I have always both loved and hated the month of May, loved it because I really really LOVE flowers, especially the ones that are growing now. Hated it because along with those fragrances come really awful memories. I have always been very susceptible to smells.
In my distorted catholic upbringing there was always much activity around May time,the time when there was a May procession in the church, and some young girl would be chosen to crown the statue of the virgin mary.
I was always the May Queen!, “absolutely democratically voted for” they said, or I was the “retiring” May Queen, or If we visited another close town for their celebrations, I would be the “visiting May Queen” or the “May Queen in waiting to be the next bloody “May Queen” Always singled out, I was never one of the flower girls or at the back of the procession - right at the front , in some contrived capacity or another - I thought of it as Hell on Earth. Or maybe this was the training for my “martyrdom?.” (Growing up I always believed I would be a martyr.) Or was I being "groomed"?
After my earlier abuse, I was already playing games with food, starving and bingeing, but also I was covered in scabs! I would self harm every day, cutting, then scratching my arms and legs, and even putting ink or dirt into the scabs to keep them infected and bleeding. As fast as a scab formed I ripped it off and bled even more.They were like great craters on my body.
They said it was because of my "nerves" that I got these sores, prefferring not to acknowlege that I caused them myself!
So in my beautiful hand made "May Queen" white dress,I was getting thinner and thinner, and underneath the white grosgrain, I was covered in bleeding sores.
So every time I smell those beautiful flowers I am reminded that in all of the pictures, my hands in white gloves in prayer, what was really there was a disturbed , suicidal, skinny, scabby, May Queen.
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