Work Text:
It was an average night at the Children's Fun Center. Tilly was cleaning up one of the children's play areas after working. She was the last person there. She had a long shift and was very tired from dealing with young children all day.
Just as Tilly was finishing cleaning up, she noticed some type of paper or drawing on one of the tables in the food area.
It was probably just some random drawing from a child.
And well,, it was.
Tilly was about to grab the piece of paper to throw it out, but she decided to take a second to look at it.
The drawing was of a family of three, it was a typical kids drawing. It had the sun in the corner, the weird spikey grass, all the things.
Tilly stared at the drawing for a few seconds, zoning out.
For some reason, staring at that drawing made her genuinely upset.
She never got to draw pictures of her and her family like that, she never even thought about it.
Her “parents” were never even parents to her. She just thought of them as mother and father.
Why did she never get to experience that type of love? Why did her parents not care about her? What did she do wrong?
Her heart began racing. Why did looking at that picture trigger her? She sees pictures that kids have drawn all the time, almost every day.
Tilly crumpled the paper and threw it across the room. Why is she so upset? Her eyes were welling up with tears at this point.
She dropped to her knees and started sobbing quietly. She continued to think, “What did I do wrong back then? What is making me so upset? Why am I so pathetic? Will I ever get over this? There is something wrong with me… What is wrong with me then? That was years ago. I need to get over it. I'm pathetic.”
Tilly got up quickly and ran over to her office area rapidly. She had a few drawers at her desk area and she kept blades in them if anything ever got to be too much to deal with.
And guess what? It was one of those times.
She took the blade, rolled up her sleeve and began drawing those pretty red lines on her wrist she had been a bit too used to seeing. How comforting.
Every cut opened up beautifully to reveal that nice white color before they started bleeding.
Once she finally made enough of them to not feel as overwhelmed, she put the blade back in the drawer for later.
She also kept bandages in that drawer for this exact purpose. She pulled out a roll of bandage and swiftly wrapped it around her own wrist.
She didn't feel better, but she felt like she got most of her anger out.
She still had tears that needed to be wiped away, but for the most part she stopped crying.
She still had more cleaning to do.
Tilly took a deep breath, wiped the tears off her face with her sleeve on her clown suit and walked out of her office.
She went over to the table that the drawing was at, she took the rolly trashcan and continued to clean what she had been cleaning before seeing that.
Tilly eventually finished cleaning everything she needed to, except for one piece of paper.
She did throw the drawing across the room, she needed to pick it up.
Even just the thought of looking or even just touching that picture to throw it out made her stomach twist.
Yeah, there's no way she's picking that thing up again.