Arjun and the Big Feeling

"No more iPad today," said Mum.

Not in a cross voice. Just in the ordinary voice, the one that means the thing has been decided and is not going to be un-decided.

There had not even been a warning. That was the worst part. Arjun had not had his ten minutes. He had not had anything.

The Big Feeling came up from somewhere near his stomach and filled him all the way to the top.

Arjun knew what it was like. It was like having a T. rex in your chest. It stamped about and it wanted to roar, and roaring would have felt amazing for about four seconds.

He knew what came next, too, because it had happened loads of times. The shouting. The stamping up the stairs. The door. The bit afterwards where his throat hurt and everyone was fed up and he still did not have the iPad.

That was the thing. The shouting had never once got him the iPad. Not one single time.

Arjun stood in the middle of the kitchen with his fists shut tight and the T. rex stamping around inside him.

He took a breath in. It was a wobbly one.

Then he said the sentence, which Mum had taught him and which he had always thought was a bit silly until this exact moment.

"I am upset but okay."

It did not make the Big Feeling go away. That is important, and nobody had promised it would. The T. rex was still in there.

But saying it out loud did something small and useful: it put a tiny gap between Arjun and the roar. Just enough of a gap to do something else with his hands.

Mum did not say well done, and she did not say anything about the iPad. She said, "That's a big one, isn't it," and carried on putting the shopping away, which somehow helped more than a hug would have.

Arjun went and got the art box from under the stairs, mostly because it was the nearest thing that was not a person to shout at.

He drew a T. rex. A furious one. He pressed so hard with the red pencil that he broke the point, so he sharpened it and pressed hard again.

Then, because the T. rex looked lonely, he drew a volcano behind it. Then he drew a small hut with a person waving from the doorway, who was in no danger, because it turned out this particular T. rex was friendly and had only been shouting because nobody had explained anything to him.

Somewhere in the middle of the volcano, Arjun noticed something.

The Big Feeling had gone.

Not been beaten. Not been argued with. It had just… left, the way a wave goes back down the beach after it has run as far as it is going to run. And he had not needed the iPad to make it go.

He took the picture in to Mum, who looked at it for a long time and asked proper questions about the volcano.

It went on the fridge. It is still there.

And the next time somebody said no about something — which was on Wednesday, and it was about biscuits — Arjun took a breath and said "I am upset but okay", and then went and looked for the red pencil.