They told me to talk to my therapy doll. They never said what to do if she talked back.

I?ve always been uncomfortable in my own skin ? which is maybe why I?ve spent so long imagining what it?s like to be in someone else?s.
It probably also explains why I was drawn to my doll so quickly.
No skin ? just smooth, varnished wood. Her features are carved and painted with lurid colours, and her hair has the feel of cheap plastic, but I love her like she?s family.
I think, in a way, she is.
She was given to me to help me cope with trauma, and to help externalise difficult emotions and experiences. I always thought it was funny, that they?d expect me to share all these things with her and not come out at least as her friend.
They?d always speak in hushed tones when they came around the orphanage, talking to the nuns, and I?d catch fragments of their conversations:
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?She seems nice ? shy ? but the doll? It creeps me out.?
?Is she okay? The doll?so quiet..?
?Has she seen anyone about, well, you know ? all of it??
?She said it...blinks, moves. It?s impossible ? and at her age? To believe such things? I?m not?I?m not comfortable??
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I never hear the nuns talk. There are men and women who come now and again and do talk to visitors, and to us, but the nuns keep quiet. I like it that way. They don?t ask questions about her, or about me.
I?d listen in silence to their talks, with my doll in my lap, slowly stroking it, speaking under my breath, reassuring her that we weren?t weird, or creepy, but that we loved eachother very much and they just didn?t understand that.
I can vaguely remember my sister saying something similar to me, her cheek on mine, wet with tears. I can remember her telling me that she would never leave me, and that she loved me so much it hurt, and the way her long fingers would tease out strands of my hair.
I remember that she smelt like mowed grass and scraped knees.
They never said where she went.
Although, I suppose, that isn?t important now.
They haven?t taken the doll from me, even though they get strange reactions, and I?ve grown old with it around. The nuns say nothing anyway, covered in those floor-length black and white robes, doing their stiff, funny march down the halls.
They nod when they see me and I nod back. I?m happy here, and I don?t know why all the visitors, all those potential parents, seem so keen to take her from me. She?s done nothing wrong. She?s kept all my secrets and told no-one, and has listened to me cry, and has been there when no-one else has.
She is precious, and mine.
We communicate with blinks. Sort of like a strange morse code, but we know eachother so well that blinks can mean many things ? sometimes all at once. It?s based off a system me and my sister used when we were in foster care, that we developed when the man who was meant to be our father wouldn?t let us speak, and the woman who was meant to be our mother would wail and shriek so loud we couldn?t be heard anyway.
Sometimes I?ll ask her a question, and she?ll blink, slow and steady, those stiff lids slowly moving to cover her dead eyes.
I suppose it?s not quite fair to call her eyes dead, she can?t help how she was made.
When asked a question the response is simple: one blink is yes, two is no.
I ask her if she loves me, and she blinks once.
I ask her if she has secrets of her own, and she blinks once.
I ask her if she would ever leave me, and she blinks twice.
Sometimes before bed I?ll close her eyes, to make sure that she sleeps well, and when I wake I?ll find her eyes wide open, staring at me in the dark, closer than she was before, and for a second I?ll think I can hear something like a whisper, or a voice in the distance.
Sometimes she moves when I?m not watching. But I am, and I?ll watch her slowly raise an arm or move her head, moving in fractional bursts, so that it looks like it?s out of a timelapse, or an old film.
Sometimes when I drop her and hurt her the nuns will help me, soothing my tears, applying a layer of varnish to the speckled wood of her skin, smoothing out the cuts and splinters, taking real care, wearing funny black gloves.
I?m allowed to do what I want with my day, to use the computer, play outside. Most of the time I spend it with my doll, who I think of as my little sister, showing her the world as I was shown it, telling it secrets that were told to me.
Some nights we sneak out, hide in places the nuns can?t find us.
Last night I realised that I was less alone than I thought.
That she was less alone than we thought.
Because as we crouched in one of our favourite places, after sneaking out after bedtime, tucked under the organ with a view of the church we saw something that took our breath away.
Two nuns, holding candles made their way to the altar.
The candles cast a dim half-light over the scene, but we could just about make out what was happening.
And in that warm light we could see the nuns loosen their robes, and step out.
With wooden bodies and on wooden legs, step out.
They removed their habits, and I saw the back of their heads for the first time.
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The back of their smooth, wooden heads.
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x


Source.