First and foremost, let me just say that life is complicated. Therefore, stories from life are all the more complicated.
Stories are made of events. Events coincide with other events, factors lead to reactions, and every story that has ever been written is embroidered with insights and tied up with emotions. However, few people, when reading a fictional story, know of the author’s insights that went into writing it. You can catch glimpses of a writer’s mind through their tale, but never can quite grasp the whole picture. Their mind is their secret treasure trove, or hell-hole.
That is NOT what I want to do.
I want ideas to flow from my fingertips, through the keyboard, and onto the screen, as natural as a stream of water dribbles down rocks. My insights can swirl around in my head, dance with my musings and ideals, and from that formulate solid concepts in Times New Roman. With these concepts, perhaps some of you can understand the tangle of pain and joy and stubborn opinions that make up my ever so complex mind.
I hope you can gain something from this. If not, the internet can swallow it up and digest it into meaningless garbles of data.
On that note, I suppose it’s time to begin.
Two weeks ago, I found myself riding the school bus home from school. It was December 16: the air was cold, but the sun shone brightly through the late autumn, yellow leaves. I was the only girl riding the bus that day, aside from one other dark haired girl. I observed that she had enormous eyes and the constantly darted back and forth from the window to the screen of her tiny cell phone. I detected the dank smell of the plastic seats and old sweat emanated into the air, stifling out the fresh breeze. The school field stretched out beside the bus as we would out of the school parking lot. Canadian geese wandered around to the nether-regions of the baseball field, and flapped their wings wildly whenever the sharp breeze began to carry them towards the road. I remember my gaze growing glassy as we reached the first intersection. I remember staring at the traffic lights, and my heart sank all the way to my stomach. Heaviness filled my body and my mind went blank. Thoughts were slipping away, falling out my ears and flying into the distance.
I thought about death, and the corners of my mouth sagged.
The windows were smudgy with ancient fingerprints. Clouds floated to and fro in the bright blue, winter sky. The loud, obnoxious droning of the bus engine came to a stop with a screech of the breaks, and the creaky groan of the opening door. My feet carried me to the top of my street, a cul-de-sac, and the bus loudly drove up the street, ever busy with swiftly passing cars. My feet carried me up my street, toward my house. Toward my mother, toward my life. My feet stopped.
The trees that lined the road stretched far into the sky, their spindly branches bearing buttery yellow leaves. They danced against the sky. The first house was white, though spattered with mud, with black, peeling shingles.
My feet turned me around to face the road.
Damp leaf-decay clung to my shoes, as they carried me forward. Wind rushed at me from passing cars. The world was so bright, the colors so vibrant. My eyes gently closed.
Death is constant.
Wind stung my face as another car passed.
I can die.
I stepped forward.
The air blew dirt into my face as I stepped again. Engines were whirring away, carrying people home.
I will die.
My feet hurriedly took the final steps into the road, and I waited.
I heard my heart beat.
There were no cars.
The whirring of engines had stopped; there was no car about to flatten me.
Some string tied to the back of my brain tugged, and a voice rang in my head. It be began softly at first, but it was determined and authoritarian.
YOU WILL NOT DIE HERE. YOU WILL NOT DIE LIKE THIS.
I felt some force pull open my eyes, and make my legs move severely fast. My muscles ached as they carried me home. The voice grew louder as I passed my friends’ houses, clad in Christmas lights and inflated snowmen. My mind danced with memories of my family, my beloved friends, my house, the smell of pumpkin pie in the oven, hardwood floors, white walls, patchwork quilts and love.