HUMAN with a touch of gold.

My first touch of gold.

Bare with me.

Asolutely pounding it down with rain, it must have been a hot day that day because: the smell you smell when the wet infuses with the hot tarmac is etched into my brain forever.

The rain poured diagonally in the glowy amber of the street light; the way each drop combined with wind stabbed my skin. My toes and feet felt like they were burning from cold. My thin drenched nighty suffocated my small and fragile frame.

The way my cries gurgled into screams as I pulled as hard as I could at my own hair until my nose bled and the ringing of my ears each time I slammed my head off the porch wall, sometimes they'd let me back in if the bump was big enough or I was having a nose bleed.

(Not this time.)

7 years old.

A long shadow that flittered on the corner across the street, as a girl and boy (at a guess late teens/early twenties) turned onto the street, I assume I was being extremely loud because I must have drowned out the noise of the rain, they headed straight in my direction.

I thought I was going to be in more trouble. More!

The young girl put her coat around me and held me while she shuddered, I settled a little and my body stopped rattling as much and she shouted to the boy to knock, before I knew it they were both frantically shouting and banging at the door, still making sure to check I was ok intermittently.

She answered, there was a highly heated exchange, I was let back inside and sent to bed.

I dont remember the words, but i do remeber the tones- from both sides. I Remember feeling like I was seen. For the first time, not feeling like I was at fault and wrong for being sad or frustrated with what was happening to me.

I remember feeling hopeful that someone else had seen so everyone wouldnt be able to put it down to the pathalogical liar or mental Zoe again.

Honestly, it didnt change a damn thing outside of me, it remained insufferable until at 10 I got myself out of there, the people that helped me escape are more touches of gold too, there have been many.

That night did change something deep inside the core of me. In that moment I learnt that it wasnt just me that was the problem, it was the most important valuble lesson I could have ever have learned, that my feelings and experiences and my hatred of that place and resentment of the people 'caring' for me, was valid and justified....... but also that nearly every grown up around me was either a liar, blind or ignorant.

As it turns out, mostly just liars but that's a different story for a different time.

I thought it was just normal, my previous home wasnt much better so if not for those two strangers standing up for me, I probably wouldnt ever have even had the thought to have left there.

The point is that sometimes life is just piss poor, it just is, unjust things happen to people non discriminately. It's full of tradgedy and misery and cruelty but if youre going to feel all of that, because sometimes you have no choice, then you have to feel all of other stuff too, you have to look for it, sometimes it will feel like all you do is search to be met with only darkenss, do it anyway. Find the beauty, its everywhere if youll just allow yourself to have a peek..... all of those little touches of gold. 

Make that YOUR choice.

And THAT's why HUMAN with a touch of gold. Humans as standard can be many things, not all good, not all bad, complex, very. 

But...

Once every so often you find one that shines just that little bit brighter, they impact just that little bit harder, ones that bring a bit of balance back to the scales of life.

Sometimes you have to search really hard and thats hard and then sometimes they show up from dimmly lit corners at the most painful points but they're always there.

Forever Humbled,

Zoe Siobhan.