down. It was pure ice held in the photons.
Perhaps for a moment it was nice, but the white discomfort was climbing into his exposed left hand. It wiggled underneath his fingernails, and he watched in wonder as the colour drained out of skin. The clock was ticking; it was that time of night, where the light erased everything, especially his skin. He could see it all, all the fear and sadness clogged under his now transparent skin. Even his capillaries and muscles and tendons; the apologetic curve of his carpels and the sinewy stretch of his tendons. The moonlight did weird things to him.
But the moon did not shine all the time, yet he felt out of place all the time. Hovering was the word that came to his mind; hovering at the edge of a party he was not invited to. Was everyone else given a guide that he didn’t have access to?
The cold of his sheets and the cold of the moonlight was freezing his skin off. Breath was catching in his throat as he pushed his comforter away and crawled over the edge of the bed. Some distant part of him recognised that he should feel pain, and that same part of him heard how hard he hit the floor. But instead of pain, the burn of the carpet only lulled him further into the whiteness of his trance.
He shut his eyes, desperate for a moment of peace, but even the skin on his eyelids had become thin and pellucid; the moonlight filtered through all the same and he was choking on the stars. The white ice kept knocking on his consciousness as the stars climbed further down his throat, jagged edges catching and tugging and ripping his oesophagus and trachea. He was not compatible with life.
The reverie pulled him back as he turned away from the window. His body gave in; cold, tired bones crumbled away, and every morsel of him disappeared away into the carpet. How long had he been like this?
How long had he been like this?
In his dream, he was a child again. Often, his dreams were memories replayed, reordered, reworded and retraumatised. How many times did he have to feel the pain to heal it?
A sound caught his attention and he looked up from his favourite light up trainers. He was in his favourite place in his favourite dinosaur shirt with his favourite weather (rain with a promise of sunshine in a few hours) and yet he knew he was about to live out his worst memory. How could he live like that?
His voice was somewhat unfamiliar, just like his tiny body. It seemed so fragile. Was that the same body melting away on his bedroom floor? Was that him? He kept hearing his voice, kept trying to soothe the cracking of ice in the centre of his chest, but it meant nothing.
There was only one way a nine year old boy could feel walking into certain heartbreak. His feet were unsteady and his knees were knocking. The ice climbed up his legs, through the base of his stomach and he gulped back the vomit teasing the edge of his lips.
His dreams often made his worst memories even worse. In reality, he was not worried when it happened the first time. But there he was, back in his nine year old body, holding what felt like hot lava in his mouth, yet shivering under the cold of the moonlight. It was never hellish walking into it, but in his dreams, he knew what was coming. The fear climbed inside his shirt, up each vertebra and lodged itself in the base of his skull.
It was heavy. It was all so heavy.
Heavy enough to weigh him back, until he lost balance and cracked his head open. At least the heaviness was gone.
He woke with a start. No time had passed – the moon was in the same place as before. Or perhaps all of the time had passed. Maybe he spent a month suspended in fear.
What difference would it make?
His overgrown body was hungry. As soon as he tried to move, the heaviness in his skull reignited. He was terrified,just like all the time. The gravity in that one place, in the cushy gap between his brain and skull, was debilitatingly strong. It was white and empty and brought him to tears.
How long had he been like this?
Melting further into the carpet, he angled himself even more away from the window, hoping he could avoid the moonlight altogether. It had gone beyond freezing his skin now, the whiteness crawling into his pores and filling every gap between his atoms.
To some degree, he was the illness, the whiteness, the moonlight. As he turned further away from the window, it spilled out of his mouth. White, cold vomit.
He was asleep again. He must have been, because he was very sure he was stood inside his mind, and the only way that could happen would have been in sleep.
Looking down a corridor, he recognised door upon door, and wondered which terrifying permutation of his past his subconscious would drag him through in that dream. How was this better than waking? Detachedly, he laughed and realised that although he may have been cracking his skull open in his dreams, he at least was not vomiting on his carpet.
What a nightmare to clean.
Walking down the corridor, the heaviness was less apparent to him in this Dreamland. He realised it with a peaceful sigh.
His veins were not on fire and white anxiety didn’t ooze out of his cuticles. No light filtered through his skin; it was opaque. Not a single part of him felt heavy, not even his heaving lungs or his sobbing eyes.
As he walked, his legs began to shrink, tinier and thinner and weaker until they resembled that of a nine year old. The rest of his body followed suit, folding and curling into the miniature frame. He kept walking, passing door after door until he found what some part of him knew he was looking for. No nine year old is good at opening doors, and even in his mind, he struggled. Wrestling for a moment, he was caught by himself. There was something so loveable and childish about the naivete of inability.
He moved away from the door for a moment, entirely enthralled by the innocence and beauty of himself. Who would hurt a child?
It puzzled him how he could have spent so many times reliving the experience of being in this body and yet repeatedly kept believing he was ill and sick and dirty and entirely not enough. But the door continued calling to him – the door of his childhood room.
He questioned whether or not it was possible to ever brace yourself for such a thing. His breath was short and his nine year old body shook with terror. But some part of him knew that something was about to change.
There was only one thing in the room. He approached it slowly.
A box. Square and solid and angular – like most boxes. There was two works scribed on the top, curled calligraphy confusing his young eyes for a moment. Until it registered, he fiddled with the latch. His impatient young body, even half occupied in Dreamland, was agitated as ever.
And then he realised what it said – ‘the lie’
He opened the box and was pulled into a memory.
The first sensation he felt in the memory was warmth. It tingled his fingers and climbed up the vines of his veins. It was still a few moments before he realised and understood where he was – his mother’s car.
Angry mothers can say the worst things. Angry mother who hold years and generations of pain can break a little nine year old’s heart.
“You’re not good enough!” The words rang in his ears. Again, again and again. His mother kept shouting, speeding up the car and smashing her hand repeatedly against the wheel. Her rage was palpable - it was white and cold and didn’t seem particularly aimed at anyone, but at the age of nine, everything is personal.
A child who believes they are not good enough lives a life of pain. He had spent so long letting it be the centre of how he saw himself – entirely insufficient. But the ice was melting now.
He thought back to the child wrestling with the doorknob; the child fiddling with the box; the chiild who’s body was his; the child who grew up to have nightmares on the floor of his bedroom. His mother’s voice drowned out.
Not even the angriest mother can interrupt a child learning to forgive themself.
The centre of the meticulous self torture he had spent year perfecting was a lie. He was good enough. He was worthy.
Shutting his eyes, he left this weird dream and absently apologised to his mother on behalf of the universe.
The sun had risen when he woke up. He turned over and found himself in a ray of sunlight. Smiling, he remembered the vomit he had to clean up.
His skin was solid in the light; solid and tan and very real. There was no weight in his skull anymore. No heaviness in his ribs – his bones felt solid and his flesh was not melting.
Lies can melt away in the reality of daylight. Nine year olds can heal.
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