Please, Notice Me...?

As a little girl, age five, my parents were always fighting, my father slamming doors, my mother crying, my brothers hiding under the table. Our mother, who was in pain and unable to think straight, scolded her children, even when we had nothing to do with what was going on. I didn't know my mother meant no harm, but I did know she was unhappy. So to cheer her up, I would make her drawings, of animals and forests and flowers, and paste them to her bedroom door. When she found them, she would rip them off and I would pick them up the day after, my work in shreds.

Age ten, my parents were divorced and our mother was trying to get herself together. I didn't understand what was going on so well. At school, the teachers called me a dreamer and said that I was "different". I would tell amazing stories about places that didn't exist, as if I had been there. Nobody believed me anymore and my mother punished me because I lied. I was alone... all I had left were my drawings.

Age sixteen, high school. I was still alone, I had no friends to hang out with, spent my time in the library reading books about worlds that didn't exist, and believing that they did, I would look for them. Classmates ignored me and nobody saw the hard work I did to make beautiful drawings of the world as I saw it - as I wanted to see it. Nobody ever saw my struggles, hidden behind my sad smiles and the loose clothes I used to conceal myself.

All I wanted was a little attention, a little praise, just a hint of the feeling that I did well, that I was good at something - good FOR something - and that I was worth as much as the others around me. But if I am not worthless, then why don't people notice me...?

Art, character and story © me