Shelly

This girl, to whom I refer as Shelly, was abused to the point of almost complete dissociation from life. I call her Shelly due to the fact that when I met her she was just a shell of a child, unable to form original thoughts or think for herself or understand how she fit into the world in healthy, meaningful way. The following story illuminates how this 9-year-old thought- no clue about the world or herself in it.

One evening I went to Shelly's room to have her line up to go down for dinner. Something was odd about her face. What was it? Was it the lighting? Her face looked grey and strange. It took me a few seconds, but then I realized that she had put scotch tape over her mouth. I was so taken aback by her distorted face, it was so strange! I asked her to take off the tape and get into line. She smiled and said, "I was just pretending I was murdered!" What?

In line, as we were about to walk down the stairs, I saw her mimic to another kid the gesture of being choked- complete with the eyes-rolling-into-the-back-of-the-head bit. I asked her what she was doing.
"I'm just pretending to be murdered. I was once, ya know!"

"You were murdered?"
"Oh yeah, I was."
"I don't think that word means what you think it means." She looked at me, puzzled, and then got back into line with a clueless smile plastered on her little face.

This girl was repeatedly raped throughout her childhood. Was she re-enacting something horrible in her room? Was she forced to act out scenarios of death or murder while enduring things worse than death? This poor little girl. She will never be normal. She will never know what a healthy relationship is like, how normal human beings interact. Her therapist once told me that he no therapies worked with her and all he could do was play therapy just to see what would come out of her mouth and if he could treat it in some round-about way.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that a life sentence in prison is not the best way to spend the remainder of my life...and that helps me (just a little, mind you) not go on a murder spree of my own, taking out the parents of some of the children I treat. Makes me sick to know what some innocent little ones have gone through, and I want so badly to give their tormentors a dose of their own medicine. Maybe Dexter has the right view of the world.