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Angela lays curled into a ball, wrapped in a blanket, inside the bathtub.
She doesn't know how long she's been there, and she doesn't know how long she'll stay.
Angela hasn't dropped in months, and now here she is, shaking and crying in an empty bathtub.
She's fighting it. Hard.
... -- --- ... ..../.. .../--. .- -.--
Her parents always said being little was against God, that it was “sinful and unnatural”.
She's always wanted their approval, she still does. To be loved by parents that always seemed to pay her little attention compared to her perfect brother.
She would pray. She prayed a lot. For the love of her parents, for them to be proud of her, to be good enough, and that when the time came, she'd be neutral like her parents. That she'd be “normal”, and that her parents would be proud of her for that.
But as puberty passed, the signs started showing, and her parents put it together before she did.
She started falling asleep after school while doing her homework. Tripping on the stairs, dropping things around the house. Her fork falling from her hands as she ate, food missing her mouth slightly even when the fork made it up there.
Angela was a little. And her parents made sure she knew how ashamed they were of her and her “affliction”.
They told her to ignore it. To suppress it. If she never dropped, it wasn't real. To tell no one, as it was shameful to admit such a thing. To pray for it to go away.
And she managed to hold off her first drop until she was 17.
She'd had an overwhelming day. School, a test, musical rehearsal, and way too much homework. Homework that she had been behind on because of the terrible headaches she got pushing back on being little.
But she tried to be good, to obey her parents, to please God. So she fought it, and pushed through.
When her mom came home, she found Angela in her room, asleep on top of her homework. She started screaming, about her being a disgrace, for her “bad” grades, for her lack of success, for everything.
As she's startled awake, Anglea doesn't have time to fight it. She panics and then,
She dropped.
Hard.
Wailing, sobbing, hyperventilating. She falls from her chair to the floor, a mess.
And what did her mom do? Continue to yell at her. How dare Angela be a little. It's pathetic, it's a disgrace, it's unnatural.
Angela kept crying, unable to calm down, as her mom grew more and more annoyed until she finally left. Tired of yelling at “something” that wasn't listening to her. Leaving a very young Angela sobbing on the floor.
It took Angela an hour to calm down enough to try and move from that spot. Gasping for breath, as her head ached, and her face was covered in snot and tears.
When she finally calmed down to hiccups she looked around her room, terrified and confused. Looking for somewhere to hide, and she found it.
She clumsily crawled to her bed and grabbed a blanket and her stuffed dog, dragging them behind her as she crawled to the closet. She struggled with the door, until she finally managed the knob and crawled in.
She crawled in, and shut the door. She was afraid of the dark, but more afraid of that was in the light.
So she wrapped herself in the blanket, and curled into a ball, Cannoli against her chest, fingers planted firmly in her mouth. And cried until she finally fell asleep from exhaustion
... -- --- ... ..../.. .../--. .- -.--
And that's basically her routine to this day, even after moving out. Curling into a ball with her blanket and her stuffed dog in the dark. But there were three differences
One. Her apartment didn't have a closet she could crawl into, so she had to use the bathtub. Both were dark and hidden, meaning that in Angela's little mind, they were safe.
Two, Spork would keep her company. He didn't really know what was going on, but he was good emotional support.
Three, she was actually safe.
But unfortunately, being physically safe didn't make her feel any safer.
... -- --- ... ..../.. .../--. .- -.--
When she first made it to college, away from the influence of her parents, she met many new people. She started to realize that maybe things could be different from what she thought. That what she'd been told hadn't been the whole truth.
She loved getting to meet so many different people. Meeting other littles. Littles with careers and lives and loving families. Littles that were happy and safe.
And as she made friends, littles, caregivers, and neutrals. She didn't talk about what she is, but no one pushed her, and she appreciated that.
Until she met her best friend, Chanse. He was little and gay. Two things her parents were against. But she loved him anyway, and they became attached at the hip.
And she adored his little self. When he was small, she doted on him, because he deserves all the love in the world. And as they grew closer she realized that maybe her parents were wrong, not about her, but about everyone else.
She slowly started agreeing to go to gay bars with Chanse. It was easier to break through that religious ideology with the lack of trauma she has surrounding it. And it was freeing to find that part of herself.
But she continued to keep being little to herself, a “shameful secret" she held onto alone. Until one drunk and emotional night at his apartment, she dropped.
And when she looked at him, terror in her eyes.
He comforted her.
He helped her calm down at her speed, respecting her and her boundaries.
And by the end of the night? She was giggling, sitting next to him on the couch.
But when the morning came, she shoved it down, ignoring Chanse if he brought it up. It was a shameful mistake she was never letting happen again.
But the rest of the cycle would repeat again.
She would fight it for months, until she lost the fight in her apartment’s bathtub again. Crying until she fell asleep. Feeling like she's back in her room, sobbing, terrified of her own mother.
... -- --- ... ..../.. .../--. .- -.--
But as she lies here tonight, shaking as her head throbs, she makes a decision that changes everything.
The phone rings three times before the other person picks up.
“What's up bitch?”
“Chansey... help”