mettle

Helmi spends her days cowering from the world or lashing out a la Bobbie when we first met her in Home and Away, 'rack... off!' If this was a proper soap opera her narrative arc would have resolved by now but she is resistant to conventional western storytelling tropes and won't be so easily pacified. Here she is looking out onto our balcony, fascinated by (I assume) the smell and sounds of the world, but very unwilling to step out. Well, we have to do these things little by little I reckon and if she had a few minutes at the balcony door every day, sometime in the next five years she might forget herself and accidentally put a foot forward. 

The weird woven cat figure which Carmel gave me did capture Helmi's attention briefly - I don't think she was fooled by it but I think she did sort of see it as one of those extra pieces of ambient interference sent by the universe to mess with her waking nightmare of a life. Paranoid. Still, I take heart from the fact that she did sit there and take an interest in the world for a brief time. I think perhaps there is hope for her yet, or at least, there's hope for me continuing to think there's hope for her.