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Extended Work
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| Black and White Technicolor #1 | |
| By cheapthrill | ||||||
| 05 June 2008 | ||||||
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One of my bi-yearly submissions, any critique would be appreciated. Mother says 'How you start something shows how you intend to finish it', so I was hoping to start this well, but lying here on my bed in front of my laptop I am at a loss. She has a horde of similar axioms that pepper decisions in her's and all to often my life. I shouldn't complain as it seems to have worked for her. She studied Law at Exeter University and at twenty-two she passed the Bar Exam and currently practices tax law at a small affluent practice in Richmond Surrey. Dad joked she chose taxes and inheritances as they were a growth industry. I never understood it as a kid, but it made me giggle if only for the uncharacteristic smile-cum-scowl it brought to mothers face. Dad never takes anything seriously. He has the odd talent of making mother laugh unreservedly at dinner parties and then brandishing the same charm and wit infuriating her with his lack of reverence for far more important matters. They weren't much different with me, while I would sit curled up on dad's lap watching cartoons, mother would busy herself packing my ballet equipment, organising piano lessons, and all the necessary activities to raise a balanced and cultured middle class girl. When I turned ten life took on a far more urgent tone, childish play gave way to regimen and of course mother was the skilled conductor's guiding hand. The main concerns were which secondary school I would attend but more importantly my common entrance exams were approaching. Syllabuses and text books were ordered and upon their arrival mother sat me down at the kitchen table and we worked through a Saturday morning time tabling every after school hour to the minute. I remember the privileged feeling when she took out her pencil case normally reserved for work. She unzipped it in a purposeful manner and laid out fluorescent markers, a mechanical pencil, a ruler and roller ball pen, all in perfect alignment with each other. Once she had them all out she zipped up the pencil case, readjusted everything in front of her to make sure nothing was out of place and turned to me sitting beside her and said, “Violet, we'll pencil it out at first and once we have it all worked out we can do it in ink ok?” “Yes mum,” I replied. “I wish someone had shown me how to timetable everything when I was your age, I used to do this at university and when I took the bar exam, I'm glad you're learning it now,” she said wistfully as she started drawing out the timetable. When the weekly timetable was done we moved on to the monthly planner. We studied the syllabuses and allocated parts of them to every month. By the time we were done we had the next year of my life worked out. “Well that looks ok for now, though I wish we had given extra time for English, you always struggle with English,” she said sighing. “Mrs Silk says my stories are funny,” I ventured. “Darling teachers have to be positive, English isn't about being funny you need a better grasp of grammar and spelling, but its ok you can take half an hour off your TV time to do extra work on it.” Lips pursed I was a picture of adolescent dejection. “Don't look like that,” mother said authoritatively, “one year of your life might seem like a lot now but you're preparing for the rest of your life, and how you start something shows...” “How you intend to finish it,” I recited. “Exactly darling, besides you need to grow up you're too old for sponge pants under the sea or whatever that silly thing you watch is called, show your father the timetable and make a photocopy of it.” My mother was an advocate of having others check your work and making copies of everything, I'm surprised she didn't make me photocopy my childhood scriblings. Original and copy in hand I went to my father's office. He had a big pine desk mother had bought for him but it was rarely used, he much preferred to sit at his architects drawing table overlooking the garden. Next to his drawing table on the wall was a pin board with pictures of some buildings he had designed, in the centre was a tree house he designed and built for me. It was a wondrous thing that enshrined a tree a the bottom of our garden. Stairs coiled round the trunk in a spiral till you reached a circular platform which wrapped around the tree, half of it was dedicated to a balcony and the other half being the house it self. The day he finished it mother had picked me up from school and told me in the car daddy had a surprise for me in the garden. I got home to find my dad sitting on the balcony, his legs swinging of the side, waving to me as I pelted down the garden. As I idly inspected the board dad grasped an arm around my neck from behind and pulled me back to kiss me on the forehead, “Vi?” he inquired, “Mum wanted you to check my timetable.” I said holding the copy and original each in a hand, “Ah, let me see,” .“I highlighted physics and chemistry in blue and pink,” I reported, “Yes yes, everything seems in order, physics blue, chemistry pink and mathematics puke yellow,” “Dad,“ I rolled my eyes. “Ok ok, I guess I'm not so funny these days.” “Well I have to grow up.” “Unfortunately.” “Dad? Am I really preparing for the rest of my life now?” “Seems so.” he said unhelpfully. He was like that. Designing and building tree house for his princess was easy, but he would shy away from giving me any kind of advice. As countless conversations turned more serious a nervous smile would take hold, seemingly braced by ambivalence, as he inevitably asked what mother thought. I always wanted to know what he thought but was too scared to ask. Scared of what you might wonder, but I'd struggle to say. Sometimes I hate words, they are so ill equipped to describe the utter sense of anguish that takes you as your mind contrives that someone -- someone you would hope believed in you unconditionally -- could be looking at you and seeing failure, stupidity and everything they hoped you wouldn't be. Even when I had to come here it was mother who talked to all the doctors and organised my stay, dad was an unyielding source of affective comfort through out but lacked any counsel into my problem. I haven't even told you who and where I am so I guess I should tell you my name; it's Violet Greyson, though most people call me Vi, and I'm 16 years old. That's the who I am out of the way. The where I am is The Manor Farm Eating Disorders Clinic, a house full of waifs and matronly nurses. Out of earshot of the staff we like to call it The Pig Farm as their greatest purpose is to fatten us up through what they call a 're-feeding' programme. Accordingly, meal times are called slurry time and the dining room is the sty. The food is awful; chocolate, dairy, crisps, chips, pasta and every other carb you could think of in every serving. Imagine everything you would deny yourself after a quick session googling 'high calorie' or 'fattening'. Weekdays are like any other school day except we all take classes on the farm, with weekends reserved for one on one therapy, group therapy and eyes averted family therapy. These very words are the result of a session I had with my psychiatrist Dr. White. She tells me Creative Writing is a good complementary therapy that will give me a 'tangible understanding of my journey to recovery'. Given the choice of two exercises, this is the one I find my self at, recounting the first time I ever felt anorexic. Well those weren't her exact words but I think you will find they fairly represent the absurdity of the exercise. Can you remember the first time you were happy or sad? The first time you liked the colour blue? I suspect the answer is no. So how exactly am I meant to describe the first time I ever felt like my self? My life has always been a balancing act, each small unrelated event weighing on my mood, either happy or sad. You try to redress any imbalance so you can function and continue with your life. I didn't wake up one day an anorexic, it is the sum of the weight on my life, it is my counterweight. Given my apprehension towards this task you might wonder why I chose it. My other option was writing a letter to my parents explaining how I felt and what made me the way I am. She assured me I wouldn't have to give it to them, but the idea of addressing my parents, however removed from reality, seems impossible. I know without telling them how they would react. Isn't that what families are? Familiarity? I can annotate all my failures with my mother's disappointment and my father's silence without ever needing to consult them. I guess if you pushed me, and then pushed me a little more, I could tell you about a time I remember feeling overly anxious. You'd probably want to hear a convenient story about me pouring over the glossy pages of magazines filled with stick like women, willing my self thinner. That never happened. There was the time I perfected my peppered cucumber mush and revelled in the glory of my low calorie creation or the times I stretched the flesh over my rib cage taut hoping to see every single rib outlined by sunken skin. But those are further along in my journey. After months of therapy and analysis Dr. White and I have identified numerous events that probably had a bearing on my condition, and even one that most likely started it all, but seeing as you pushed me to tell you I'll take license and start a little before the fact. Getting into secondary school was great, I even managed to get into mother's first choice, though the praise that followed was inflected with the cautionary note that 'They are giving you a chance to prove your self Violet'. First day nerves were quelled as I quickly made friends with Flo and Ayesha. The three of us fast became inseparable during any given school day, dad called us the triplets. I wouldn't attribute anything that happened in the next two years as contributing to my current state, in fact that was probably the happiest time in my adolescent life. I only tell you so you don't think I have always been this miserable. Year 3 is a relatively insignificant year in career of a student, unless you attend Victoria School for Girls, until this point you are considered too fragile to play field hockey. At first it was a lot of fun, mother bought me all the necessary equipment, dad boiled my gum shield and while summer waned towards winter we played in the clement weather. When winter came in full though things got tougher. The ground froze hard and every stride on the uneven ground jarred your bones. The freezing air made every slap on skin smart ever so more and to make things worse after a month of practice I was actually showing some promise at the game. You might not think this so bad unless you knew Mr Suthern, our biology teacher. He trained the hockey team and through out the day he would proudly parade round school in his tracksuit bottoms and his Victoria Girls Hockey Team sweater, he even took classes in it. PE in the middle of winter is a joyless task in its self but Mr Suthern reserved a special level of sadism for the girls who played well. As Flo, Ayesha and the rest of the girls would sit recuperating under the willow tree, a dozen or so of us would have to run extra lengths of the field, a task kept only for his 1st Eleven hockey team. I hated it. If only for the fact I had to walk panting back to the changing rooms with Flo and Ayesha as they laughed about some joke I missed. I suppose it wasn't all bad, mother was overjoyed, she told anyone who cared to listen that I had made the 1st Eleven and insisted that I practiced with dad on the weekends. Our first match came at the end of October and was preceded by a night of torrential rain and thunder, if I was at all superstitious I would have taken this as ominous, while all it really meant was the playing field was soaked in preparation for the ensuing melee. As it was an away game Flo and Ayesha couldn't come watch but mother and dad drove to the other school to give their support. Everyone seemed psyched for the game as we got ready in the pokey guest changing rooms, they were all talking about who they thought was on the other team from the girls we had seen outside, who would be playing where and who we would all have to mark. As we walked out I remember seeing the playing field, it was sodden. You could see the informal path that had formed next to it, where countless feet had worn away the grass till a muddy meandering throughway had been made. In its current state my first step into it sunk and slid sideways as the mud yielded to my weight. I don't know why but the first thing I thought of were Neanderthals. Mr Suthern had told us about them in biology and how they had bowed legs from their gait as they ran lurching from side to side. I knew it was a silly thought, I wasn't going to end up with bowed legs, but still I stepped aside and walked on what little grass was left. I took up position on the left wing and while the team captains dispensed with formalities I waved to my parents. As soon as the game started it was a mess, every time I ventured into the mob fighting over the ball, I ended up slipping over and landing on my backside. After twenty minutes neither team seemed to be making progress and with bruising knees, thighs and a aching bottom I hung back from the clacking hockey sticks. It was a grave mistake, the girl I should have been marking managed to whisk away the ball from the group and ran unchallenged down the wing to deftly place the ball in front of our goal needing only one of her team mates to whack it into the net. Mother soon familiarised her self with Mr Suthern's advice, “Keep moving Vi, keep on you mark,” and dutifully chanted it for the rest of game. The second half was much the same, though when my mark made her move again I chased her only to slip and fall flat on my front. I got up caked in mud, amid the cheers of the other teams second goal. The score ended on three – nil, and I knew two of those were my fault. As we made a sombre procession back to the changing rooms, all I could think of was how much I hated mud and hockey. After this game I was relegated to the substitutes for the rest of the season, every so often Mr Suthern would reassuringly say, “Maybe we will try you on left wing again Vi,” but I didn't care. The drive home that day was when I remember feeling particularly bad, mother couldn't fathom why I fell over so much. “You have studs on your boots Violet, you shouldn't have slipped so much,” she said. “Everyone was mum.” “Not as much as you if the amount of mud you were covered in is any indication.” It was pointless to argue. When we got home I took refuge in my room as I did my homework, I remember sitting at my desk almost crying till mother called me down for supper. We didn't talk about the match that night but when mother found out I was only a substitute she said “I guess we'll come see you when you are on the team again, there is no point taking time of work otherwise.”
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