The New Girl

As I drove to work this morning, far too early in the cold dreary rain, there were yet occasional cars filled with school bags and panama hats and beuniformed children crowded into backseats ready to be dropped at before school activities. All looked the part of involved and belonging children, with parents fussing over bags and blazers. So sure of themselves, so confident. So secure.

Where I park is right next to a private school, filled with girls who have gone to that same school (or selected feeder schools) their whole lives. They fit, they belong, their position they need not even think about most of the time because shared history cements them in it.

And watching them I searched for the girl amongst them who I knew had to be there, the one that didn't belong. The new girl.

At the beginning of each school year I was exactly the same as every other child - new slightly too large uniform for me to "grow into", new bag and lunchbox, new books and pens and pencils with my name stamped into them. Hair carefully brushed but never as immaculate as other children's, often hanging in two long plaits down my back. Excited and cheerful at the idea of a new school term, with all the adventures and fun that that would entail.

But there was one difference, 6 times out of those 12 first days of the school year I was the new girl. The one with no history, no past, and nothing to recommend her but herself.

Even from a very young age I knew the power in this, the ability to reinvent each time, to project whoever I wanted to project, be whoever I thought I would like to be. But I also realised the massive disadvantage. Children can be and often are insular - the schools that I went to often had less than 50 students total whose families were intertwined and had histories going back generations. Breaking into those social networks is the sort of thing that brings grown men out in a cold sweat, so for a tiny (for I was a very small child) pigtailed little girl it was a difficult task.

Luckily, or maybe unluckily as the case may be, I have always been attuned finely to the needs and wants of other people. I have also known how to make friends in an hour, whether by intuition or calculation I do not know. Friendly, jocular, interested in others, rarely by the first week had I not made friends. Friends who would divulge all their worldly secrets to me and rely on me for a hug, a friendly word, or a good deep and meaningful where I would help them explore their feelings and inevitably make them feel good again. Without sounding full of myself I understood the power of listening and reflecting and the healing effect I could have on others.

But it wasn't just altruism that drove me, beneath that, in the scared tiny girl underneath was the fear that if I wasn't all of that, if I didn't continue to give then no one would seek it. I am not the vivacious life of the party, and even though I tried that in one of my reinventions I found it too hard and too superficial to maintain. I was terrified of being alone at all of these new schools, and I had the power to not be, so I didn't. And I told myself that it was enough to have many friends that relied on me, and I tamped down any part of me that needed something back, because if I couldn't help and heal others, then there was no appeal for them to take me into their groups. I had no history, they had no loyalty, so I had to manufacture it.

For someone who so obviously craves solitude at times, this probaby screams contradiction, but I have always preferred solitude with a warm body curled at my back.

As I've moved into adult life my craving for human interaction has remained the same. When I see people I know that I can help heal I can't stop myself from opening my heart to them and to trying to give what I can to soothe whatever ails them. But I can't open myself up for the same thing because I know that ther is no incentive to heal the healer. Aside from anything else I know I project an aura of calm and coping that only the most determined onlooker would see through.

And usually I can cope fine with this, I've chosen this, and I'm aware that I could certainly change the way that I act, and that if I allowed them, there are friends that would gladly try and heal me too. But I can't let myself be open like that, because if I do let myself be vulnerable and they walk away - then what? I am not sure that I would have the strength to heal myself. So I take pleasure in helping others, and refuse to feel sorry for myself. Until such time as some friends are healed well enough that they don't need me any more, or they shun the one thing I offer.

Then I get back in my cold lonely cave and stay there. Until I'm brave enough to come out and be the new girl again.