Advice Blog ♥

Victoria watched as the rain pounded down on her window, the rain drops catching in the cool glass and slowly sliding down, where they rested against the faded white of the windowsill.

Oh, to be a raindrop, She thought, absentmindedly following one with her finger. It must be so easy. No hassle. No worries. A life spent so quickly. Falling; but not alone. Never alone.

Somewhere distant was the sound of laughter. Maybe two, three kids. All happy. All unaware of the misery that tainted this world.

Victoria stood, and closed her curtains sharply.

“There,” She spat at the little light she saw through the red curtain. “Now you’re nothing but shadows.” She was addressing the rain drops, which she now saw as tiny insignificant black dots against her curtain.

Victoria climbed in to her bed and covered her ears with her hands to try and block out the sound of her mother yelling. This was standard for her, actually; she would hear the screams, ignore them, and carry on as if nothing happened. Tonight they were especially resonant, though, as if her mother was making a show of keeping Victoria awake.

She may have been shouting, “I’m a work-crazed psychopath who wishes her daughter the worst! I hope she never gets any sleep!”

Of course, she wasn’t actually shouting those words, but Victoria could imagine her doing so without actually having to hear the words. Because she knew them to be true.

“Damn this place and damn you all,” She spat, though her voice was muffled in her pillow.

Giving a bereaved little whimper, she climbed from her bed, out the hall; where the shouting was only more audacious; and to the hallway bathroom, where she locked the door and sat down promptly on the cool tile.

Victoria stared at the cerulean blue tiles that framed the bottom of the bath, making up the old Victorian pattern that ran up the shower wall, too.

She shivered. It was cold tonight, especially so for the winters she knew to be generally harsh. Outside, the rain was still penetrating the windows, bashing down on them as if to say, “Let us in, Victoria. We are your thoughts, we are your worries, and you cannot keep us locked outside forever.”

“Watch me,” Victoria hissed, not knowing whether to be mildly startled she was speaking to herself, or mildly horrified that she enjoyed the sensation.

She stood on shaky legs, uncertainly turning to stare at her reflection in the mirror.

Greasy hair, misshapen face, dull, lifeless eyes and fat body to match.

“Go away,” She told her reflection. “You’re not wanted here, nor are you accepted in today’s society. Go away.”

Before she fully turned, Victoria caught a glance of the real girl in the mirror.

The one with locks of golden hair so shiny anyone denying jealous was lying. Maya blue eyes that held all the yearning and passion in the world. An undernourished girl, her ribs sticking out just a little more than they should be, but with a fairly healthy body she kept in check. A vibrant, radiant aura that made her skin glow.

But by the time Victoria had thought to take a second glance, that girl was gone, replaced once more with her ugly self.

Her mother didn’t even glance up from her phone call as Victoria passed, not even when she mumbled that she was going outside.

As soon as she had closed the door behind her, Victoria kicked off her shoes and stepped out in to the freezing weather.

The raindrops clung to her bare arms like diamonds, soaking her hair so that it clung to her cheeks.

She paced her backyard, many times contemplating just running away.

But is it really running away, if you’re eighteen? She wondered.

Is it really running away if the only reason you’re still home is because your mother has built you up to believe that you’re this unattractive being of unworth that will never make something of herself?

Finally giving up on pacing, Victoria made her way across to the tree.

The tree was a good ten feet tall, it’s branches twisted and sullen, it’s shadow falling in to the neighbour’s yard, where ever so often a peach might grow.

Victoria climbed it barefoot, ignoring the scratches the wet branches left, and the mud that mixed with the blood from her now sore ankle.

Once she had finally picked a branch she was content with, she could weep.

Victoria didn’t cry very often. She kept it all bottled up to herself, until once in a while, perhaps every month or so, she could let it all out in private, so that she didn’t bother her mother.

Victoria was a very smart girl. She had always strived to do her best in high school, never getting anything below an A. She majored in engineering, math, social studies and art. Her initial plan was make mama proud. That’s all that matters.

But when the time came for her to leave for university, she’d been told otherwise.

“You’ll never make it in the real world, stupid girl. They don’t take well to fat, stupid girls like yourself. Your best bet is to stay here with your mother.”

After a while, Victoria started to believe her.

“Stop eating, Victoria. You’ll only get fatter.” Yes.

“Eat more, Victoria. You’re getting too thin.” Yes.

“Make something of yourself, Victoria. You’re lazy.” Yes. I’m sorry.

“Don’t you dare leave, Victoria! You’ll never make it out there!” Yes. You’re right.

“Don’t ever leave me, Victoria. I only do this because I love you.” Love me. Yes.

After hours and hours of crying, Victoria had cried until she couldn’t cry any longer, her cheeks stiff and sticky with tears, her eyes dry and heavy.

She wiped her face down with the front of her shirt, only making her eyes redder when she tried to rub away how puffy they were.

When will things change? That question always managed to come back somehow.

Victoria never quite had the answer. Often she’d tell herself, “soon” or “one day” or even “tomorrow.” Once she had thought “never”, but that thought only terrified her so she stopped thinking it immediately.

“When?” She asked herself aloud.

Her only answer was the rain beating its way through the leaves that provided a neat shelter for her.

And then, just as she was sure the silence couldn’t stretch on any longer before she went mad, she heard, “Hello.”

Victoria’s head snapped up, and she looked around.

There was nothing. No one. Only the lengthy branch in front of her and the others behind her.

“Hello,” She heard again.

This time she was sure it had come from somewhere close to her. Victoria scooted forwards on the branch, using her hands to open a tiny gap in the curtain of leaves, perched on the edge of the branch that overlooked her neighbour’s yard.

“Oh,” She gasped quietly, taking in the sight of the small boy.

“Hello,” He said again, giving her a smile that showed off all of his teeth.

He was a lanky boy; tall for his age, it seemed; with a mess of pumpkin-coloured hair on top of his head. His cheeks were speckled with freckles of the same colour, his eyes a dark, complimenting brown. A trust-worthy brown. He was missing a tooth at the front.

“H-hello,” Victoria stuttered, trying to manage a smile for the poor boy. Why was he out in the rain?

“Why are you crying, miss?” He asked.

Victoria blinked in surprise. What with the pouring rain, she had been sure nobody could hear her.

“Oh- I was just…erm…” Victoria could have hit herself. Here she was, face to face with the world’s poster child for innocence and she couldn’t even think up a damn reason for crying.

“Well, I suppose… because I’m sad.”

The boy frowned. “Why would you be sad? You’re so pretty. Pretty people shouldn’t get sad.”

Once again, Victoria blinked in surprise.

She didn’t think she’d ever been called pretty, especially not by a boy, even if this boy looked to be about seven years old.

“Th-thank you,” She mumbled, looking down through her lashes. “But I’m afraid you have me confused with some other pretty girl.”

The boy frowned, looked thoughtful a moment, and shook his head. “No,” He said matter-of-factly, “I haven’t seen any other pretty girls today. Just you.”

Just you. The words echoed in Victoria’s head. She pushed a stray strand of her blonde hair behind her ear shyly, addressing the boy this time with a genuine smile. “You’re very sweet,” She told him.

The boy shook his head. “I don’t know about that. Grandpa says I’m honest. He says ‘honesty is the best policy, and liars aren’t very nice people’. So I always make sure I tell the truth.”

Victoria felt tears brimming in her eyes again, for reasons she herself had no words to explain at the time.

“Thank you,” She whispered.

When she said she’d never been called pretty, she’d meant it.

She’d had a good lot of friends in high school, but none of them were real friends. They seldom spoke to her, and all the boys ever wanted her for was sex, which she never gave them anyway. She was the most popular girl in some ways, but in others, the biggest loner.

“Didn’t your mummy ever call you pretty?” The boy asked curiously, cocking his head to one side.

Victoria shook her head, as if the idea was ridiculous. “Oh, no,” She said. “My mummy always told me that I was fat and ugly.”

She was taken aback a moment. Had she really just admitted that to a little boy?

Before she could take it back, his face twisted in to a look of pure horror.

“Why would she lie? Why would your own mummy lie to you?”

Victoria sighed. She didn’t expect him to understand. In fact, she didn’t expect anyone to understand.

“She didn’t lie to me,” She assured him. “She only told me what I couldn’t see at the time. The scale agrees with me, anyway.”

The boy put his hands on his hips.

“You listen right here, missy!” He shouted at her, causing Victoria to reel back a tiny bit, nearly losing her balance. “Don’t you ever lie to me! I don’t wanna be friends with a liar, so you listen right here! I don’t like it when girls don’t believe they’re beautiful. It’s like Judy from my kindergarten. I thought she was pretty so I wrote her a letter. She threw it out, and said that she didn’t want to go to our dance with me, and that she wasn’t even pretty. She didn’t want to go because she felt ‘fat’. What a load of nonsense, I say! That scale is a mean thing. It only tells us what the world wants us to believe about who’s beautiful and who’s not. The world wants us to believe that little numbers are pretty, and that girls aren’t, unless they look like skeletons and clowns. The number on that scale doesn’t mean a thing. You’re beautiful and no number, no person, can ever change that!”

For a while, Victoria didn’t speak. She just sat there, staring at the boy, mouth agape.

Then, slowly, she started to cry.

Tears poured from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks, clinging to the bottoms of them and hanging there like icicles a moment before falling and splattering all over her already damp clothing.

She couldn’t stop herself, lost in the tears, the sobs ripping from her chest.

When she finally managed to stop herself, the first thing she could choke out was, “How old are you?”

The boy smiled at her, showing the gap in his teeth, and said in a sing-song voice, “I turned eight on August the second!”

Victoria sniffled, wiping her face with the back of her arm.

“You’re a wonderful person,” She whispered. “Don’t ever grow up, okay?”

The boy frowned. “Why are you crying? Do you feel ugly again?”

And then, as if by magic, Victoria laughed. It was the first real laugh she had laughed in almost two years. She tipped back her head, trills of musical laughter lifting off in to the evening sky.

“N-no,” She said honestly, still laughing when she looked back at the boy. “I feel beautiful.”

The boy smiled at her, and soon, he was laughing with her.

“VICTORIA!”

Victoria paused in her laughing only a moment to look back over her shoulder, where her mother was shouting, probably unaware that she was outside.

She looked back to the boy. “I have to go inside now,” She told him.

He looked sad.

“Hey,” Victoria said gently. “I’ll come visit you. Maybe I’ll see you again, yeah?”

The boy gave a sad, small smile. “Maybe,” He said.

Victoria turned to climb down the tree, but then turned back, giving him an unsure, fleeting glance. “What’s your name?” She asked.

He grinned. “Ricky,” He told her. “Ricky Mavis.”

Victoria smiled. “Well, Ricky Mavis. My name is Victoria. And for the record, I would go to the dance with you any time.”

And then she disappeared in to the tree, climbing down in to her own yard.

She was still smiling when she went inside, ignoring her mother’s yells as she went to her room.

The first thing she did was pull out her drawer. She sifted through it, until her hand found that small white envelope, the one she’d received a couple of months ago and hid from her mother.

She held her breath while she opened it.

Slowly, she pulled the letter out, her eyes scanning every word…

Victoria set it down on her desk, laughing again.

Then she packed.

She threw everything she would miss in to her biggest suitcase, and shoved the letter in to her handbag.

Semester begins February 4^th, it had read.

One quick call to her cousin Carly; or rather a very long call filled with crying and laughing and reminiscing; and she was set.

She slept easy that night, not even bothering to stand on the scales before bed like she used to. Not even bothering to speak with her mother.

When morning came around, Victoria was the first in the house to awaken.

She got dressed in her favourite outfit; the one she always held back on wearing because of her mother’s discouragement, and brushed her hair in the mirror, humming as she did so.

Victoria paused on her way out of the bathroom.

She looked back at her reflection carefully, as if worried she might provoke the beast that glared at her yesterday to reappear.

Instead, she was graced with the reflection of the real Victoria Graham.

The one with the silky golden curls that bounced perfectly on her shoulders.

The one with the perfect blue eyes.

The one with the gorgeous, flawless skin and bright, beautiful smile.

The real her.

Victoria grabbed her bag, and made her way to the front door.

“Wha-? Victoria!”

She stopped short, sighing and turning to face what she knew was coming.

Her mother stood looking groggy by the kitchen, black hair a mess, makeup dishevelled. Her eyes were bloodshot, and glared back at Victoria with every ounce of malice.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Victoria took a deep breath. “I’m leaving. With Carly. I got in to university, mum. I’m going now.”

Mrs Graham’s eyes widened, and suddenly her sneer turned to a look of utter desperation.

“Wh-what?” She sputtered. “No, you can’t- you won’t leave me!”

Victoria kept her head up high. “I will. And I am.”

The look returned to one of anger.

“You won’t last a day. You’re stupid. And ugly. And fat and worthless.”

Victoria felt the ghosts of old agreement creep up on her. She was overcome with an urge to nod and sulk back to her room.

But the determination, the memory of Ricky and the tears and the laughing and of yesterday, pushed past that urge.

“No,” She said calmly. “I’m very smart. And funny. And witty. And beautiful. And thin. And worth more than you’ll ever be.”

It was silent between the two of them.

Mrs Graham’s jaw could have been touching the floor.

Victoria gave a little nod of her head, picking her bag back up and making her way out the door.

Mrs Graham panicked. She sprung for Victoria, landing with a loud ‘oof’ on the floor and resorting to clutching her leg.

“Please,” She gasped, any sign of anger gone now. All that was left was completely pathetic.

“I can’t go on without you. You’re all I have, Victoria.”

Victoria’s gaze softened, but only for a moment. Then it hardened again.

“Mother,” She said gently. “It’s time for me to go live my life now. I’ve lived yours long enough. If you needed me so badly, you should have been kinder. I’m leaving now.”

It was all Victoria could do to shake Mrs Graham off her leg and make it out the door, hurrying down the driveway without tearing up at the sound of her mother’s wails.

Before she got in the car to drive and meet Carly, there was one stop she needed to make.

Her knuckled grazed the old wood, giving an eerie, hollow knocking sound.

Victoria waited a second. Just when she was sure no one was home, there came a slow shuffling sound, and the turning of a lock.

Victoria turned back around just in time to see a very frail looking small old man, squinting up at her.

“Yes?” He asked, looking as if it hurt him to keep standing that way.

“Oh- sorry to bother you, sir. But I was wondering, is Ricky home? You see, he spoke to me yesterday while I was in the tree in my backyard, and he was very sweet, and… I was wondering if you could give him my thank you?”

The old man frowned. “Ricky?” He asked.

Victoria nodded, and waited. The old man licked his dry lips, and shook his head once. “No no, I think you’re mistaken. My grandson Ricky passed away last August.”

Victoria frowned. “No,” She said carefully. “He spoke with me yesterday. Orange hair and freckles? And a little gap in his teeth? Does he not live here?”

The old man shook his head. “No, that’s Ricky. But he died last year. He was in the car with his parents, driving back from here to their beach house, when the truck came out of nowhere. None of them made it. I’m very sorry dear… but I think you were mistaken.”

The old man closed the door slowly, and all that was left was Victoria’s shock and the sound of shuffling shoes on the hardwood floors.

She stared straight at the door.

He… Ricky. That was impossible.

And then, as if out of nowhere, the oddest sensation overcame her. She felt goosebumps rise on her skin, along with a smile.

Somewhere, she felt, there was a strange sense of peace. Of finally being at peace.

Victoria turned, and slowly walked away from the house, feeling graced no longer with the small boy’s presence but with the memory of that strange encounter.

To this day, Victoria doesn’t quite remember what happened at house number sixteen. She isn’t sure whether she was visited by a ghost, or perhaps the old man really was just crazy.

But she is sure of one thing.

The next thought she had leaving that house, as she drove away to meet Carly, drove away in to her future, was, When will things change?

And for the first time ever, her answer was, now.

 

 

 

 

This week we’re focussing on what inspires you artistically.

Open a new tab. 

(Instead of opening google, I urge you to open http://www.thecharitysearch.org/)

Find an artist.

Google the first thing that comes to your mind. Professional art. Abstract art. Semi-abstract art. Oil paintings. Wood carvings. Amature art.

eatsleepdraw.com is a good website for amature artists.

I want you to spend a good half hour or so looking through different type of art work.

I want you to look through at least five different kinds of art.

Did you find any art that speaks to you personally?

Now, I want you to find a good abstract art picture, one that makes no sense. What’s the first thing that comes to mind? What do you see in the picture?

Google image it.

The first picture that catches your eye in images, that’s going to be your muse.

Print it off, or just remember it, whatever you want to do.

Now go draw your own picture. Or paint it. Or carve it- just make art!

Make something inspired by the picture! It doesn’t have to be about the picture.

You might find a picture of swans, and then create a collage about peace and tranquility. 

Let your mind run free!

Finding interest artistically help you to reach out to yourself on an emotional level.

Write down some of the things certain pieces of art make you feel. The way certain colors make you feel.