Reflection ( Fiction Work)

23 Dec 2010 Leave a Comment

by uscthunderwolf in Stories

The world has grown dark and silent this snowy eve. The only interrupting thing is the people gathered around staring down at me bathed in the glow of flourescent light in the shades of yellow, red, red and blue. Their voices are just muffled white noise to me as I watch a snowflake kiss my forehead and I reflect on what brought me here……..

 Being born with a weak poet’s soul is the worse thing one could have in this modern world. Poets are usually the first causality of humanity. I was no different except from an early age I learn that friends who one thinks are shoulders to lean upon just end up getting you into more trouble. Elementary school is where my first lessons in how cruel the world must have really scarred me bad. Being called Casper, Whiteout and other things was tough but when your mom and dad are going through a divorce, a child is bound to feel confuse. So I told a classmate friend who then told my mother who when we got home promptly told my grandmother who then in turn proceeded to give me a spanking. My mother was in tears and I was sent to my room but while I was in my room, despite my tears, I learned very quickly that friends and enemies are to be kept at arm’s length as well as family.  Even now it amazes me how quickly I built up that defense wall and sought solace in books and the written word. Don’t get me wrong, I love my family but family out of the entire universe are the ones who can harm you the worse. The only one who seemed to be understanding was my grandfather or maybe it was because he tried the least to hurt me and focused on helping me grow.

 All those elementary years, I learn that its easier for you if you please those around you so they left you alone but the times with my grandfather were the best. My mom and dad divorce, I was given great childhood memories despite the efforts of some trying to tell me how to remember them then my mom remarried. I got step brothers and step sister and for my own reasons, I hate them. Junior high is when I started to strength that defense wall and retreat further into myself. Friends were not trusted allies, the bullying seem to get worse in its own way and I just tried to find things that would gain me honors so a proud family would let me be. Graduated junior high with honors but my real trouble started in high school.

Ah yes, high school, the time that girls have chests that get looks from boys, time of socializing and such. Wish I could say that was my high school years but it wasn’t. I had no social life, did the band to get a stupid letter to make mom proud, sunk deeper into books that english teachers found that something to complain about and got my first kiss from my seemingly best friend only to have him later brag that his girlfriend ( another supposed friend of mine) was his first kiss. I was a late bloomer and just trying to make it through highschool. Major embarrassment was delivered at the hands of my stepsister for something I didn’t do, made to apologize only to find out later my stepfather’s children were spreading rumors to damage my character. It didn’t matter, my defense wall kept me safe but then that defense wall suddenly grew a big crack in it. My grandfather, the man who seemed to understand who and what I was was gone from me. My world shattered like a vase or a mirror. To my family it was a time of sorrow, my grandmother seemed broken but that pain tore through my world and left me shattered. i never healed from it, refused to heal and a shrink would say that I hadn’t grieved. To hell with grieving, the one person in this world that let me feel comfortable with who I was rests six feet under and left me with a family of sharks. Even now that pain still holds me. Later on in high school, I would graduate in the top hundred, get a silver seal but life seemed to hold very little interest to me.

Yes I went to college, moved to another state to do it and despite saying that i would go into one field, I found family hooked onto it because of the salary not my happiness so I rebelled. The little doll who offered up no resistance was starting to fight back. This upset the status quo in the family and things got harder. Money became the god for mother and grandmother and soon the bitching started about bills, about college tuition and even after college, my modest paycheck had to stretch and most of it go to them to shut them up. I was alone, content to be alone in my misery and pain. I wrote poetry and stories because that was my poet’s soul in me finding release but even that small joy had to be destroyed. my dreams of writing a best seller were dampened then crushed. Writing I do now, I keep hidden behind that defense wall with its ever-present crack.

Then my own body started to fight me. I was losing a war on so many fronts that I stopped fighting, stop caring and just went through the motions. Family didn’t notice, friends I limited the information to about my health. One of my favorite poets Keats had felt his own body turning on him as well. Funny how the one foolish wish to a non-existent god for a deadly illness came true thanks to family genetics. Yet I couldn’t stand the pain my body put me through. Once many times I thought about taking my life, tried to cut my wrists once but chicken out. Not anymore as I spent the evening walking aimlessly. My cell is shut off and i let the cold numb me to my finally decision about my life……

Yes I took my own life because in the end, my life held little value to family who worried over money and very little over me. Maybe I sound like i want sympathy and no i don’t. I made my choices, kept that defense wall up and contend with being alone. Being forced to fit social norms had destroyed me till I was nothing more than an empty shell….a doll that was discarded soon after. They say that you are missed by loved ones but not me. What will be miss is the paycheck, the one expected to be obedient, loyal and no trouble, the one who made the error of not growing a thick skin to this world and its barbs of cruelty and in the end, no one will understand that removing myself from this world was  to save what tiny part of the true me still existed before it was destroyed.