The Fawn

Julia’s childhood had been one of constant correction and criticism. She’d been a skinny, shy girl who had never understood her worth and never been told what it really was, anyway.

She’d been told what clothes to wear, that her hair was too long or too short, that she was too sensitive, too meek, too much of anything that other people couldn’t seem to handle. She was of a generation that was expected to be seen and not heard; to be gentle, feminine, polite, even to those who insulted her. Of course, it was never their fault. The lecherous man old enough to be her father? Don’t be so sensitive, he just thinks you’re pretty. The school teacher who berated her for being too timid, too scared? She’s just trying to help, you should smile more . She was told to speak up, then told to be quiet when she got too loud. She was told to stand straight, to stick her chin in the air, then told not to appear so arrogant. She was always too thin or too fat, laughing too much or not enough, talking too much or being too quiet, never listening but always ignored. 

In the end, Julia learned to keep the peace. She became silent, distant, a people-pleaser. She still didn’t know her worth or even that she had any beyond her own reflection. Every comment, every nit-pick, every correction, she soaked up like a sponge. She inhaled the insults, swallowed them down until they coursed through her veins like poison. They became her.

As she grew into adolescence, Julia noticed the power of others’ words enveloping her wherever she went, even following her to the spot in the woods where she would go to sit and cry to the universe, to finally be herself in a place that only she knew about. She felt the years of criticism start to seep out of her pores, her organs and blood too full of bullshit to allow her to breathe. She was leaking negativity, her spirit too broken to hold onto it, too black and damaged to keep it inside. She could sense the emotions in a room before she even entered; she felt the residue even when the occupants had left. If she could have visualised them, the feelings would look like inky clouds bouncing in slow motion along the floor, trying to rise into the air but being pulled back down by their own heft. They would brush her legs, leaving slimy and sticky remnants on her skin and her body would try to absorb them. Because that was what it had always done.

By the time she reached her thirties, she had forgotten who she was; she was only what she had been told to be. She had taken her childhood lessons into adulthood, attracting the wrong kind of partners, the wrong kind of friends; the kind who told you everything you wanted to believe, the kind who held you when you were in pain, or shared congratulations at your achievements. But that never lasted. Once the relationship was solidified, once they were comfortable with your position beneath them, the old ways persisted. At first it would be in the form of suggestion, a line punctuated with ‘it’s only because I care’. And she would believe them. Every fucking time. She was so desperate to be loved, so open to being accepted for who she was, that the words sank into her soul and made a bed there until they were replaced by heavier, crueller words. Somehow, she still trusted people, still saw the good before the bad. Because she wanted it so badly. 

After more than three decades of living this way, of surviving on what little confidence she drew from strangers, she finally stopped. She stopped pretending. She stopped listening. She stopped being quiet. One rainy day in September, a day that happened to be her birthday, she simply woke up.

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It was the bolt of lightning, she decided. Looking out of the kitchen window as she stirred his morning cappuccino, she saw it. Three hundred million volts of power blasted from the sky and hit a tree in the neigbour’s garden. She dropped the spoon and stared at the tree, swaying in the fickle winds, a black scar running down its trunk. She was the tree, she realised. The same scars ran through her body and mind, invisible to the outside world, causing pain and turmoil that only she could feel. The people she had surrounded herself with, they were the lightning. Every snide remark, every condescension, every word uttered with malicious intent, every roll of the eyes or patronising snigger – they were the bolts of electricity aimed directly at her, the emotional sponge. 

She had been their safe place for too long, their sanctuary where they could spit their venomous lies and misdirected shame and lack of their own self worth. She saw it clearly now; they were the poison, they were trying to make up for what they lacked within themselves, shifting the blame and their inadequacy to one who could take it, lap it up, store it away safely for them so they didn’t need to feel. But she could feel. She had felt it all, for years, taking the reins of their own responsibilities and helping them to cope, to feel big and proud and immune to imperfection. 

Enough.

No more. She could take no more and to her relief, she found that the guilt was no longer there. She no longer wanted to help them rise above her, watching them turn their backs when she stretched out a hand and asked them to hear her. No more. She would not sacrifice her own happiness for that of others anymore. She had a right to be here, to take up space, to have her voice heard. She had a right to be free, to be happy; she was not put on this earth to soak up the venom of their insecurities. She not only had a right to exist; she had a right to live. 

No more.

Julia poured the coffee down the sink, watching the hot brown liquid swirl down into the pits of hell. It was the poison that had controlled her all this time, kept her docile and compliant, kept her chained to the household chores and kept everybody happy. 

Everybody except herself.

No more.

“Why did you do that?” An angry voice sounded from the doorway.

Julia turned slowly to see one of the faces – the faces of those who controlled her dreams, who reigned in her nightmares and kept her under their feet, their cumbersome, dirty boots pushing her face further into the mud as they laughed and chanted and celebrated themselves. 

No more.

“I don’t want to do that anymore,” she said with her head held high.

“You don’t want to make my coffee anymore?” The voice demanded.

“No. It gives me no joy, no happiness. I’m done with things, with people that refuse to know me. To care about me.”

Julia turned to face the enemy, one of a long line of people who had kept piling on the hurt, day after day, until she could barely stand under her own weight.

“You can make your own coffee. I’m going to pack a bag and leave.”

“Leave?” The voice asked incredulously, a blushing smirk meeting Julia’s stoic, confident features.

“Yes. I’m leaving you. All of you.”

She marched past the voice – because that’s all it was now – and made her way upstairs.

“All of who?” The voice called back, but the only thing he was thinking of was his sudden, unquenchable thirst.

When Julia walked out of the house, he watched her leave. Sadness bloomed in his chest, but it was pure selfishness, the kind that may as well be labelled as jealousy or fear. He was sad because now he was alone with himself. And he hated that. 

They all did.

THE END