I woke with a start at the sound of rumbling thunder. Rain patted on the roof lightly, but the sky was violent with roaring clouds. I couldn't remember the past night, mostly because it had been the same as the past few months: bleak and lifeless. I couldn't remember the last time I had left my house, oh wait, yes I could. But I try not to think about that anymore. My body felt stiff and sore from laying in bed all day, but I was used to the feeling by now. I regestered that it was late in the morning, and my hand automattically went up to my face, wiping away the dried tears from the previous night. I no longer had dreams of death. My dreams were much worse these days. The memories played through my mind on repeat through out the night. I was sitting there, his hands holding mine as he seals my fate of lonelyness. The pain was numbing. Some nights were difficult. Some nights were dreadful. Most nights I felt dead. I stared at the hosiptal barelets fastened on my writsts. There was two of them. One from the emergancy room and one from the physc ward. They didn't want to let me leave, but I no longer showed signs of physical harm and they no longer could find a reason to keep me. I watched as the memories played through my mind, forcing myself to watch because I knew this was the last time I would have to face them. I watched as my life slowly faded into the deep abyss of lost memorys, as the months numbly passed by like minutes, and as my will to survive effortlessly slipped from my hadns. I knew what was to come; I've watched the signs appear for months, but now, as the idea concluded in my head, I wasn't afraid. I had lost any control I had. I had lost any life lines I thought I needed. I lost my need to br... ... middle of paper ... ... with the baby securely cradled in her arms as she slept, I sat in the heavy snow. My body slowly slipped forward on the tiles slicked with icy snow, as I tried nothing in my power to stop the fate that was sure to come with falling off a second story rooftop, doing absolutely nothing to save the thing we had so desperately fought for. My life. A quick second passed and my body fell from the rooftop. The air was thick, but it wasn't enough to catch me. The ground came sooner than I expected or had ever imagined. There was no sudden hope that anyone, or Alex, would swoop out of thin air and save my life. My life did not pass before my eyes as I fell, for my life had been taken from me the second I was sent back to earth alone. There was no moment where everything seemed to fade into slow motion as death quickly approached. Or at least I hoped it would.
The night was tempestuous and my emotions were subtle, like the flame upon a torch. They blew out at the same time that my sense of tranquility dispersed, as if the winds had simply come and gone. The shrill scream of a young girl ricocheted off the walls and for a few brief seconds, it was the only sound that I could hear. It was then that the waves of turmoil commenced to crash upon me. It seemed as though every last one of my senses were succumbed to disperse from my reach completely. As everything blurred, I could just barely make out the slam of a door from somewhere alongside me and soon, the only thing that was left in its place was an ominous silence.
As Jonas reached the top of the hill, the chill seemed to grow from his bones. Jonas and Gabe climbed onto the red sled from the memory. He clutched Gabe closer as the sled gained speed and the trees flew by. A few feet from the base of the snowy hill, the sled broke on impact with a rock. Jonas staggered out of the snow, trying to rub warmth into the newchild, who had begun to shiver violently.
All eyes were focused on me. This was it. The tension had been building up to this point, and I knew there was no way out. I had gotten myself into this predicament, and I was the only one that could get myself out of it. There was nobody to turn to, for they were all waiting for my final move. I had never felt so alone, so isolated.
I walked into the room on New Year’s Day and felt a sudden twinge of fear. My eyes already hurt from the tears I had shed and those tears would not stop even then the last viewing before we had to leave. She lay quietly on the bed with her face as void of emotion as a sheet of paper without the writing. Slowly, I approached the cold lifeless form that was once my mother and gave her a goodbye kiss.
If I was lucky, I’d fall asleep from the pain. I vaguely remembered something to do with hot irons, scalpels, electric shocks, blades, pliers, and lots of blood. At that point, I was scarred literally everywhere. Big, red, infected scars. I wanted them to kill me. I wanted it to be over with. I’d learned my lesson. Society tells people to fit in for a reason. Every town, no matter how big or small, has an Asylum. It looks like a normal house, like one you’d find in the suburbs. It looks like no one’s home, with the little lace curtains drawn shut. It looks like somewhere safe to spend the night. It draws you in, and once you go in, you don’t go back
I cuddled my baby as close to my chest as possible, whipped the streaks of tears from his cheeks, and kissed his peach fuzz forehead. I started to hum a lullaby while rocking him in my arms. I had gotten so caught up in the moment, that before I knew it, he was fast asleep.
Time passed and in what had seemed like hours, but more realistically was about ten minutes, my time had come. My br...
As I inched my way toward the cliff, my legs were shaking uncontrollably. I could feel the coldness of the rock beneath my feet when my toes curled around the edge in one last futile attempt at survival. My heart was racing like a trapped bird, desperate to escape. Gazing down the sheer drop, I nearly fainted; my entire life flashed before my eyes. I could hear stones breaking free and fiercely tumbling down the hillside, plummeting into the dark abyss of the forbidding black water. The trees began to rapidly close in around me in a suffocating clench, and the piercing screams from my friends did little to ease the pain. The cool breeze felt like needles upon my bare skin, leaving a trail of goose bumps. The threatening mountains surrounding me seemed to grow more sinister with each passing moment, I felt myself fighting for air. The hot summer sun began to blacken while misty clouds loomed overhead. Trembling with anxiety, I shut my eyes, murmuring one last pathetic prayer. I gathered my last breath, hoping it would last a lifetime, took a step back and plun...
In the state I was in, if someone had come and told me I could go home quietly, that they would leave me my life whole, it would have left me cold: several hours or several years of waiting is all the same when you have lost the illusion of being eternal. I clung to nothing, in a way I was calm. But it was a horrible calm -- because of my body; my body, I saw with its eyes, I heard with its ears, but it was no longer me; it sweated and trembled by itself and I didn't recognize it anymore.
Shivering in the blasting cold night, the words fear and death invaded my soul and lamentably waited for the deathblow. The darkness of the lemon orchard under the full moon hidden behind long, high parallels of cloud was accelerating my fear and advancing the idea of `suddenly disappearing` in my mind. I had never thought of death before. The rows of lemon tree standing like elite soldiers made me feel like an enemy soldier captured in war and was being taken to be executed by guillotine. A shotgun was targeted towards my head which made my eyes and legs become paralysed; thus I could not feel or sense anything. My eyes looking blindly and my legs walking briskly with the question” will I die” stuck on my mind like a tick attaches into skin.
...alone, because I was afraid my life would change radically after this, and I was not prepared yet for them to see this change. After a few minutes, I realized I was so weak I could feel the cold reaching my bones, but that was also the best feeling I’d ever had. I was thinking I had only a few weeks left to start college, which had been my dream since I can remember. My dad had already paid for my tuition, I was so exited I had promised to do my best, but I’d just had my daughter, and I was so nervous about being a young mother in college. I tried to open my eyes to admire my baby’s beautiful face and thought I was so brave, because I had decided to have this little girl. When I saw her I knew I would want her to be better than me, she would be my strength, because nothing would ever make me give up on my dreams, and that was another promise I had made to myself.
I cried as we locked up the house for the last time. I felt like we had just spackled, primed, and painted over my childhood. I felt as if my identity had been erased, and like the character in the song, I had lost myself. There was no longer any physical evidence that I had ever lived in, much less grew up in, the house.
Nothing has changed my life more since the realization that I had to make who I was something that I chose, and not something that just happened. Since this revelation nothing seemed the same anymore, as though I could see the world through new eyes. It changed everything from my taste in music, literature, and movies. Things of a dark and pessimistic nature used to hold a strong allure for me, and yet I found much of things I once enjoyed didn't seem to entertain me anymore. I remembered the mental state that I once held and now seeing how I have changed, know that I can never return to the prison I came from.
Suddenly, I snapped awake. It really was the day of my party, and it really was pouring down rain outside. I trudged out of my room and had breakfast, all the while staring gloomily at the storm raging outside.
The sun was setting behind low, gray-blue storm clouds. This is the worst day in my life. The sounds of sirens awakened the still roads. A blinking red light from the truck’s turn-signal illuminated our darkened home. I shielded behind the curtain and clenched my fingernails in my palm. You are being put into a cage with a collar on your neck. A stranger took over you and got n his car. I peeked at your figure through the window and bite my lips until you vanished in the corner of the street. The world went blurred.