Hollow Pain

By Mona Angéline

Wanting to take back her words, it was too late. The teacher made eye contact with me, and her face had lost much of its color. She tried to hug me as my tears came.

Moments ago, she had led me into our classroom, away from the group outside, to stow my school cone. 

What would my parents have put into the cone for my very first day of school? Would it be crayons, chocolate, maybe even a toy?

Deep inside I had a foreboding idea in my mind of the reality that would await me, but I still harbored some hope somewhere and obliged when my teacher urged me to look inside.

But the shame welled up. My cone was empty. 

I slowly froze in place as if a hollow space was growing inside me, feeling cold and exposed, embarrassed that the teacher saw through my disguise as a normal child, the child of normal parents. 

How could I be so foolish to think I’d deserve these gifts? Of course it was going to be like those other times. The times when everybody’s parents came to see our projects in kindergarten. Except for my parents. They never came.

Void. Bottomless. That hollow shell of the school cone. Just like the hole they left in my depleted soul.

I may have been only six years old, but emotions of neglect are deciphered by our vulnerable hearts even before we’re fully in this world.

And yet there’s hope. We’re not alone when we’re with ourselves. Today, all education considered, I’ve been to school for thirty-one years. And throughout this time, I’ve filled my school cone myself. With warm-toned pencils to paint my life in my favorite colors, with happiness, with health. With hearts and flowers to hold onto, to make up for the love lost way back when. With belief and strength and resilience, with the essence of who I am.

The voids we bear and try to fill may never be fully gone, but they make us who we are. What has come of this empty first day is part of who I am today – a full life, a cone full of life, a life full of wonder, because every day is a new first day, a new chance for fulfillment and joy. A chance to be me.

Mona Angéline is an unapologetically vulnerable new writer, artist, athlete, scientist. She honors the creatively unconventional, the authentically “other”. She shares her emotions because the world tends to hide theirs. Her work was accepted in Flash Fiction and Down in the Dirt Magazine. Learn about her musings at creativerunnings.com.