"little" part one

The heart of an eleven year old girl still beats in an adult.  Somewhere.  She's alone.  Lonely.  She feeds her to keep her quiet when her crying gets too loud.  Her heart is broken and she can't find her way to fix it again.  She thinks if she could just keep everyone around her happy, the pain will dull somewhat.  Truth is, she only loses more of herself when she edits her character and her opinion to keep life at an even keel for everyone else.  She is tired of holding up her world, while time marches on and the wound gets deeper.  Her heart is tender but she makes allowances for those whose ways are a little harder than hers.  She keeps quiet because it matters more how she appears than what comes from her heart and mind.  She loves even more to be helpful with a smart idea if the moment presents itself.  She'll replay the conversation over and over when she is the hero and does the same when she's appeared foolish.  Only it's not pleasant and tends to wear her out.

She is tired of being an adult at 15.  She knows too much of life and not enough of play.  She spends her days taking care of her little brother, making sure he's eating and that his clothes are clean.  If she can keep the house tidy her father will be pleased with her.

Her little heart longs to be comforted.  She weeps at night for her mother, so certain if she could just feel her arms around her that things would be okay and life would make sense again.  This new way of living is confusing and unsafe.  She carries a heaviness in her heart or a dull ache that won't subside.  Her bedroom is her quiet place.  A sacred place where she can control the environment.  In her room she can be quiet and think.  She can pretend she's a normal girl with a normal life and normal concerns.   

This way of living has worn her down to a thread.  She fills the emptiness in her heart with food.  Food is not fuel for her body but band aids for her wound.  For awhile it takes the feelings away and she can deal.  So she thinks.  The trouble is she's needing more and more these days to numb that feeling and to shush the 11 year old her.  She wants desperately to stop but the hunger is there.  A fixation on filling herself beyond satiety, it's hard to stop when the shut off valve is stuck in the "fill" position.

The adult she has become knows that she can't keep living this way.  The little girl keeps throwing the adult off.  She's tried to keep her quiet for so long and now it's grown too difficult.  This ache has been a familiar companion for too many years.  For some reason a bad thing, because it's familiar, can be "comforting".    She tries to delve into this area of her heart, the part of her she's been ignoring and filling all at once.  She's been journeying, wanting to figure out the riddle of her life.  Something in her wants to be loosed.  A long process of peeling back layers, an unfolding she runs headlong into at times and other times runs the other way from.

These days she is running at breakneck speed.  Forward.  Done with the old, ready for the new.