2. The embrace
The door was cracked. She fell into the castle. Ruben and Lilith sat with a cup of tea. He had gone and returned. He stayed and he left. Maybe a little longer that day. It was good to go, because otherwise you can not return. To enjoy a familiarity that gives strength to discover the new, the unknown. Frightened both looked up. The girl, who was so wide-legged in the room, looked as wild as she had treated the door. The wide camouflage pants dangled around her legs. The hood of the sweater she had pulled over her head, so that only a few short strands of black hair barked at the top of her head. Her gaze was unsteady, and her lips clenched tightly, as if words were jamming behind them, which she could not possibly allow herself to get out of. Just as she also forbade her eyes to abandon the tears that had been gathering behind them for a long time.
“Hello! Nice to see you here,” Lilith said to the girl.” Sit down and have a cup of tea with us.”
“Is there nothing else?”, she asked cheeky, without replying the greeting.
“How about hot chocolate?” Lilith continued unflinching. Only Ruben seemed a bit irritated. This girl was snowing in here, helpless, and then she made demands. Absolutely no behavior. That was what he thought, as clearly as it was written on his forehead.
“I had thought of something harder, but if there is nothing else, even that,” she explained, struggling to maintain the snappy tone. But it was much more difficult for her.
“Would you like it with whipped cream?”, Lilith asked as she put the steaming cup on the table in front of the girl.
“Oh, yes, please,” she said, “so we used to drink it in the past.” And while Lilith piled a huge mount of whipped cream on her cocoa, the savage had not just disappeared from sight. Instead, a girl came out, who could be gentle and turned and loving. A girl who was so full of longing and touchability. But the longing, which remains unfulfilled, recedes into itself. Because it hurts less to deny them than to see them again and again unfulfilled. The touchability hides behind inviolability, if the touch does not occur.
“And so you know right away, I need nothing and no one. I get along very well on my own. So I’m really wrong”, she said. Lilith noticed that Ruben had also turned to her, that he was ready to ignore her behavior, for he recognized in her a girl without hold. A driven person recognizes the other.
“Of course not,” he said at last, “but that does not stop us from sitting here and talking to each other.
“Ok, if you want that,” she said, far less grumpy than she really wanted to say.
“Yes, I will,” said Ruben resolutely, “I am Ruben, by the way, and the nice lady who gave you the cocoa is Lilith.”
“Rebekka,” Rebekka replied briefly, and as she brushed the hood off her head, her brittle brush head cut, the sleeve slipped up a little on the left arm. Scars became visible. Self-inflicted wounds. When Rebekka noticed Lilith’s gaze, she quickly pulled the sleeve down again, up to the fingertips. She hid her injuries under long sleeves, the outer, and the inner in herself.
“I also like it that you are here,” explained Ruben on his part, “How old are you actually?”
“16,” came the quick response, “It’s been a long time since I’ve been drinking cocoa. Mama used to make it to me before, and then we cuddled in front of the fireplace and she read me, so when I was quite small. Later we talked. But that’s a long time ago, that does not matter.” With one sentence, Rebekka wanted to wipe not only the picture, but also the feeling of security from the table. She grabbed a sheet of paper and a pencil, as if lost in thought, and began to scribble.
“Should not you be at school?” Ruben asked, frowning.
“There I lost nothing”, Rebekka explained, fully absorbed in her drawing.
“And work?”, Ruben remained stubborn.
“No one wants me, just as I am”, Rebekka said defiantly.
“And at home?”, Lilith interrupted.
“I do not want to be there”, Rebekka said, leaning even deeper over the sheet of paper.
“What happened?”, Lilith asked.
“Nothing at all. But it’s all so mendacious. It always says, Family, that is where they love one, but love, that depends on how you behave or how you look”, Rebekka said, “And if it does not fit, then you are criticized all the time. Then there was the new brother. Constantly I should be careful. Everything was all about him, and all I did was wrong. I was completely unsubscribed. They do not realize that I am no longer there. I can nothing. I am nothing. I have nothing.” Finally, Rebekka put away the pencil, which had conjured a bleeding heart on the paper. It was of an intensity and depth that Ruben and Lilith could only be astonished. And this girl claimed that she has no abilities?
“What would you want?”, Lilith asked softly.
“That she just takes me in her arms and likes me as I am”, Rebekka said as quietly, and now there was the longing and the sadness and pain. The gate had opened, for the words and for the tears. The words were the first. Then were the tears. And Lilith took her in her arms, like a child she actually was. Rebekka let it happen and leaned her head against Lilith’s shoulder.
Hot chocolate is good for the heart, also for the heart. But a hug, without ifs and buts, which means to me how I am, in my self-existence, but also in my loneliness and abandonment, in my doubts and in my fears, this is like a little piece of home that one conquers. Maintained, steady and secure, warm and snug. A hug is good for the heart, even for the heart. Let it happen without a word. Just be there. Do not judge, no longer qualify, but simply leave it there.
“You are, and as you are before me, it is good,” said Lilith.
It was time for Rebekka to go home and embrace her mother. She, too, would need someone to take her as she is.
And on that evening the drawing of the bleeding heart found itself in the display, which was connected with the embrace, so that the wound could heal. Embrace as the acceptance of the other, which becomes a you in it.