Grace

She’s the quintessential back flanker. Nothing flash, no silky skills but by hell she’s reliable. She’s the one you want with the ball when the chips are down, when there’s 45 seconds to go on the clock. If a friend is in trouble she’ll float backwards into a pack to effect a spoil. I’m kind of drawn to Grace. I reckon she’s a kindred spirit in an Anne of Green Gables kind of way.

Her colleagues and acquaintances might describe her as a happy person. She presents well, if you bypass the odd mascara blemish, and she loves a laugh and a chat, actively enquiring about others. Some people have a sparkle in the eye. She’s one of them. But the exterior veils a deep sadness. The smile belies a darkness, a burgeoning shadow that prevails over her soul. She looks at me and her expression is wistful, the eyes intense. It’s like she’s a husky, she can see through me, she’s there but she’s also somewhere else. A pause. She turns her head. Then it all comes tumbling out.

She’s always had an inner knowing. She was eight when puberty hit. She vividly remembers having a bath with a schoolfriend and feeling self-conscious and embarrassed about being so physically different. This only exacerbated when she’d just turned 11 and got her period for the first time. While she understands this is more common for girls nowadays it certainly wasn’t then and the feeling of being so different was pervasive, isolating and lonely. It’s taken many years to realise that feeling sick and wanting to vomit during school sex education was not a normal reaction.

If everyone has their cross to bear then hers is a heavy weight. By all accounts she tells me she was a happy child. Her mum told her she could sit and play puzzles for hours on end, very happy with her own company. Now that’s a contented introvert if you ever you met one. Adolescence however, was a difficult time. It was around this period she started restricting her eating, watching for any changes in appearance. She recalls the feeling of dread, constantly weighing herself and looking in the mirror for any signs of difference. She wonders to this day if it explains the small stature and the childlike features.

Years pass and life is consuming. There’s travel and work. She’s embraced the serendipity, the surrealism of venturing beyond Australia’s shores, meeting the most remarkable people and experiencing those pinch-me moments. She loves her friends. Her friends mean the world to her and she’s adamant she’s the keeper of the best.

She thinks she’s learned to manage her anxiety after an unsuccessful stint as a manager. Spending hours after work concerned about the next day’s internal team meeting is not a sustainable way to live. But she’s found her groove in the supporting/advisory role, with cautious caveats of hero worshipping her exceptional managers of whom she’s always been admiring. Life creeps along, like a vine’s tendrils clasping a wire fence. Friends are getting married and having children. There’s the frequent hens days, wedding and baby showers. You name it. While she loves a party and any excuse to meet new people or gather among friends and receive that injection of energy that only friends can give, she feels like she’s swept off a boat in the midst of a stormy night and is drowning among the towering swells.

Grace directs me to her best friends Celine and Beth for insights. Grace tells me they are the two greatest humans you’ll ever meet in a lifetime. I believe her. These women are towers of strength. They are earnest, authentic and I feel a little in awe in their presence, reverent almost. They bookend Grace. She feels complete and safe when they’re around. Protected almost. Unfortunately, the shadow that stalks her is beyond their realm but they do what they can to offer safe harbour when it lurks the most. Grace is indebted with gratitude.

The years roll on but the questions still linger. Why is she so seemingly different? It’s not until she divulges her past to a friend with qualifications in mental health who slowly clasps her arm as the past unravels and with a gentleness suggests ‘Grace, I think something happened when you were a kid’. Being a devout (but questioning) Catholic she’d always put the overwhelming feelings of queasiness down to a sense of guilt, of shame and despite many professionals asking if she’d ever been sexually abused she’d always interpreted the question from an adult’s perspective. Over the next few weeks and years she reflects and indeed, it’s like the eternal missing piece of the jigsaw has found its place at last. And it’s so normalising, it explains so much. Those early red flags are queued up and fluttering in the same direction. The most recent, hoisted when a former colleague confided in her that she’d been abused as a youngster without any prompting from Grace who always wondered why she shared this information. Like her namesake, Grace forgives whoever did this to her as they themselves were not well. She has an inkling but will never share as she’ll never know for certain and being incorrect is just as damaging, if not more so, than accuracy.

She’s going OK until she shares with one of her closest, respected confidantes her inner knowing and truth, sagaciously backed by professional experts. The conversation begins to meander to her deepest concerns as he tends to become slightly lecturing about the difficulties we all encounter in life. That everyone has “issues”. Grace tells me she tried to interject, that she tried to protest that she’s done an exceptional job at coping, at surviving given everything she’s been through. He tells her doesn’t believe her. Not those words exactly, but that’s the essence of the conversation. He believes that she believes that something happened to her as a child but ultimately does not believe her because it’s just “not possible”.

Grace swivels her head around and her deep, piercing blue eyes look at me. She tells me she she struggled to breathe at that point, that she felt numb. She heard words but they did not resonate. “He did not believe me”. She says that afterwards she took two mersyndols because she wanted to sleep, to numb the pain. The rest of the day remained a fog. In hindsight, she realises it’s unfair for him to understand. He doesn’t want to, and likely, does not have the capacity. It’s taken her a lifetime to come to terms with this inner knowing, and in fairness, how should he be expected to grapple with it, in such a relatively short timeframe? That is unfair. While her love for him is everlasting, she’s never been so heartbroken and the pain is raw.

Grace’s younger self leans over, quizzically looking at the puzzle before her. She detects the outlier piece of wood and rotates it 180 degrees until she hears the familiar click and feels the firmness of position, locked and secure.

I smile at Grace. She looks wearied but content. She knows the internal battles are lifelong but that she’ll ultimately come out on top, all the stronger for the experience and knowing that we all walk our own journey, that uniqueness is sacrosanct.

“You’re extraordinary and you’ll be OK” I say as I give her a hug, look back and walk out the door.