In the Beginning

A Chapter by Selena Griffin

Going over a young girl's early years.

I just wanted to be left alone with my books. I wanted the world to let me be. I did not want to become trapped and smothered in its uncaring existence. I just wanted my books. Within the world of my books, I could find any world I wanted to visit. There was cruelty in my books, but when it became too much for me, I could always close the pages until I was in a better frame of mind to deal with it. There was love in my books, and I could take comfort in the leafs that fluttered under my fingertips, as gentle as a lover’s kiss. There was tragedy and joy, everything that is said to be in the world around us, but in my books…in my books, I was always safe. A hero was always there to comfort and protect me, not so in the ‘real’ world. In my books, there was always someone there that I could relate to, that I could love as family, not so in the real world. In my books, there was all the emotions I could wish to have, and have them anytime and anywhere I wanted to, not so in the real world.

In the real world, I had parents who were not parents. They served in my creation, and that was it, really. Oh, they provided me with a place to stay and food to eat, and the occasional item to entertain myself with, but that was really all they offered me. Why did I need their attentions, they would think. Why could I not be self sufficient from the very moment I drew my first breath? Why did I cry for their attentions? Why did I bother them at all?

I honestly don’t know how I survived those early years at all. Perhaps they took care of my only to the extent that they would not go to jail for negligence. I do not remember being held at any time. I can remember no little lullabies that my mother might have sung me to sleep at night with. I cannot even remember a night light to give me any comfort in the long, dark hours of the night. My father, it seemed, was almost never home. He was out, working to put a roof over mine and mother’s head, and could not be bothered with the act of actually caring for a family. We should be grateful to him for what he did for us, even if we almost never saw his face.

Did my mother ever take up with another man to ease the loneliness she must have felt at father’s absence? I will probably never know. She kept so many things to herself. Mother was a puzzle to us all from the very start, and we all hated her for that. She had no emotions, no feelings at all. She did little more than wonder around the house, aimlessly, doing nothing at all, that I could see. She did a small amount of house work, but that was it. Most of the rest of the work about the house was taken care of by a maid, who had little time for anything but the cleaning and the laundry. I talked to her seldom, for my mother would tell me often not to bother her, she was a servant and servants should not be bothered while they are working. Little did I know at the time that my mother considered our maid a lazy woman, and that talking to her was a means for her to keep from doing her work, even though what few times we did talk together, she would work through the entire time, never stopping for a moment. The maid taught me more of hard work and dedication than my mother ever did, and I cared all the more for her for those lessons.

I spent much of my early years by myself, for I had no siblings and my parents were always far too busy to be concerned with any of my needs or wants. I had imaginary friends, at first, but my mother caught me talking to them one day, and informed me that if I continued in such childish behavior, she would see that my father would give me a sound spanking when he got home from work for it. This was her usual threat when I did things she did not approve of, and it usually worked, for father was quite quick to deal out any punishment that would quiet my mother’s complaints. It seemed he could not stand her voice anymore than I could after a while. I have no idea why the two stayed together. Surely it was not for my benefit, for they could have cared less about my wellbeing, and I was not so delusional that I could not see this in their every gesture.

After I was denied the few companions I had in the shape of my imagination, I turned to reading. Since it was my only form of entertainment that could actually keep my attention for any length of time, I learned to read quite swiftly, picking up the books and going through them as most children would go through candy. They became my closest friends, my tie to the outside world, and soon the only world I wished to be in. My books would never betray my needs, desires and emotions as people had. They would always be there for me when I needed them, and would not judge me lacking in one useless ability or another.

You see, I could not sing, dance, paint or present myself before a crowd well at all. I was not the least bit entertaining to my parents’ guests when they saw fit to present me before them. I was neither beautiful nor amusing in conversations. I had little going for me, as far as my parents were concerned. They sometimes wondered how I could have possibly came from their union, and most times I found myself wondering the same thing.

Then, I started school. It wasn’t a special school. Just because I could read at an early age didn’t mean I was a special child. No one noticed my unique talents for they weren’t worth anything to the ‘real’ world. So what if I could read before I was even able to properly speak. I could not juggle mathematical figures in my head. I could play no instruments with the skill of a master. I could not recite anything from memory that was worth reciting, and I could not display any scientific knowledge that would have been beyond my years. These things did not interest me so much as Dickens and Faulkner, and I had no desire to let any of these pursuits run my life.

Did I have dreams? Not as others would put them. I dreamed of worlds that did not exist beyond the pages of a novel, but nor did I dream of making them myself. I was considered a rather dull person in my imaginings, and would make nothing beyond what I discovered in my books. The Rats of Nihm and the dragons of Pern were the only imagined creatures I had interest in. Anything of my own creation meant nothing to me, for they were not on the pages of books for myself or others to enjoy, so what use were they to me? What use to the world would they have been, for I am no writer, no great weaver of words. I am me, pure and simple. I am the lonely child who has been left to fend for themselves. I am the outsider who has been pushed away to the point where I do not even miss human contact. What good is that to me? What good is any of it?

There are those who say I should grow up, seek out a mate and have a family. Why would I wish to do that? No one has offered me anything that the pages of a good book could not offer, and with less hassle. No one had held my hand in comfort, or wrapped their arms around me in friendship. No one has offered me an ear to hear out my darkest problems or to listen to my most inner of secrets. No one has ever been there for me, and so why should I suddenly wish to seek out someone who would demand I be someone else instead of myself, for I am not a lovable person. I have realized this all my life.

I was told that it was not natural for a girl to wish to live alone when I was only ten years old. At school this was, as if these people who had barely noticed me before, and had no idea as to what my needs could be would possibly understand me, or know what is best for me. Why would I wish to impose myself on another human being just because a bunch of fools told me to do so when I was but a child.

It was intended that I make actual friends once I started school, but I proved to be rather inept at this, and after a while, had no desire to pursue this course of action at all. I honestly could not stand the other children, as they seemed cruel and wicked to me in most things. The girls found it the height of fun to pull my dark, wavy hair, and make impolite jokes about my overly pale complexion. The boys found it delightful to torture small, innocent animals while in my presence, for they knew this would upset me greatly and send me into a bit of a rage, for which I was the one who would be punished for the incidents that would transpire thereafter. The boys, of course, would receive no form of punishment whatsoever, since they were not the ones in the wrong, according to my teachers.

No one seemed able to fathom why I would not possibly want friends, for it was only natural that children should be drawn to others, but I had no desire to be ripped from my beloved novels for anything. I would read on the playground, read after my assignments in class were done and read during lunch. This was all seen as quite peculiar, but I would not be taken from my books on my free time.

I had learned very early not to read while a teacher was talking, for they would take my book from me, and I would never see it again. I can only assume they kept the stuff they took from the children of their class so that they could either enjoy the items themselves or deliver them to their own children once they got home. I imagine the child of a teacher must have a great multitude of interesting items to play with that their parents paid absolutely nothing for, but of course this was not stealing, since it was done to children who needed some form of punishment, and that is what it was considered. Punishment. This actually greatly upset me, since I had to save every penny of my birthday and Christmas money to be able to get the books I owned, and most of those were in terrible condition since I was always getting them second hand from whatever used book store was having the best sale at the time. My parents neither encouraged nor discourage my hobby, but they could never be bothered with parting from a single dime for my entertainments. This was another lesson I learned at an early age.

No, I couldn’t say I cared much for school anymore than I could the first few years of my life. I was still being ignored, for the most part, but now I was being ignored in a group instead of just being all alone. Now I was seeing what it was like for someone to get attention, and it not be me. I wasn’t exactly envious of my classmates, but if I was going to waste my time being there, it would have been nice if someone had, at least once every now and again, have acknowledge me as a person instead of some sort of animate fixture of the room. I was seldom called upon to answer questions, even if I was the only one in the class with my hand up, for surely I wouldn’t know what the answer was, and the teacher didn’t want to embarrass me, or so I had been told the only time I confronted one of my teachers about this. It was never brought to anyone’s attention when I got a good score on a particularly hard test, for the teacher didn’t want to discourage any of the other student’s with my apparent intellect, and surely I didn’t want any attention brought to it myself. This seemed a contradiction to me, but the teacher assured me that it was not and that I was to stop arguing with her if I did not want to invoke yet another punishment and trip to the principle’s office. I was a girl, after all, and what girl wants to scare away the boys by being smarter than they were. Good to see such barbaric thoughts were still practiced by the female teachers in my school, and considering they were all female in the early years, I had to deal with these silly and cruel notions. What did I care if a boy thought I could think? I had no interest in the opposite gender anyway, especially at that young an age.

Gym class brought even less joy to my life since it was almost immediately brought to my attention that no one wanted me on their team due to my lack of skill in this most important of areas. I could not fathom why it would be so important for a girl to be able to kick a small, red ball across a yard. Wouldn’t that also be a threat to a boy’s ego, if their girlfriend could kick better than they could? Besides, all the other girls, who weren’t tomboys that was, couldn’t kick any better than I could. It was just that they acted so much more pathetic with it than I did. Whereas I would gracefully admit defeat in the face of my small, rubber adversary, my female counterparts would stand there next to the base, bouncing around and crying when they missed the ball, shaking their hands and wringing their fingers and begging others to forgive them for not scoring the goal or making a point, or whatever it was we were supposed to be doing to make sure our team won the game.

I was never allowed on any of the field trips that my classes took. It was told to me by my parents that those things were too dangerous for someone like me. Too dangerous, or did they just not want it getting out to the world how strangely their only child behaved, not that we were going places where they would be well known. My parents could be a bit paranoid at times. It was one of their less endearing traits, I should add. This only served to alienate me even further from the other children, and it darkened my moods when they came back from some pleasant place with stories of how grand the trip was. I do believe they actually took pleasure in the fact that I was the only one who hadn’t been allowed to go along.

My reading eventually took me into the world of science fiction, and I soon took to that subject rather well, but my lack of math skills left me completely unable to choose that as a course of serious study in my life. I learned a considerable amount about the world, its past and subjective future, but I could not command the language of science that would have made me a true scientist, so all I could do was watch on the outskirts of this most interesting and enjoyable of subjects, wishing that I could be smarter in this aspect.

I took so little interest in anything else, that I soon ended up in remedial classes, even though I was getting good enough grades that the remedial teacher couldn’t even fathom why I was there. She gave me the assignments, and left me to my work. I was kept in these classes for close to three years before I finally got transferred back into the regular classes, but by this time, the damage had already been done. No one would interact with an idiot, and that was what I was dubbed for being in classes I had no business being in.

My home life was not all that grand or spectacular. My parents never divorced, although how this happened is far beyond my ability to comprehend. My parents saw so little of each other, I suppose the topic could never be broached because they were never there to broach it. They certainly were not a loving couple, and I do believe if they were forced to spend more than ten minutes together in the same room, they would have soon become bored and disinterested in each other. I could not understand how they could continue to remain bonded to each other in marriage, but they seemed determined not to let that bond break. Perhaps it was the fact that they saw so little of each other, and had quite separate lives of their own that they were able to stay together. Father had his work, and mother had his money. What better arrangement could one ask for?

I continued through school, getting average grades and continuing to defy the probability that I should have gotten at least one friend in all my time I spent there, and then high school came about, and everything changed for me.

next chapter