Moving 3000 miles

Insecure attachments aside, I had a good childhood in SuperCity. We often visited with relatives who were kind and friendly. I had lots of friends and several best friends. I played a number of sports. I attended Sunday School regularly. I was years ahead of my peers at school in reading and maths. And I was given the freedom/responsibility to roam, explore, and play on my own.

I was a leader: extroverted, confident, attentive, imaginative. I had ideas, loads of them, and kids older and younger than me gathered around to play my role-playing games. The yard transformed to a medieval jousting ground. The woods became a dinosaur hunt.

I smiled and laughed often. My desire to know and understand was relentless. I was a gifted child. I liked to try everything. I didn't care about being good at anything; I wasn't afraid of being bad. I just wanted to try.

And within the confines of intellectual and social development, I blossomed. This fabulously exciting, successful, social world was my identity, my sense of containment.

My dad called me and my brother into the bedroom. I perched on the edge of the bed, wary of this sudden attention. He had the white board and markers in his hand. My brother was restless.

"We are moving to AnotherCity."

Shock.

He asked for pros and cons. I don't remember any of the pros. I left in the middle of the cons, running upset into the bathroom and locking myself in, sobbing.

My parents were strangers to me, and I was not a part of that decision to move. My feelings were never put on that white board. It was never intended to be anything but an attempt to intellectually persuade two children that a move was a good idea. It was ridiculous. It was inappropriate. It was inconsiderate.

I was left to sob in the bathroom. We never discussed how I felt ever again.

The irony is, we never moved to AnotherCity. My dad was transferred again before the summer was over. We packed the van and drove cross-country to our new home, a slightly nicer version of the same house we left, but 3000 miles away.

Reviewing these memories makes me feel woozy. This one event changed my life. It changed me. I became, quite literally, a different child. I cut off all my hair. I changed my name. I became deeply depressed. I withdrew from other children. I lost my temper often. I cried every night. I thought about SuperCity, my friends there, my life, and the person I was... until it became an obsession. I thought of nothing else but what would have been, had I not left. What I would be doing, if I was there. Who I would be.

I rejected my new life and everything in it. I refused to talk. I refused to listen. I refused to do my schoolwork.

It only took a couple months for my new teacher to became frustrated with my vacant mutism. She lost her composure in front of the whole class. "I don't know what's wrong with you, Eliza." All the little heads turned to look at me.

"Sally has been here a month, and she's fitting in just fine."

I looked at Sally, a fuzzy blob of long brown hair. Sally looked at me. Everyone looked nervously excited. I felt numb. She continued: "It's your fault. You aren't trying very hard."

I felt very far away. It was the yellow painted walls, yellow lights, orange desks, orange tiles, and orange curtains that soaked up my shame. I love colours. I hate yellow-orange. Yellow brings me back into that room, back to being blamed for something I didn't know how to contain or control. Being blamed for being in pain. Yellow = unfair. Orange = pain.

Because of the move, my mum was extremely depressed. She didn't want to leave her family but she couldn't say no to my dad earning more money and wanting desperately to build a better life for himself.

To ease her loneliness, she got a puppy. I hated that puppy. I refused to take care of it. I'm still angry at my parents for getting this puppy. I had extensive allergy treatments in SuperCity. They knew I was allergic to dogs. They got him anyway. My mum's loneliness trumped my allergy.

It did help her. So much, she began to call me and my brother by the dog's name. She still calls us by her dogs' names and laughs about it. I never laughed.

I remember driving back from the breeder with the puppy's tiny head in my lap, finding it impossible to hate an innocent puppy. So I hated my parents instead. I have the same angry question in my mind today: what about me? What do I get for my loneliness?

It didn't take very long after that for me to become completely depersonalised. I didn't exist. I moved 3000 miles and was no longer in anyone's mind but my own.

I was 10 years old. My childhood was gone. My identity was gone. I was gone.

It wasn't moving 3000 miles that broke me. Everyone thought I would get over it. Kids are resilient. She'll make friends. She's brilliant; she just needs a new hobby.

Except I never got over it.

She'll make friends. She's just like her mum. All teenagers act like that. She'll outgrow it. Of course they tease her, she doesn't take care of herself. I've done all I can to help. She won't talk to me.

She won't talk to anyone.

Everything's fine.