Luka Was A Little Girl
- Luka
- May 14
- 4 min read
'Katie was a little girl' is a song lyric to one of the most haunting, ethereal, honest pieces of music I've ever had the pleasure of listening to. Missy Higgins is a very sentimental artist to me because her music was an integral part of the beautiful childhood I shared with my world, my mum, when it was just us two. I believe Missy Higgins takes us through the life of Katie, a troubled little girl who turns to unhealthy mechanisms to cope with the world that she knows. I related so deeply to this song growing up. Luka & Katie - two little girls just trying to find their way. This is the life of me, if Missy Higgins were talking about me in her song called 'Katie'. I have attached the song lyrics below so that you can understand the references to them in the following blog.
When I was a little girl, I was fearless when the barriers of the world made themselves known to me. I didn't know any barriers until one day, little pieces that had unnoticeably piled up, upon little pieces, upon little pieces, suddenly, all at once became too big to continue to go unnoticed. I believe I became scared of the world at this point, the point when I realised that so much of my dauntless life was, in actuality, interlaced with hostility, belittlement and anger. I was a little girl dealing with an ego so ravishingly encompassing that every part of the light that was me was cornered into a room where all of the lights were turned off. And I was just stuck there, for so many years, trying to turn my light back on. But I couldn't. And I didn't understand why.
I use anorexia as an illusion. It subdues my fear of the world that can seem so scary, allowing me to run away from the heaviness I feel in my chest when I breathe in the rubble and remains of the messiness in my life: My mental illness, beliefs of inadequacy and experiences of abandonment.
Anorexia is my terrible coping mechanism, but a coping mechanism nonetheless.
And every time I engage in behaviours associated with anorexia, I'm speaking to the little girl in me who wasn't protected with safety nets of honesty and communication. The parts of the little girl that needed to be showered in love were instead obliterated by people she should've been able to trust, thereby leading me to develop a relationship with a predictable source I could rely on. And that was what anorexia provided for me. Even though it was killing me, for the first time in a long time, I felt alive. I didn't need to pinch myself just to feel anymore, instead I became numb, so I didn't have to feel at all... not the good parts, not the bad parts, not anything. It was emptiness. I think it's hard to explain something like that to a person who joyfully engages and relishes in life itself, but when life has been unkind to you for so many years, you stop believing that there are good parts out there and wrap your head around an understanding that there is security in nothingness.
A person buried beneath the belief that they are nothing will become content in experiencing and existing as nothing.
I'm a 22-year-old trying to build a life for myself on the foundation of an entangled web of years of lies, pain and suffering. I want to be alive. I want to be free. I want to redo my life so that I can shelter myself as a little girl from drowning. I want to 'turn a blind eye to all the faces' that I thought I could trust but never could. I move forward with an open mind, but not one so open that it lets people in too fast before I know of their intentions. I shower myself in the present with the knowledge I've learnt of my past... that how I was treated was wrong. Even if I believe I deserved the brokenness, the hail and the wounds, at least I am aware of the abnormality of my experiences. Perhaps within that space, I can begin to heal from everything I've carried so heavily on my shoulders and my back. Perhaps within that space, I can glue together my ripping heart. Perhaps then I may begin to find the parts of myself that were seized with melancholy in every ever so tiny and every ever so grand way.
This Blog is the story of Luka. But perhaps she and Katie were the same person in another life, for their stories resonate so perfectly with one another. Each little girl was damaged by the way of life they grew up with, becoming the emotions that were always going to be far bigger than them. The two were forced to deal with brutal emotions, turning to something that helped suppress their suffering. I hope that Luka & Katie one day become free from everything they've grown to know and everything they've grown to hate. I hope love finds its way into their hearts.
Kisses,
COS x
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