Stealing the Troll -- guest blog post by Julia Richardson

I was always moving as a child. First I was moved from my mother when I was two weeks old in 1958. Then I went to a foster home. When I was eleven weeks my adoptive parents came to collect me and take me home with them. We moved houses and I moved schools. My mum had to go into hospital and I had to to go away. Each move layered another trauma on top of the first one. 

This story is about what happened when I was seven. We had moved house again to another area. We kept crisscrossing England like a game of cats cradle. As soon as I started to settle we seemed to leave. Now I carry that pattern in my soul. I settle and I want to move. 

This time we had moved from London to Manchester. It was all different. It sounded different, smelt different and the way everybody spoke was like a foreign language. I felt like an alien with my soft vowels and London ignorance of Manchester United.

We were in that area for two years from when I was six and we moved twice. Once to another house round the corner and the second time to live in a caravan whilst our new house in a new town was being built. I think this is where things started to fall apart for me. Or I started to fray at the edges. No one seemed to notice. I was doing well in school. And I tried so hard to be liked and to fit in. But I was scared and lonely and my attachment issues were kicking off. My rebel child was screaming inside but she learnt how to do it silently and discretely so that on the outside I conformed. I didn’t feel like I belonged.

This is where it started. That recognition in myself that I didn’t quite fit, in my family, in my life, in my own skin. Trauma was in the house, but we didn’t know its name. 

I started to behave in ways that screamed for help. Having accidents was one. Nightmares were another. Stealing was the one that caused me the most pain and also the most satisfaction. It gave me an instant feeling of comfort. For a few brief seconds when I had something in my hands that didn’t belong to me I felt happy. I felt like I had what other children had. I just wanted to be like them. I wanted to be someone else. I wanted to be like popular kids. The ones with the shiny hair. The one who did ballet and had the perfect little outfits. I wanted the potty putty that had just become a craze and the marbles that were the big thing in the playground. I wanted the felt tip pens and the Orange Club chocolate biscuits.

So I took them. I stole the other kids’ “tuck” meant for playtime and I ate them, stuffing food into my mouth in the girls’ cloakroom or into my pocket for later. I spent a lot of time feeling sick and ashamed and frantic. I knew that what I was doing was wrong. I was terrified of being found out and getting into trouble. But something was missing and taking something shiny and special or delicious made me feel like a little bit of their life would rub off on me.

My nemesis was coming and it came in the shape of a rubbery plastic toy with a cute ugly troll face and long hair in a range of colours. Everybody had to have one and my little addict self was of course no exception. Trolls with hair all colour of the rainbow and pink bodies with baby bellies. Small trolls and big trolls. Trolls that would sit on top of your pencil or attach to a key ring or pencil case.  I had one with orange hair and I loved him. But one is never enough.

I was going to a 8th birthday party for Izzy who was in my class at school. She lived in a big old Victorian house with a wide open staircase going up from the hall. I hadn’t been to her house before. They seemed a nice family with a mum, a dad, and three girls of which Izzy was the youngest  I was left at the party by my mum and I felt like I had been thrown to the wolves. I felt out of place and anxious because I didn’t know what to do or what the rules were there. I was a watcher. Throw me into a room and I would study everyone and work out what I had to do to fit in. But I was eight and I hadn’t quite got all the skills yet. I was always envious of other people’s families: I wanted to not be alone with my parents.

This house was busy and lively and the party ran its usual course of games and a party “tea” with cakes and jellies and sweets followed by the birthday cake and candles and singing “Happy Birthday”. After the sugar high,  there was  a game of “sardines”. I had no idea what that was and no one explained, but I used my super ninja skills in the art of copying everyone else. I watched and followed the cues. In the helter skelter running round the house I was feeling anxious and uncertain. I wanted to go home or for my mum to come back. I loved to get away, but I wanted then I wanted to be back home. I felt unsettled and didn’t know how to make myself feel safe.  

Izzy had showed me her bedroom and her sister’s room. She was so proud of her sister’s troll collection. There were three or four trolls including one with rainbow coloured hair. I fell in love instantly. I wanted it so badly and I knew it would make me feel better if I could just hold him.  As I ran past the open door on my way to find somewhere to hide, I spotted the troll.

He called to me.

In a flash, my little fingers scooped him up and put him in my pocket. My heart was thumping hard because I was scared of getting caught, but I felt so happy to have him. For a moment, I was satisfied. I knew that what I was doing was wrong. But my hands seemed to act independently. My brain was telling me that I didn’t feel safe, so my nervous system was in panic mode. Taking the troll changed how I felt.

That is the purpose of addiction, to change how we feel. The fear of not knowing how to fit in came straight from my terror of being abandoned again. Those feelings were too much for me to bear. Stealing transported me to a different place. I substituted a different fear and in the the meantime I got a short burst of pleasure, a moment of satisfaction and of feeling that right now everything is okay. Later the addiction became shopping, but that wasn’t an option then.

Shortly after it was time to go home and dad came to pick me up. As I was on the doorstep my friend grabbed my arm and said loudly, “That’s my sister’s troll! You’ve taken it from her room! What are you doing? Give it back!” I had been wondering how to get myself out of this situation. I knew taking the troll home was crossing a line into chaos. I had thought I might just drop it on my way down the path so they would find it later. But her accusation froze me. I went into a panic and had no idea how to get out of it.

So I lied. 

“No, it’s mine, I brought it with me,” I said and I kept on saying it until they stopped arguing. The more it went o,n the more scared I got. I felt like I was going to die. The only way out that I could see was to escape, and to escape I just had to keep lying. All the magic had gone from the troll. 

Several weeks passed. The troll stayed hidden under my bed. I couldn’t play with him or even take him out and look at him. I felt him burning through the covers and at the back of my mind all day, every day. I couldn’t escape the constant fear and anxiety. I felt sick a lot. I wonder why no one noticed. One day at school nemesis came knocking in the form of a seven year old with freckles, a pointy chin and long curly light brown hair; “My mum knows you stole that troll and she is going to tell the police and then you will go to prison,” she said.

“But I didn’t take it,” I kept saying. I had got myself into this situation and I felt like there was no way out. 

Inside me, the shell I had built to keep all thoughts of discovery out shattered, and I went into freak-out free fall. I don’t know how I got through the rest of the day. When I got home I went to my room and cried until Mum came in and found me. I never knew how to go to her and ask for help so I just cried until she heard me. It seemed to take a long time and I felt lonely and scared. I thought this was it. Now they would take me away and I would be sent to prison and I would never be able to go home again.

I told her what I’d done. She just listened and said, “You are going to have to give him back you know.” She arranged everything. and the other mum met us on the doorstep. I handed over the troll and I said, “I’m sorry,” and she smiled at me and said “Thank you.” 

We turned around and walked home. I don’t remember any more being said about it. I knew this couldn’t happen again. I couldn’t bear the shame. That’s what happened with difficult things. We didn’t talk about them. I stopped stealing after that because I realised that it made me feel worse than the reward of getting the shiny treasure. But nothing really changed. I had just learnt to layer shame on top of need. 

Whilst writing about the troll story I went online and bought myself a set of mini trolls. I have them in front of me now and they remind me that this story is not about shame anymore: it is about understanding and compassion. Ibsen asks Peer Gynt to work out what is the difference between a troll and a human being. The troll’s motto is "Be true to yourself, and to Hell with the world.”

I quite like that.