Voices Gallery

I was born mute.

When my words did not work, my body did the talking for me.
I could never speak the words that could express my anguish,
but I learnt very young that my body could express what I could not.

I spent many Mondays sitting in the doctor's chair. I always let my mum do the talking.
 

“The pain in Lola’s stomach seems to be getting worse.”

“On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad is the pain?”
 

No number could ever explain the reason why my stomach felt raw with dread.
When the doctors explained that my abdominal affliction was not a physical one,
I would tell myself it was a cancer, and it may as well be, for it wasn’t long until stomach would

gnaw itself empty and my frame waste away.
 

And as the tumour grew larger, I would tear at my body until my hands were stained with my

own guilt.

Kneeling on the blood stained floor was me pleading.

I asked for redemption from white coated gods when I believed my own self hatred was a sin.

They prescribed oblivion only when I begged for it.

In this world, redemption seems to come in the form of neatly pressed pills.
And when the medication was in its greatest numbers,

A new illness was born.

Losing myself to screaming numbness

I found a voice in the darkest parts of my heart that could do nothing but yell and kick and

scream like a bullied child.

Though mute, the cracking of my personality , twisted and contorted by an array of pills, could

not fathom a single word that did not blame.

Sloth, hate and panic dissolved my frontal lobe and was nothing but relentless to the people I

loved.

Easily melded into apathy , the atrocities lay upon me founded no more than a few more pills in
my cup. Tears did not fall from my eyes and the chaos surrounded me was so familiar it was

almost boring.
 

I, Lola, at 20 years old had consigned to oblivion.
I had signed the papers, and condemned my life for what it is:
A pattern of instability, violence towards myself and a resignation of perpetrators.

Even with the anesthetic to my emotions, sporadic glimmers of hope would dance across my

eye line every now and then,

If I wasn’t looking for them I would’ve missed them;
the more I managed to grasp the more they spread
Until I was holding so many I realised my own life was in my hands

My grave was not nearly yet dug

So I threw down my shovel and began looking for more.
Defying the white coated Gods, I started to taper off the pills in my cup until the excitement

​

The felicity

The love

The grief

The anger

The passion

The fear

They all came back.

​

I felt them all at once as if I were cannonballing into a swimming pool.

​

I welcomed them

I shunned them

Eventually I accepted them.

All highs I welcomed with open arms,
and the lows I held in a deep embrace.

I found a deep comfort in the fact that my lows were a side effect of grief for those years lost

But turning my face to the future years excited me
The day I could see clearly was the day I could finally speak

And no God with a clipboard and pen will silence my voice again.

​

- Lola Cavill