I try to act normal want to be normal but I don't know what normal is. Isn't normal the place where I live? Aren't my parents normal? If what I am surrounded with is my normal why doesn't she likes me? She keeps yelling at me. She says I am not normal. I do everything she asks except smile. I do not know how to smile. I can not relax. My body feels like a shelf. I feel frozen if she arrives if I hear her or smell her. I don't know what is worse. Her voice or her smell. Her smell makes me gag and I cannot hug her. It is torture to be in one house with her. The perfumes she uses, all those expensive creams only make it worse. Her scent cannot be covered. She will never smell nice.
Grandmother does not smell. Her smell comes from a bottle of pink body cream. She only uses one cream and no makeup, no perfumes.
My nose is very good and so is my hearing. Both make me suffer. It's hard to smell what other people can not smell and to hear everything. It is impossible to shut it out. To not smell all those different odours that make one person. The sharp odour is the worst next to the rotten scent of hate, infection and death.
Getting out of bed this morning was hard. My bedroom is cold. It's even cold underneath the blanket. I have a yellow woollen blanket. It's itchy. The sheets are white. They always come back white from the laundry no matter how much blood was on it. I wonder if the laundry checks if it's clean or their machines wash better. If the sheets are back from the laundry my mother checks and fold them again. It has to be in her way. All sheets are folded in the same way, the same size. Neat and perfectly folded in the linen closet.
School was okay I guess. In the classroom with the teacher is fine. At the schoolyard, I rarely play. Dirty and damaged clothes will make my mother angry. The children don't really like me so I wait till I can go back to school again. Sometimes I wait in the sun, sometimes in the shadow. The children who play with me after schooltime never play with me at school. I feel lost at school. Lost and as if I am the only child who doesn't know how to play. I am the only child who cannot see the fun, feel the fun.
The crowded hallways at school I don't like to cross. The chairs are herded too. The children push and you have to take care. They are loud and in a hurry always in a hurry especially if it's time to go home.
Home isn't the place I like to be. I don't feel at home at home. It's not a safe place to be.
Monday
September 20, 2021
