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Triggering (SI/ED) - "trance" A Story About My Childhood Bullying *abuse trigger*
“Ashlee, darling you forgot your lunch, and you weren’t going to leave without giving me a kiss goodbye were you” Ashlee forced her ten year old body into her mothers loving embrace and allowed herself to be consumed in affection. Ashlee didn’t want to let her mother go, for the world outside her gentle arms was one that would transform Ashlee from a loving child into an empty shell.
Walking to school with her lunch in one hand, chocolate milk in the other, Ashee’s awaits the day to come. After arriving at school Ashlee playfully throws her school bag onto the green seats outside her year three and four classroom and walks through the door to begin the day.
“Good morning Ashlee, how are you today” says a cheerful voice. Ashlee looks up to see her teacher Miss Cunnington looking down at her with a grin on her face. Ashlee replies with the same cheerful tone saying “I’m well thankyou miss”.
The morning passes by slowly. Ashlee watches as a year three boy, Benjamin stares at her legs from the other side of the room and makes snide remarks to his fellow male year three friends. Ashlee is embarrassed and tries to hide herself behind her desk. She moves herself into an uncomfortable position in which Ben and his friends can’t see her body. This position is painful, but Ashlee doesn’t dare more.
When the lunch bell rings Ashlee is filled with relief. She waits until everyone else has left the room until she stands up and walks out onto the courtyard. The sound of hundreds of children playing with their friends echoes through Ashlee’s head as she makes her way alone towards the playground seats. But before she sits down Benjamin and his friends intercept her. “ Don’t let her sit down on the seats, she’ll l break them” exclaims Benjamin in an insolent manner. One of Benjamin’s friends, James, snatches Ashlee’s lunch box from her arms and throws it over the fence. “You don’t need food, you have enough fat on your boobs to not eat for a hundred years” laughs James as he pinches Ashlee’s breasts. Benjamin and James then begin to poke and push Ashlee around towards the play equipment. Ashlee doesn’t dare run away physically, but she manages to tune her mind out of what was happening. The boys and Ashlee arrive at their destination at the top of the play equipment, not long after, Ashlee finds herself in pain at the bottom of three flights of stairs. She looks up to find that Benjamin pushed her. In severe pain and with tears in her eyes Ashlee looks down at her feet and walks away, while the gang of year three boys sling words of abuse at her. Ashlee wishes that she were in another place, she doesn’t let her mind comprehend the words that she is hearing. “Maybe if I pretend I’m not here, maybe if I can make my mind wander somewhere, anywhere other than here, everything might just be okay” Ashlee manages to induce a trance state as she escapes from Benjamin and James by retreating into the girl’s bathroom for the entire lunch hour.
Ashlee returns home late to an empty house. She walks upstairs into her room and looks at herself in the mirror. She is a tall girl with a large bone structure, she has a large chest for her age but definitely not as large as her stomach which can be seen through the light blue fabric of her school uniform. She analyses her face, she is a pretty girl with freckles and white skin, which has managed to maintain its overly fair complexion throughout the summer. Her eyes are medium brown and match her long curly dark auburn hair perfectly. Ashley’s gaze skims over her reflection again, but this time she stops at stares at her stomach. Ashlee has been overweight ever since she was six years old, but this year the problem has become worse. For the first time ever, Ashlee rotates her body ninety degrees to the right still keeping her gaze strongly fixed on the mirror, and looks at herself sideways. After analysing herself, Ashlee retreats to her bed and awaits the future.
Two years later Ashlee is beginning her first day of high school. Ashlee is excited “a new school, a new start” thinks Ashlee optimistically.
Before walking out of her bedroom door, Ashlee catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She is still a very tall girl; she has almost caught up to her mother. For the second time ever, Ashlee turns sideways and examines her profile. “Some things will never change” thinks Ashlee disappointedly as she forces her eyes away from the mirror and feels the optimism inside her heart melt into a pessimistic pool of blood.
Ashlee arrives at the big blue gates of her new high school and jumps out of the car in excitement. After saying goodbye to her mother, Ashlee watches the car drive away into the distance. Ashlee is consumed in emptiness and perplexed with fear as she shakily steps through the blue gates and onto the basketball court.
Examining her new surroundings, Ashlee observes small groups of year seven girls who appear to be congregating based on which primary school they attended. Ashlee spots her old pimary school group in the distance but she doesn’t dare talk to them. “They have always hated me, why would anything be different now?” Ashlee asks herself.
After standing around for what seemed like an eternity, Ashlee decides to walk up to the group and just stand near them so that she looks like she is a part of the group.
Ashlee’s plan worked and she smiled to herself, as she stood inconspicuously next to her former enemies.
Ashlee’s first few years of high school continued well, she even managed to make a few friends. Ashlee had never been happier. Walking home from the bus stop near her house, Ashlee passes her old primary school and catches a glimpse of the courtyard through the metal fence. Memories of Ashlee’s past consume her mind. Ashlee remembers the day that James threw shards of bark into her eyes and the day that Benjamin put a plastic bag over her head and almost choked her. Then, after Ashlee’s passing gaze came into contact with the ‘sports shed’, suppressed memories of the day that James drove Ashlee’s arm into the hard cast iron gate resurfaced. A wave of pain rushed over Ashlee’s arm and up through her nerves into her shoulder just as it had so many years ago. Ashlee panicked and began to run home. She ran fast, faster, even faster, but from what? Her past, or herself?
Ashlee storms through the front gate and into an empty house before tightly locking the door behind her. Looking down at her arm, Ashlee begins to weep. She cries for the pain she had endured, she cries for the hurt that she is suffering, she cries for her present and she cries for her past. In a fit of rage, sadness and disconnection, Ashlee pounded her fist onto the hard double brick foundations of her house. The window quivers, the furniture jolts, and the bones in her arm shatter. Ashlee inhales, preparing her lungs to scream, but as shots of pain rapidly pulse through her arm, Ashlee is filled with relief. She learns that pain had precedence over any other feeling, even sadness.
“I just slipped on the tiles in the kitchen” Lies Ashlee as she sits next to her mother in the emergency room. Ashlee looks into her mother’s eyes and sees the she is concerned yet still her happy, loving self. Ashlee has never told her mother about what the kids did to her in primary school. “Just because I am in pain because of my past, doesn’t mean my mother should have to be” thinks Ashlee as the doctor plasters her arm.
The day that Ashlee walked past her old primary school changed her forever.
Ashlee began to remember how she used to ‘tune out’ the abuse that was spoken to her and how she numbed herself from the pain that was being inflicted on her by disconnecting herself. Ever since that day, Ashlee acquired a desire for pain. Whenever she felt the way she did when she was in primary school, she would cut herself on arms, legs and stomach. But the desire for pain didn’t stop there. It wasn’t until Ashlee began to starve herself that she discovered a new type of pain, hunger.
Over the next few years, Ashlee continues to cut herself. She watches her warm red blood rise up beneath her fair skin and escape through a self-inflicted cut on her underweight body. Ashlee had stopped starving herself but that does not mean she is not hungry. She denies herself the nourishment of love and friendship because of the fear that if she allows herself to get close to someone, to love someone, they will hurt her just like Benjamin and James. So Ashlee looks at herself in the mirror one last time. Her hair is now short, black and straight. Her freckles have faded but her skin is still as white as it has always been, except for the deep red lines, which cover her arms and legs. She lifts up her shirt to examine the cuts on her stomach but is distracted by her newly protruding ribs, which can be seen clearly through the scar tissue, which in encase them. Ashlee stares into the mirror and loses herself in a trance of disconnection. The person she sees in the mirror is no longer her. She looks down at her arms and believes that they do not belong to her. Ashlee has lost herself. One last time, Ashlee turns sideways and looks on the mirror. At the same time, Ashlee presses the cold sharp blade that she has come to love deeply into her arm. While examining her profile and pressing the blade deeper, Ashlee disappears into forever.
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