Life.

Life sucks, and then you die.

Sure hope it's better in the next life.

What is the next life? she wonders. Is it another world? Is it another dimension? Is it Heaven or is it Hell? Or are we reborn into a new lifetime without any recollection of our former life or lives? Or maybe we do remember, and we avoid making the same mistakes we made before. Although, if that were the case, everyone would be perfect and nothing bad would happen. Doubtful, don't you think? She does.

As she is descending the stairs one day, she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the wall. She stops to get a better look. Her hair is big and frizzy. Her cheeks are pale. The freckles covering every inch of her face are easily visible. She finds herself dreadfully plain. With a sigh she turns away from her reflection and continues down the stairs.

Life drives her crazy, but she lives for it. She lives for the thrill of kissing her boyfriend passionately on her bed as they listen attentively for footsteps on the stairs. She lives for the way her touches her. She lives for orchestra. She lives for music. She lives for books. She lives for paper and pen. She lives for everything and everyone... But herself.

Sometimes you just know.

Sometimes you just know
when that one person
is the right person

Sometimes you just know
when he smiles at you
when he makes you laugh
you just know
that he is near-perfect

Sometimes you just know
as you're laying together
holding each other
kissing each other

Sometimes you just know
you just feel it
you know its real
with every kiss
and every touch
you just know
when you're in love.

Finally, Finally, Finally.

     They met during the first week of school.  She sat at his lunch table one day with her friends from orchestra.  She smiled at him every time she realized that he was looking at her.  She was quiet, and sometimes, he observed, she looked a little sad.  He had no idea why she was sad, but he felt the need to wrap her in a hug every time he saw that look cross her face.  He always wondered what she could be thinking when she looked like that.  She was way more beautiful when she was happy.
     She didn't notice the looks he gave her often, but when she did, she could tell he was interested.  He always made a funny face when she caught him looking, and she giggled and looked back down at her lunch.  He sure was cute.
     They hung out for the first time in the downtown area with a mutual friend.  They walked all over for a good four hours, finally returning home exhausted and hungry.  Then she went on a weekend vacation to see her older brother.  They sent messages back and forth, getting to know each other over text messages.
     The next weekend was homecoming.  He had to be at the game, so he stayed after school.  She stayed with him to keep him company.  As they were wandering the halls at school, he asked her some questions.  He asked if she liked him as a friend, or possibly more than a friend.  She said yes to both.  He asked, "If I asked you out would you say yes?"  She said maybe.  Then he finally, finally asked, "Will you go out with me?"  She smiled her biggest smile, happy as any girl could ever be that finally, finally, someone liked her, she said yes.
     They went to homecoming together, October 9.  They kissed, October 9.  They said "I love you," October 28.  They're going on two months.
     She is so happy that finally, finally, someone loves her like he does.

What she feels and what she wants to feel...

What she feels and what she wants to feel are two completely different things.  She feels lost, like a page torn out of a book and used to clean up a mess, although she hoped no one ever did that to a book, no matter what the book was about.  When a page is missing, the story will no longer make since.  She feels like a page was torn out of the book about her life and nothing makes since anymore.  What now? she thinks.  What am I supposed to do?  She doesn't know where to start.  There are moments in the day when she just feels like sitting in a corner all alone and crying her eyes out.  She doesn't know why.  She just wants to cry.  She feels like it would make her feel better.
What she wants to feel is loved.  She wants to feel normal, and she wants to feel like there is at least one person in her life who gives a shit about her.  All her parents are concerned about is each other.  They don't care if she gets up and goes to school in the morning, or if she eats three meals a day, or if she drinks enough water to keep her alive.  They don't care.
Of course, she does all these things, because she believes that there is something to live for; someone somewhere will come along one day and starting caring.  So she does get up every weekday at  six AM and goes to school, she does her school work, and her homework.  She makes the grades.  She eats three meals a day and she lives.  She lives absently, in her own little world for a majority of the time, but she lives and walks and sometimes she talks.
One day, she hopes, someone will be there for her.  Someone will love her the way her parents never did, never could, and she will feel like she has some purpose in the world.  It is a small thread of hope, but it is her hope and it is what keeps her going from day to day without giving up.

Off the top of my head at this point in time.

     She sits on her bed, attempting to read her new book, but she cannot concentrate.  She places a bookmark between the pages and shuts the book.  She just got home from the movies with her friends, but she didn't have any real fun.  She tried to talk, to laugh, to have a good time, but she felt like the other three saw right through her.  She looked down at hands, examining them for any sign of translucence.  Nope.  All she saw was pale white skin and brown freckles.
     She looked out the window at the cloudy gray sky and thought to herself, why did she try anymore?  What was the point of trying so hard if she was just going to get knocked down again and again?  She always tried to get back up, but as soon as she was standing straight and tall, she fell to her knees once again.  In that very moment, she almost gave up and stayed flat on the ground.  But she remembered what her mother had told her that very day in the kitchen, while she was seconds away from breaking down.  Her mother said, "I love you, and you are beautiful."  Even though she herself didn't believe that latter, she believed the former was true.  Her mother had noticed that she was not herself, but neither mother nor daughter wanted to admit it.  They existed in blissful ignorance of her near-depression, or possibly full-on depression.
     She knew that at some point, if she didn't get help, she would just quit altogether.  So maybe, sometime, she would try talking to her mother about her problem... even though it would nearly kill her to admit something this extreme was wrong with her.  She hated feeling so helpless...

Again, in government class. And partly in online learning class.

     She feels legitimately sick to her stomach.  She forced herself to look decent today, with hair fixed, a black mini skirt that hugged her thighs, and a white wife beater that accentuated her cleavage.  She wore the jewelry her mother had bought her; jingly with fleur de lis, and earrings to match.  She even put on makeup.
     Yet still, she felt like everyone was ignoring her.  She felt like she wasn't really there.  It made her feel like disappearing altogether, if she wasn't already invisible.  Even teachers never really heard her.
     What she wouldn't give to be back where she came from, back where she felt like she belonged.  It made her feel even worse to think about how happy she would be if she were back there.
     There's been so much change around her, she doesn't know how to cope anymore.  She used to be able to smile, even though underneath it all, she wanted to burst into tears and never stop.  And what hurt her the most was that her own mother, who claimed to know her so well, didn't seem to take notice of the fake smiles or the way she never did anything but sleep and go to school.
     What was she supposed to do?

Written in Government class.

     She lays her head on her left arm, which is resting on her desk.  She feels sick; numb.  She begins scratching the back of her left hand, but not because there is an itch.  Actually, scratching her hand hurts.  But she keeps scratching, because finally, for the first time today, she is feeling something besides numbness.

     She's been scratching for nearly a minute.  She raises her head and looks at her hand.  Three angry red marks appear among the freckles on her skin.  A voice in her head tells her to stop, not to do it anymore.  So, for the moment, she doesn't scratch.  The red marks disappear, but the area still stings.  

     The teacher asks the class to grade their quizzes, hand them in, and begin writing notes, all of which she does without much thought.  

     But she keeps scratching.  Because if she stops, she's afraid she'll stop feeling at all...

     Eventually she stops scratching and the stinging goes away.  However, she is all too aware of the numbness that is left behind.  She begins scratching again, constantly, and when she stops for more than an hour and the stinging won't go away, she knows she has succeeded in her task.  

Introduction:

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook a while back... I'm not entirely sure where he got it.  But I am going to use it.  Credit goes to Ryan H.

"She writes for her family,
She writes for her friends,
She writes so she never
     has to pretend.
She writes what she thinks,
She writes what she feels,
She writes so people
     will always be real.
She writes when she fails,
She writes when she grows,
She writes in third person
     so no one will know."

Don't take this to mean that everything written here, which, after this post, will be written entirely in third person, is about me or my life.  Some things may come from my imagination, some may have actually happen throughout the course of my life.  Stories will only be in third person because I favor anonymity.  Don't get the wrong idea from anything.  I have a large imagination.  That is my disclaimer.