To the Sun!

To the Sun…

We will make it there!

The place we end may not be the true  sun,

But to us it is all we need.

Weather the sun we meet be person, place or thing…

We do not know.

All we know is our destinations name,

And where we hope to end.

Not where our destination actually is.

We know not how to get there,

Nor the path that will claime us.

We are blind in our search for the light.

No matter what happens we know:

We will make it there!

It may be hard and only a few may succeed.

Some of us may die before we reach our dream,

But we will not be bent or broken in our search.

The sun is within our grasp,

all we have to do is stretch out our hand and claime it!

We will make it!

We will get there!

We will go to the Sun!

The Life

The smell of sweat and perfume, lockers slamming down the hallway, everyone with there back-to-school clothe and new hair cuts, students are milling around, talking about their summers and the latest gossip, all filling the halls with chatter. 

She looks for a friend or two as she makes her way to her new locker before remembering she does not have any. She spends the day memorizing her new schedule and locker combination, signing out her new text books. All the teachers go through their own variation of the same rules and seating charts. It is the same thing every year, just this time at a new place. 

The strawberry blond next to her in third period talked about all the cute guys and different sporting events. She’s immediately put the girl into the prep division of the school and only half listened. The kids in fourth and sixth ignore her but through curious glances in her direction, only to look away when she meets there stares. One of them is in almost all of her classes and stares openly as though she’s a puzzle he cannot figure out. The teacher in seventh cannot seem to remember her name; he just calls her what ever pops to mind.

The food in the cafeteria is okay but not as good as the food at her old school. When she sits down at a table that is only half full everyone already there gets up and leaves. About half way into lunch the people at the table across from her empty one waves her over. She figures why not and goes to sit with them. They seem out there and a little slow to catch on, but she figures it is not her place to judge them, seeing as they are the only ones who were willing to talk to her so far.

Little does she know she has just committed social suicide.

She gets looked at funny for the rest of the day and no one will talk to her. She has no classes any of the kids she sat with at lunch, but doesn't really care. By the end of the day she has decided to eat lunch in the art room for the rest of the year.

On the bus ride to her new house the kid in front of her asks if she had really eaten lunch with all the retards. She then knows why the kids from lunch were so strange and knows that if she had any chance of being accepted here it had been crushed. Knowing the damage is already done, she just nods her head and says nothing. 

The next day she ducks into the library during her study hall, not wanting to talk to anyone or have to admit her mistake. She is not really a reader, but figures it as good a way as any to pass the time. She hasen't  yet relised that the books around her will soon become her best friends; not leaving her side for the duration her high school career.

Over the next few weeks she decides that she likes the solitude and not having to deal with her pears. She devises a plan as to how to keep people at a distance. She does not start any conversations, and when someone talks to her she will purposely comes a crossed as the most obnoxious and stupid person she can create. Sometimes she just pretends not to hear them because she is so rapped up in her book. It does not take long for the roomers to spread. By the middle of the school year no one tries to talk to her, no one asks hers questions, and no one sits with her at lunch.  They see har as a moronic air-head; She sees them as easly fooled preps.

She reads more and more to pass the time in and out of school now. Her mother doesn't notice her lack of a scoial life or that she’s lonely. The only times she and her mothers ever actually talk any more is when they are arguing. More and more the nights end with her running up to her room and slamming the door in her mothers face. No one at inside or out of the high school ever knows she’s upset, that she hates the people and places around her, and she cries herself to sleep some nights.  Wishing to live in the past her mind is stuck in.

She dreams of the characters of her books coming and taking her away for better or worse and of the people from her home town turning away from her.  Much the same as they did in the sad reality of her life. As the fights with her mother and self solitude continue, she becomes angrier and sadder, though she does not admit it to herself; she can't. By the time summer rolls around she sees even less of her mother and hardly leaves the house.

It is not that her mother is a bad mom, and she knows it. Her mother is trying as best she can. She just resents her for bringing her to this desolate place, full of hicks and nothingness. She blames her mother for the divorce and all the arguing that went on before it. She misses their old town and her friends. Though the more she thinks back on her old life the more she starts to hate it and the people in it as well. The angrier she becomes the more she dives into her books, only now to escape rather then to pass time. 

The characters in her books are loved by their family and friends. They have grand adventures and face devastating problems they are only able to get through because of their loved ones with them and supporting them the whole way. She starts to envy those who are trapped inside the books she reads. They are not perfect, but yet they are still loved.

As school starts up again some of the newer kids try to talk to her, but she treats them as though they are beneath her, when really she would not mind them staying and talking with her. The more she longs for company the more she starts to see relationships with family and friends as a weakness. She decides she will never need or depend on anyone like she used. She starts to hate her old friends – people she had grown up with and spent her childhood with. She feels they had abandoned her when she needed them the most. They had all just turned away from her after they found out she was leaving. No goodbyes, no I’ll- miss-you’s, they just stopped talking to her all together.  It is for this she begrudge them.

As time progresses the arguments with her mother grow worse and she begins to neglect her school work. She tells herself she hates everything and everyone around her, but really she only hates herself. She knew if it were not for her mistake that first day she could have been happy with people she could care about and talk to about how to get along better with her mother. She would not have all this anger and regret, but most of all she wouldn't be alone.  She starts to relies that that is what she did wrong with her old friends. No matter how bad thing had gotten between her parents, she had never once confided in her loved ones. She had just tried to pretend that nothing was wrong.

As the school year started to draw to a close once again, she had come to hate herself even more. She was disgusted with herself; how she thought, how she looked, and how she acted. She could not stand to even look in the mirror or wear a bathing suit at the public pool in summer. She started doing dangerous things, things like wa and see how long she could go without eating. She would purposely do things that hurt, such as shutting the car door on her had or stepping on sharp things in her bare feet.  In winter she would go outside in nothing other that a flimsy tank top and short shorts just to see how long she could stand it. 

She was still angry at her mother and peers, but that anger had seemed to dim in comparison to the hatred directed at herself. Her self inflicting behavior eventually lead to cutting, as it hurt the most and left less evidence for anyone to see. People at school already called her a Goth/Emo wanabe, so what difference did it make? She never cut her arms or thighs because that is where people would expect, but instead she cut strange places such as the bottoms of her feet and her stomach so it would hurt when she walked, bent over.

The third year after she had moved her anger started to dwindle; it was in return replaced with an all consuming numbness. She no longer cared everyone picked fun and laughed at her, never commented on the obscene gestures they made at her when they thought that she couldn't see them. She became impenetrable to people and things that went on around her. She stopped caring about the things that society thought was right and wrong. She still read but not as much; most of the time she would just sit there and stare off into space, thinking of how she would have done things different if given the chance, and imagining everyone around her dying -- choking on their own bitterness towards her and everyone they feel is beneath them.

As the third school year and summer passed, she grew tired of it all and no longer saw the point. After all, it was her fault her parents had gotten divorced in the first place, she would think because maybe, just maybe, if she had been a better daughter, if she would have just tried a bit harder, they would still be together and everything would have been alright. It was her own stupid fault her friends had turned their backs on her and walked away. If she would have just opened up to them about the things that happened at home then maybe they would have at least heard her out and not have walked away so easily when they found out what was really happening in her home.

Most of all she wished she would have never set at that table on her first day, that she would have actually talked to that peppy strawberry blond rather than acting shy and only giving half answers, and that she would have – should have – been more open to those around her.  Maybe even talked to that boy who had openly showed intrest in her throught out her first week.

It was too late for the “would have’s” and “should have’s” though and she knew it. She had already picked a day and written a letter to her family. She had picked her birthday to end it. She would correct the mistake her parents had made on the same day it had started. She had only to wait a month or so and it would all be over – she would be dead. 

There would be no more anger or hatred, there would be no more arguments, and most of all there would be no more tears shed for the things people said and did to her. Everything would be blissfully quiet; she would neither go to Heaven or Hell because she would just stop existing all together. She felt there could not possibly be a Heaven or Hell because there could not possibly be a God. And if there was a God then she hated him, truly hated him because he had let her suffer all of the things she had and that he never once answered her prays. 

Not long after she had made the choice to commit suicide, she found a paragraph about someone else who had. It made her stop and think about what she was going to do. Was it really the only option she had? Is it what she really wanted to do?

She did not know who had written it or if they had thought similar thoughts to her own, but in the end she was glad she had found it. It made her think about what might happen to her family if she were to die. How her older sister might not go out as much, that she might actually come home once in a while rather than stay out all night; how her mother would blame herself for not being able to be a good mother — even though she was; and how people at school might actually be willing to talk to her and change their opinions of her if she were to give them the chance rather that acting spiteful towards them. 

After summer was over she went back to school, but this time she didn't wear black, nor did she sit in the back of the class room with a book – No! During her senior year of high school she went out of her way to make things better. She talked to that strawberry blond – who was now a brunet – and joined clubs. She reestablished her connection with all her old friends and never looked back because she knew if she did she would be terrified at what she saw. She talked to that boy who had always watched her, her first year there, and at the beginning of year five they had plans to go to the same college together. She had burned the note she had written and was slowly mending her relationship with her mother. Now she had her own loved ones, but she still read to see what happened to theirs, even if she no longer envied them. 

That section of words that had saved her life was written down in the front of her senior year book with a little question mark at the bottom and a line she had put there her self saying to never look back.

Imprint

Publication Date: 12-13-2013

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