The Daisy & Her Chains

Language often ran away from me. Words could not hold the meaning of my thoughts. I yearned for a unique voice that my readers could recognise as my own. This originality I forced, proactively coerced my lyrics to obey. By the end of year 10 I had produced a rendition of Sylvia Plath's Mirror. Something I had enjoyed writing. Obsessed over when I should not have been. My Sunday Mornings at mass was a mere time of reflection with my inner god. The bread could have been tar dissolving in my mouth but I didn't care. In the exam room, the scratches of specially selected inkjoys muted in my head, a layer of harmless white noise, the canvas for my own scratching. I savored the hour, allowing my prepared piece room for flair and spontaneity. I tucked in my chair and shook on my blazer with a knowing smile. My piece was irresistible to the emotions. I hoped the teachers marking it would see an internal darkness that was a stark contrast to the pretty faced catholic girl. That they saw the alluring darkness I had succumbed to. The voice I had finally grown into. Or the voice that had become me. 

Weeks later I was called into the english department. The cream coloured interior and neatly organised green and peach pink folders lining the walls became all too overwhelming as I saw my familiar scrawl on the answer booklet on the desk. Such a tainting, my paper was to the blissful world of the head english co-ordinator's office. Her sing song voice asked me for the original transcript of my work and I handed it over. Feeling self-gratification. Then horror. My peers would see. There would be two readers, those that acknowledge the art and execution of the assessment, the second would see a connection to the reader. The blurring of self compelled authorship to a pupil fulfilling assessment criteria. I began to imagine my work with distaste, cringing at the idea of it being seen. I lived the last few week of year 10 on edge. 

Something snapped in my final Geography class of the year. I asked to excuse myself and walked stifly to the door and before I coulc close it properly my eyes betrayed me. Openly sheading tears to curious eyes before I firmly shut the door. I let my restrain go. Walking to the bathroom feeling a hollowness yawn in the pit of my gut. I almost ran into a private tour run by a junior student. She was about in year 8 with a perfect ponytail I've seen down during lunchtime, tailed by a mother and year 6 girl. I walked determinly past making no effort to clean up my swollen eyes. I made it to the bathroom, I look to the mirror and moaned at the red faced moon face staring back. 

I was actually embarrassed. 

Usually I was good at bottling up my most extreme thoughts.

I had trained my face often and with such precision that sometimes I swear I can fool myself. 

I kick open one of the dodgy stall doors and kick once again when I was inside. The wood of the door wedges itself with the sides of the frame. I am momentarily annoyed that I may not be able to get out with the same ease as getting in. But before I could allow it a second thought I'm crouching down adn holding my head on the cool walls of the bathroom. The cheap marble blurring with the proximities of my eyes and the vision distorting wall of tears. I hit the marble with a fist, but not hard enough to break the flesh but to feel the solidity resonate through my wrist causing a dull ache. I let the tears run hot and furiously feeling the liberation with every squint until I realised I was forcing tears. I unfold my tunic that costed more than I should and yanked open the door after hearing another stall flush and the sink run. I walk back to class. 

Within the next weeks, my work didn't rear its ugly head again and something I once dreamed of having recognition for became something I wanted buried and under an unmarked grave. It was not until the following year that it did. In the school annual magazine. I began reading it like a stranger, forgetting the words I had produced in my previous year. I realised a quarter in that it had come back. I was not dismayed as I would have felt before. I had matured and grown into the expectations of the next year. My constructed maturity did not protect me from the multitude of flaws I found. Flaw. Flaw. Flaw. Further on in my life I finally came up with the words to alleviate its continuing weight in my head. 

Nothing remarkable happened that year. My writing was restrained. I did not dig further into myself for assessments. I played the game. I played it too well. I knew what got the marks and that was the Dramatic. Which was sad because the smaller things amount to the bigger I finally realised with the dawning of my final year. I began a course that would see me presenting a creative writing piece. I was sixteen beginning the course. I had come to the vice of writers old. I drank deeply when I wrote. And edited profusely by the next morning. It made for long nights but peaceful sleeps. I was when I reawakened that side of me again. It was the light again. But was constantly denied by my harsh teacher. I was so angry at my rejection one time that on my way home I was plotting my next hand in. In my mind I formulated the beginnings of a (proverbial) grenade. That night I worked to the next morn. I felt nothing but the desire to illicit emotions from an unyielding teacher. I sent it through at 3 am. I met her again to discuss. She told me she wept. I felt good. It validated my power over the emotions. But that sound too crude if not obnoxious. I thought I was a puppeteer. I could make people feel something. Sometimes I went too far, taking my horizons from the edge of my lined notebook. But I am unapologetic for the person I have become. I am proud that I have denied some pathways and taken to others. I did not take the easy avenue often, sometimes inadvertably drawn to the steeper incline. 

Fast forward from the girl that tried too hard, and forced her hand to create words, past the girl making her teacher cry when she herself could not cry from her own words, to the proud and pretentious girl who thought she could play around with emotions, who naively though she could go about doing not realising she was forfeiting her own capacity to feel in the process. I cannot deny that there were some who got away, crushing heartbreaks, missed opportunities, playful flirtation, foul plays and denied lovers. I look at them in the light of good writing material. Something that matured my own writing voice. Fulfilled the destiny that my younger self had intended. Too young then to realise that I could lose myself in the process. I mourn the years of empty words. I hope for mindless prose and feeling for the future. 

Though the future is a blurring manifest of our decisions today, I know this to me true.