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Note: This is from a book called Children with Emerald Eyes by Mira Rothenberg. This section starts at the bottom of page 64 and ends at the top of page 67. Those pages are all falling out of my copy of the book. Katy Kill is, in her words, "a residential treatment center for emotionally ill children. It is a large and depressing institution, which cares for, treats, houses, and molds 150 children from all walks of life, from all social strata, all with one common denominator: mental illness."
"Katy Kill Children: Labels. Categories. Rape, assault, murder; some reached out to the world in this fashion. Withdrawal, inaction, regression; others removed themselves, withdrew into their shells, and waited-- waited for the world to reach out to them. They reached out in this fashion. Then the ones in between; they did both. Katy Kill. Always erupting or ready to erupt. Seething with greed from so much deprivation, with hate from so little love, with rage from needing and not getting, with love hidden deep and yet right on the surface. Seething with terror. Seething with sorrow deep and pain so potent that when the eruption comes, it has the howl of pain that it is driven by, rather than of the rage that it expresses itself through. Katy Kill. Have you ever heard the sound of rage when it seems noiseless? It roars with an intensity. It grumbles with a desiccating rhythm. Its voice is dry and throaty. Sometimes it sounds like hell. And its color is white. Have you ever heard the sound of terror when it is noiseless? It rustles helplessly, like a leaf in a hurricane. It breaks hard, like the thunder. And it has a smell, a smell that shrivels your skin, a smell that makes you break out in a sweat so cold it freezes you. And its color is blue--deep, dark blue. Have you ever heard the sound of pain when it is noiseless? It howls the loudest and it whines the quietest. It sounds as if it comes from the deepest bowels of the earth--that is you. It shakes with intensity and trembles with its own resonance over oceans of nothingness. And its color is black. Have you ever heard the sound of loneliness when it is noiseless? It has a blast of thousands of trumpets. It has the howling of hyenas waiting for their pray. It has the howl of herds of starving wolves. Its melody is neither nice nor pretty. And it is gentle and full of fury. It is deep and somber, threatening and pleading. And its color is gray. It shouts at you and echoes over all eternity. It reverberates over the whole world and echoes in every cave, cavern, and mountain. It has a frightful sound; it has a howl. And the plea is: "Love, come to me." Its basic ingredient is: "Give, give to me." And the other ingredients are pain and terror, hate and rage, anger and tears, and "Do not leave me, love me, and oh, it hurts so much." And the search. Have you ever seen the search for "that" which one no longer knows by any rightful name but "that" or "what" or "Oh, God, help me!" or then no longer even that, but the burning ashes of a long, long, long ago fire? Have you ever seen and felt and smelt and heard them all together? They have cold, sweaty hands. And eyes that sometimes burn and sometimes weep, red-rimmed, sleepless, hopeless. Eyes that try to hide deep into the sockets of the head, and finding the futility in this, just stare--nowhere. And the body, no matter how straight or bent, or fat or skinny--something just about the shoulders--a little tilt, which in spite of all its bravura and all its bravado in a very, very small voice asks: "Protect me." A child. Any child when abandoned. But all these children feel abandoned. It is the world versus the child. The child versus the world. In all, the impotence of both. In all, the fear of both. And sometimes this loneliness of theirs takes you by the shoulders and says, "You are going to give." And sometimes it kills because you didn't give." And sometimes it kills because that is a giving, too: their giving. And sometimes it just withdraws and waits till you come and give, and in its waiting it often dies. It stops. It doesn't talk and doesn't walk, and sometimes doesn't move. It waits. It often does, and in its strange perverted way it makes you give. Sometimes there is sex to fill this void. And the sex is then strange. There is little giving, but there is taking, there is devouring of you and whatever you can give to fill this void. The exquisite giving and taking is no longer. The balance is disjointed. Because it is to take, to calm, to quiet this awful howl of loneliness and the hunger that derives from loneliness. To feed, so that for once, for this one short while, the need, the plea, the want is filled. One doesn't cry, with tears. One doesn't sob, with sobs. One doesn't ask, with pleas. One waits, one watches. One is ready. One is tough. One pushes away. Except in the dreams. One doesn't talk about the dreams. That is the way to be, out there in the world that is a jungle. One hurts. One fights. One kills. So that one does not get hurt, get killed, one withdraws. In order not to get refused, one doesn't ask. The price of the ticket for a lifetime is high. One pays. But one sees to it that everyone else will pay it too." ~me |