The broken doll is a girl.
She is a girl who has been broken.
Every day, she goes through the same routine. Looks at herself in the mirror and feels nothing. Puts on makeup, does her hair, because this is what the world requires of her. She smiles when her mother says goodbye, and says it in return, but she feels nothing.
At school, she says hello to her friends and engages in their chatter. The friends know that she is broken, but they fool themselves into believing that she isn’t, that she’s still there.
The bell rings, and she is swept along with the crowd. School was once hard for her, but no longer. She sits quietly and listens, does the work she is given, following the directions to the letter. She has always lacked creativity.
“Hey, wanna come hang out later?” Her friends ask each afternoon. Every day she gives the same excuse, yet they don’t push the matter. They know she is broken.
She was not always broken. There was a time when she was normal. There was a time when she laughed, and talked, and felt emotion. When she could create, when she was whole. She believed she was unbreakable.
But they broke me.
There is a shift in the pattern; they are starting a poetry unit in English. She cannot feel, but if she could, she would be afraid, for she cannot create. The teacher makes it clear that everyone will present their poetry, but she knows he must make an exception. He tells them to write a haiku, so she takes a pencil, looks at the paper, and does nothing.
I am surrounded by white, but the wall is cracking.
She puts pencil to paper and creates.
Drowning in the deep
Brilliant white surrounds me
Forever I hide
“Excellent work,” the teacher says. His expression betrays relief; he had been worried the doll would fail the unit. If she could feel, she would be surprised at her ability, for she would have thought she would fail too.
I try to peek through the crack, see the world outside. A brief flash — a hallway, students rushing to class, a book in my hand. Then nothing but white once more.
She stops, blinks, and if she could feel she’d be confused. She does not understand, she is broken, but for a moment, she thought she felt something. She continues with the day as if nothing happened, for she cannot do anything else.
I gave up fighting long ago. But maybe, just maybe, I can fix this. I can escape.
They begin writing poetry again. Whatever creativity she had is gone, for she is still a broken doll, and for days she simply sits and stares at the paper, wracking her memory for a poem the teacher has not heard. But there are none, for she was never much of a poet.
Please, let me out, set me free, let me fix the mess I’ve made. I pound on the wall, the endless white, and a shining crack appears. I force it open, and for a moment I’m in a classroom, staring at the paper, a pencil in my hand.
Is all you see of me a pretty doll?
The words are on the page, but she does not recall writing them. She looks at the students on either side of her, but all are diligently writing, not one looking in her direction.
I fall back into the white, and the crack disappears. But I won’t give up, I keep fighting, and with each blow the wall starts giving, until the crack appears again. I force one hand through.
Is all you see of me a pretty doll?
Am I a shell, empty within
I am a broken doll
Trapped within my mind
I am not a machine.
What you see
Is not me.
She watches the words appear in front of her, but she is not writing them. Her hand moves of its own accord, writing sloppily, hastily, yet clearly enough for her to read. When the poem is done, her hand stops moving, and she lifts the pencil off the page. Unsure of what to do, she takes another piece of paper, copies down the words in neat, tight writing, and hands it in exactly one minute before the bell.
“This is… interesting,” the teacher says after reading it. “Come see me after school.”
She returns a few hours later, entering ten minutes after the final bell. The teacher is sitting on one of the desks, waiting for her.
“Are you okay?” He asks. She gives the same answer she always does: she’s fine. “I know that’s not true. You hardly ever talk, and I’ve never seen you write anything this creative since September. We all know about what happened, but… well, maybe it’s not my place to pry.”
I can hear the muffled words coming through the white barrier, and I leap to my feet. I need to know what’s happening. Every time I strike, the crack grows wider. Five punches in, I’ve made a tiny hole.
“Did anything else happen?”a familiar voice asks. Through the crack I say,
“I was broken.”
The words are coming out of her mouth, but she did not speak them, and she does not understand them. She does not understand anything. Neither does the teacher, judging by his expression of shock.
“Have you considered going back to the guidance counselor?”
Of course she had. Her mother had required that she go once a week for months, but he’d failed to get through to her. Eventually, she’d stopped going.
“Go back. Show him this poem. Maybe it’ll help.”
She nods, acknowledging the advice, but for the first time in months, she defies the command. No one could help her.
Please, just give me my life back.
She wasn’t always broken. She was normal, once. Even at the start of this year, she was normal. She came to the first day of high school feeling optimistic, feeling that she was ready for the world. She was not. By the end of the first week she was drowning in work. Her friends helped her, but they could only do so much. But it wasn’t the work that broke her.
There’s a crack in the wall, and it’s not going away. I can’t do much, but I can see, I can watch and listen while this shell of me lives my life. If I widen the crack, sometimes I can move my hand, or try to say something, but only for a moment.
It’s barely anything, but at least it’s progress.
She is about to leave for the day and, just like every day, her friends ask to hang out. But today, something is different. Today something inside her makes her open her mouth and say yes. She doesn’t know why. Her friends are ecstatic, and all of them go to the first friend’s house. At first they just sit around and talk while they do their homework, and the doll wonders why she’s there at all.
I’m at my friend’s house. What’s her name again? It’s been so long I can barely remember. I’ll just call them 1, 2, and 3. I wish I could talk to them. We could laugh, and gossip, and be normal for once. Just like old times.
A tiny piece of the wall breaks away in my grasp.
I pull at the edge, break off more pieces, until it’s large enough to stick my head through.
I’m in 1’s room, blinking, looking around. I can only move my head- the rest of me remains out of my control, but I can see, I can hear, and I can talk.
“Hey, are you okay?” 2 asks.
“Help me…” it comes out as a strangled whisper, and 3 pairs of eyes widen. “I’m trapped in the white, I’m a broken doll, I need to get free...” My words don’t make sense, but neither do my thoughts.The white is creeping back, pulling me in. “Poetry set me free.”
I’m trapped in the white once more.
“What happened? Hello? Are you still there?” 3 asks. The doll just blinks.
“She’s gone,” 1 murmurs.
She doesn’t understand what happened. She doesn’t understand anything. She just shakes her head and returns to her English assignment.
Pain erupts in her skull, and she is dimly aware of her body crashing to the ground.
Let me out!
I’m screaming at the walls, kicking and punching everywhere, but the room just keeps getting smaller. The walls start to crumble and break, light shining in from outside.
She was not always broken. She tries not to remember that night. She was drowning in work, and she was desperate. She was so tired, so close to breaking, that when he came for her, when her father hit her again, and again, she snapped. She was too far gone to realise what she’d done when she stood over his body, blood pooling around her feet. But it was too late.
She was broken.
Holes appear, more and more, and the light is overwhelming. I close my eyes and keep going, pushing against the walls, forcing my way through until they break.
There’s a hole in the wall, but the edges are shining, and the opening is replaced with a door. Voices are whispering to me, voices in the walls. Stay here, they whisper, Where you are safe.
No. I’ve fought too hard for this. I may have been broken, but I’m not gone yet.
I open the door and step through.
I’m lying on the ground, surrounded by my friends. I see the concern on their faces, and I understand, I actually understand. My head hurts like hell, but I’m whole, I’m not just a doll.
“Can you hear me?” Janice asks. Janice, of course. I’d been calling her 1. I take a deep breath, then another, then another. I sit up, shaky at first, and then stand.
“I’m not a broken doll.”
