Hi. This is Spencer, for Spencer Reads on Unpretending’s Substack.
This is chapter 4 of Freeing Finch by Ginny Rorby.
Transcript of Chapter 4 is omitted - Buy the book here.
Spencer’s commentary begins on the voiceover at 12 minutes, 40 seconds.
And that’s the end of chapter 4.
I like dogs, I think I like all animals. I think-I think I might be a little bit like that Mandy lady. I uh-I know that we here, well most of us, except for the one who doesn’t like anyone, we like animals better than people most of the time too. And trees, that’s because they were kinder to us sometimes than people were.
Hmm, I just think people just misunderstood us, that’s all. If they understood us better, they wouldn’t have been unkind.
I think that Stan, her stepdad, I think, it sounds like he loved the mum, cause he did that kind thing for Finch and made steps, and put the mum’s ashes in a nice place.
Our mum got buried. They (Unpretending Spontaneous) use to go there a lot, planted Lavender, cause they had a dream that she was in Heaven and she had lavender trees outside her house, not lavender trees lavender bushes.
But anyway after a while she didn’t want to go there anymore, why go there because, it’s just her body in the ground. Sometimes, she use to feel her, or they felt a grandma or the grandpa around us like, sometimes…, sometimes they sometimes feel other people’s people. But we don’t usually tell people that because maybe we don’t, maybe we just imagine it, it’s really hard, maybe we’re just crazy. I don’t know, I reckon when you feel somebody, you know they’re there.
I was feeling sad that Finch only has a bathing suit, we call them swimmers, that doesn’t hide enough. That must really be hard. You know when I was in year 5…, I think things must be different cause when I was in year 5, I-I had a flat chest too, I-I didn’t start like growing anything until I was in year 7 or year 8. I didn’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to just go around in shorts, like all the other boys, they were allowed to just walk around without a shirt on, on hot days. I just couldn’t understand why-why? Doesn’t make any sense especially if you don’t have any boobs or nothing. Just because you’re a girl.
When she says she’ll be stuck in this body she hates forever…, I know this is a made up story but there’s…, I know there’s people out there who-who are girls and they’re in a boys body. Like us, I don’t know how it works but, we’re in an old lady’s body, she’s nice but it’s not my body anymore, I can only see myself on the inside, and so if I look in the mirror it’s not even me. If I don’t look down at my hands and stuff, it seems to be my hands and then I look down and go, “Oh wow! There’s my grandma’s hands there.” I got my grandma’s hands.
I had a nice grandma, well my dad’s mum was a nice grandma, my mum’s mum was interesting. I think-I think the-my mum’s mum didn’t know how to uh-be affectionate or be loving and kind. I think that’s maybe why my mum couldn’t do it, until my sister was born or sumthin. But even then she-she didn’t understand me very much at all so….
She’d give me hugs because she had to but she was always stiff. I feel sorry for her, to have to have a girl when she actually wanted a boy. They thought I was going to be a boy, the whole time I was in her tummy. They were going to call me Gregory Damien, they even had a football to give me. And I came, and I was 17 days late, cause I didn’t want to come into this world because I already knew what’s it’s gunna to be like, cause I could hear ‘em, the yelling and the screaming, and the hitting, and the all the other stuff. I’m sure I could I, I can’t remember but that’s why I didn’t come out till 17 days late.
And they were so surprised that I was a girl, they didn’t know what to call me, they-they didn’t even have a little girls name picked out or nothing. So I was nothing for a couple of days, till they came up with a name from my dad’s work, he probably thought she was attractive or something, gross hey. So I hated my name for a long time, the name that they all called me. I’m called Spencer and I know where I got that name, it’s a nice name and I like Spencer more, much better than the Body’s Name.
But then when my brother was born after me, they called him Gregory Damien and he got the football, not that I liked football or nuthin at the time.
But there was some bad things happening to me at the time and I didn’t find out about that for a while because other people, in me, little people they-they take on those memories, but now if you look back they was some lying going on by grownups. But that’s not this story.
You know in this story, she had a mum who loved her. She had a mum who stroked her cheeks when she went to bed at night. That’s really nice. I don’t remember anyone stroking my cheeks, I just remember being scared, crunching up into a little ball. Horrible scary music was on really really loud…,
But I’m not allowed to talk about that.
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Unpretending Spontaneous is the name used by a Multiple System from Australia, the technical term is currently called DID - Dissociative Identity Disorder. This blogcast is our journey as we attempt to function well in society as a multiple while healing from our traumatic past.