Family is Forever

Chapter 50- I'm just Natalia and that's ok

Ali was doing so well. She was eating full meals at home with Ollie and Zosia and was gaining weight according to what the diatician and clinicians expected. She still struggled in public and still had a long way to go with her weight gain. They were doing a topic at Day Treatment called 'who am i' they all had to talk about how they would define themselves after they go back into the real world as most of them were defined before as 'the anorexic one' or 'the skinny one' or 'the one who doesn't eat' or something along those lines. Abby had made a whole slide show on dance and ballet. She was so excited because as she was getting discharged soon she was allowed back to dance- only 5 hours a week though, which was much less than before- but she was determined to get back to 16 hours a week like before. "As You can see I do loads of different types of dance, but my favourite is ballet. So I want to be the dancer or the ballerina or something like that."
"That's wonderful Abby" Claire the clinician smiled. "Your mum told me you had something you wanted to show us?" Ben another clinician asked.
"Two minutes." Abby replied then went into the school work room. She came back with her pointe shoes on and plugged her iPod into the speakers. A song came on that Ali recognised and Abby, holding a doll she started to dance for a minute or so, although there were only a few square metres of space in the middle of the room. She looked so graceful even just in her jeans and top she truly was a wonderful dancer. She finished and they all clapped, Abby blushed and turned back from that confident dancer into the shy little girl they all knew. "That's Clara's solo from the nutcracker. It's one of my favourite dances. I've know it all my life. I'm kind of rusty I haven't danced properly for so long." She said shyly. "I know that ballet was one of the things which gave me issues with my weight but I see, now, that dancers are strong not skinny. I went out for Pizza with Anastasia, one of my dance friends after dance yesterday. I just wanted to show you all that I'm a dancer."
"Hey Abby, you're truly amazing." Elsie smiled at her friend. "So graceful!" Ali added. "We want front row tickets to your first professional show. Ok little one?" Meena smiled.  Abby laughed nervously again.
"Ali, your turn." Claire smiled at Ali. "Well I don't know how to follow that!" She smiled. "This is just more of a brainstorm I guess, Natalia- that's me." She wrote her name on the whiteboard. "I am 16 years old, I am Polish" each time she mentioned something she wrote it on the board. "I like to make things, cross stick and papercraft, I love spending time with my cousins." She continued until here were about 12 things around her name. "But none of those thing are what makes me me. Although I always think that there are 3 different versions of me." She held up a photo. "This is Natalia. She is 7 years old. She lives with her grandparents her babcia and dziadek and her mama. She speaks only Polish-
Except learning a little bit of English at school. She is happy and loves visiting the park with her babcia. She put the photo down and picked up another one it was her first day of high school "This is Natalie-a she stressed the last syllable. "The Polish freak. Still struggling with her English, bullied and picked on spending her school days wishing she was at home, in Poland with her grandparents. She lives with her mother and her string of boyfriends- she's not happy- except for when she spends time with her aunt Ania and cousin Zosia, she usually spends at least one weekend with them per month." She held up another photo. It was a selfie that she'd taken about a week ago and printed out. "And this is Ali...but who is that? I asked some people what they thought of when they would think of me I asked Elsie" Elsie blushed "she said my best friend, Ollie my sort of cousin said Zosia's little cousin who makes me laugh a lot, mama said my beautiful daughter, and Zosh just said my cousin. And all these things and more make me who I am. The other day I was reminded of something about little Natalia, baby me. I used to go to mass with my grandma. And I was reminded of a bible verse. Matthew6 25-27 "that's one of my favourites." Elsie smiled and they recited it together. "I'm just Natalia-Ali and that's totally ok."