The Hidden Fountain of Joy

I’m sorry I let myself get side-tracked. I was telling you about Stella.

What else can I tell you about Stella?

I could tell you how her red ribbon, her tartan skirt and her matching jumper make her look young and naïve like a vague, nervous schoolgirl who has no place amongst the loud, serious, bright and arrogant that dominate us. I could tell you how this uniform she’s chosen to wear has made her the joke of everyone. Exposing her to snide remarks and cruel jokes. All behind her back, though, never to her face. None of them are cruel enough or brave enough for that. Just the usual petty, senseless attitude to others that most people here have come to embrace.

But what I really want to tell you, what I’ve been dying to talk to you about is that Stella doesn’t care. She just gets on with her work and pays no attention to anyone else. She never looks angry or upset. You’ll never find her hiding in the toilets, eyes red, nose wet from crying. She just looks back at everyone with that blank face or that disdainful look and carries on, regardless.

Now, I know what you’ll say. You’ll say that she’s just putting on a front. Of course she cares, of course she gets upset she’s just putting up a front so as to pretend to me and the other cruel, arrogant pigs that make her life miserable that we don’t matter to her. Deep down she really cares. And when she’s finally at home, alone, deep down comes right up to the surface thrashing and crashing against her insides until she has to let it out in one loud screaming, cry of despair. And then another and another, until all that anger, all that hurt has come flooding out leaving her body empty and blank. Blissfully empty and blank. Her body and her face. Her round and small and white and blank face.

(You see how I know you. How I know what you’re thinking, what you are dying to say to me. I know you so well I almost don’t need you with me. Don’t need to talk to you like this. Don’t need you to find me. Almost.)

But, let me tell you that this isn’t true. Stella doesn’t have hidden depths of despair, she has hidden depths of joy.

I know, I know, how could I possibly know that?

Because, I’ve seen it.

A small glimmer of the hidden fountain of joy that sits inside her spilling out all her warmth, her charm, her love and inspiration. Sending it flowing around her, inside her. Gently, so gently it doesn’t make it through to the surface. It’s her own secret world. But it’s a secret world that’s waiting. It simmers and seethes until one day it can finally come flowing and rushing and bursting out into the open for all to see.

How have I seen this? That, my dear, is for another day.