Healing from within.

Mandy Murphy was her name, I forget her face but her hair I recall vividly was golden locks lightly tussled about her shoulders and down her back a way. The sweetest delicate girl in her informative years during junior school that I felt so much envy toward in my shy unassuming need to have such attention as her when she merely scratched her knee. I with messy dark unfurled ribboned long hair, inky fingers and second hand clothes foraged in jumble sales could never understand what it took to be cared for so readily. When I hurt I hurt alone, suffering the bruises in silence as I cried in some corner where I could not be found. I see Mandy Murphy in every woman who seeks attention so sweetly that men, some women but mostly men swoon to their side with offers of affection. She is a 'good girl' in their eyes. Often doing well in life, a well enough paid job or clean and tidy dwelling, conforming neatly into standards set by man. She the cause of many a falling out between lovers, she the incent, the wife the scorned jealous affronted victim and persecutor in one. With all my efforts to be free from expectation, other people's rules of how we should be, I still feel eluded as to how I am excluded from such circles of drama but know now it is that Bermuda triangle I have sought so long to escape. To them, I am an outsider as I refuse to play my part. Neither victim nor persecutor, rescuer or pity giver I feel something else for the Mandy Murphy's these days. No more envy although the child within sheds a saddened tear for being overlooked, uncherished as an individual but for her, I feel compassion.

For me, for my mother's daughter lost and lonely as she was, I am almost home, I'm at the door unlocking my heart to her with the greatest of ease. I see that messy brown hair, fingers which love to write, hold books as they provided a safe place of understanding, answers to question not yet asked, a scented feel of comfort, hand me down garments and envy her youth. I have become her again only this time she is loved, adored. So sweet and delicate yet robust and bruised from play, unassumingly taken care of at last soon to be free to leap with the abandoned joy she's craved for too many a year. Her name was Julie, mine it's rightful owner, Julia, the given name never used after registration until an assertive in her own right eleven year old declared possession again. A rebirth perhaps but liberation for certain. I have taken you with me on this journey and thank you. Without the support and understanding I have received I might not have arrived so soon...so soon at fifty-six is late enough but never too late to reconnect to oneself. A painful, confusing homecoming where entanglement takes place creating a whole completed puzzle. Anyone want to come play...you are all very welcome in my playhouse?