Willa
a short story
Willa
by Ophelia Everfall
Despite her way of feeling gay, the world had birthed much pain to stay.
Willa lost and lost some more. She couldn’t hold out for the chore—of being what the people said was how to get someone in bed. All her heart she’d scream and shout. Every loss would be let out. Nothing came for what they saw, something she could not unthaw.
Every single person too, would see some whore who’d been run through. Trauma of a special kind had rotted deep into her mind. Reflections made would be shined back and blow her out by every crack. Nothing left to be unseen would turn the world so very mean. They’d feel it her—the one turned cruel—while driving pillars into stool—while watching porn and making thoughts of dogs and whores—all her lot. Never would one understand it hadn’t ever been her brand. Raped she’d been from youngest change, warped it made her woman’s brain.
Willa became what they’d want, less the girl, all a jaunt.
Alone with self she shatter-spliced—rising wisdom—mind, it riced. Surely, God would stow surprise, someone special’s shared sunrise. Suffered-hard, she wandered fraught. Willa cried for all to not. Every place she’d find more lack. No one had the woman’s back. Never would it come to be that she would find someone to see. She needed more than what life gave, and those it showed to be her stave. All her class was broken down, to be forced in would prove some clown. It wasn’t even what she’d want. No one cared. That’s what she got.
Less and less her mind had gone. Sorrow stilled in every song. Until one day it broke at last. All was done. Each had passed. Every friend she ever had found Willa’s spirit slightly mad. That never-honored girl inside was always of much wounded pride. The thing they’d see was just her glee and how she’d fail to bend the knee. Each would sense it stranger still, how one could make such change by pill. They’d think it wrong, they saw it mad, they’d blame her thrice while loving bad.
Even when she lost her child, every stare just became mild. People thought it meant to be, for how could one such as she—deserve some place near youngsters’ breath. Corrupted whole they thought herself.
My child, why? How did we lose? For never would I ever choose. To be less than your every sight. I’d be there with you every night. Your shining glow had let me be, at last, for once, someone free.
Thoughts swirled constantly inside Willa. She was being sacrificed for the ways of ignorance borne through other’s lie. She had been mutilated by hatred for realizing herself, fighting to survive every breath for so long despite, searching for hope, calling out for human connection, needing one to stand beside in some occasional consistency, wanting most a person to share her art with and know closely. She wanted someone to believe in her heart.
Willa was like a child and no one understood they made her that way. She wanted to die for the woman she’d hoped to become; that mother she had only a taste of living as, for those best and worst three years of her life.
She’d gotten to be the best mom. Time with her daughter was sacred. It wasn’t something she shared with anyone. That was holy time for Willa. The opportunity to know a soul so pure and clean, helping them grow into the world with right foundations, allowing them to find themself by gentle exploration of freedom, always knowing it incorrect to even raise her voice and code them towards believing their curiosity was wrong. Willa hoped her daughter would remember those times, but she knew they wouldn’t.
When Willa told people she needed hugs because she’d become disabled and been alone through it all, then lost her daughter, they didn’t come. No one came. When she told them all how she wanted to kill herself, or was going to, because nobody would be her friend; they called the police on her. When she reached out through it all, doing her best, knowing it wild, trusting people with big minds and hearts, to her own estimation—silence taught of misunderstanding—restraining orders came to the door.
Everyone had raped Willa into an emotionally crippled schizophrenic who needed a hug badly from any person she loved a lot, that she was literally dying for each day. She’d become a subconsciously driven survival artist in a world that hated her every action. It was torture. She had been telling people all about it.
People didn’t love the way things were. But that’s just how it was.
Willa was an angel who need taking care of. She’d never once lost her ability to be the best mother. When her child was taken from her, all of the communications she shouted into the ether became of overt, uncontrollable anger adorned with sexualization, romance, and witchcraft. They were all products of executive dysfunction in her schizophrenia, reactive projection beyond her, made to happen through her. The human body had been trained to hold those kinds of responses for how it was supposed to activate compassionate care from community. People just wanted her to grow up and get help; they’d wanted her to stop bothering them.
People thought Willa was embarrassing.
She’d been trying to explain it all, and to everyone, the whole time. No one really believed Willa. Their own opinions were quickest judgements based on how they wanted to get back to living.
Willa was a reflection and nothing more. She’d been suffering through hell for how the world made her evil by being so itself.
If only one had been able to help her. If anyone cared to let her rest after being abused into a child by every one of those she hoped might form some community of family around her authentic self, and becoming highly disabled with schizophrenia, or simply decided it wise to help her land on two feet— listening to the woman, who would go on about how complicated things were—letting Willa slow down once, and believing that she was a great mother worth preserving, or finding the means to care about a living human being needing someone to have fun with, she might have been able to hold on.
Only one was forgiven to Willa. It proved something strange of heart. She felt responsible for letting them down long ago and never making up for it. They were that one she’d wish for seeing in Heaven the most.
Children didn’t need Willa’s forgiveness. Least of all her daughter. Willa was going to be with her every moment once she’d gone.
I had been fighting to hold on for my daughter, having been nearly schizophrenic a year, with no help, working full time, falling into unbeatable anxiety, writing, reaching out to people I knew, when I took this photo.
This was our favorite album to fall asleep to.