Alive

       "Wake up, wake up, wake up!" I yelled at myself in my head. "You can't skip school again, you have to get out of this bed!"
      This was a recurring battle I fought each morning, and even though I surrendered most days and got up, I still fought again the next.     

6:30 a.m. I brushed the usual things that got brushed, including but not limited to my hair, my teeth and my cat. I tripped over the usual things that got tripped over, also including my cat. I tried on three different pairs of shoes and wiped off my eyeliner four times. As I looked in the bathroom mirror, put my hair behind my ear and then took it out and let it fall in my face. "Well, like always this is as good as it's going to get." And here I go.
7:00 a.m. I like to look at my reflection in the window of the bus when the street lights go by. My long, dark hair flowing inches past my collarbone in a wavy, twirling mess. Just brushing it was never enough, but I lacked the energy to do anymore with it. So there it fell.
I observe myself like many tourists do the Mona Lisa. I'll say things like, "You call that a smile?" And "Why would he paint her? She's so plain." Not yet understanding that I am art, and art was not always made to be pleasing to the eye, but more pleasing to the mind.
I sometimes even feel that I am like a waterfall; kind to look at in photographs or even in passing, but if you get too close you'll end up getting sucked in by crashing waves and thrown down into sharp, jagged rocks.
Still, I like my pale skin and the light brown freckles that cover my face from one cheek, across my nose, to the other cheek. I liked my pink, sparkly blush that sometimes covers  those freckles. I liked the way my teeth aren't perfectly straight. I have short eyelashes and long legs. I have a small waist and large feet. I have boney hands and thick thighs. My blue eyes could freeze your heart if you made me cry. I am beautifully imperfect.
7:27 a.m The bus pulled into the school and I gathered my things, being careful not to let my headphones fall out of my ears as people bumped into me on the way off. I always tried to walk straight to the doors but for some reason never could. I thought people stared at me when I swayed from side to side but I know that they never really did. They only ever dared take glances of me. Some would yell things at me as I passed. Things varying from "W----!" to "Got enough make up on?" to "Amelia! Can I get a hug?" I couldn't stand any of it, so I just focused on my feet and tried to walk straight.
7:33 a.m. I eat breakfast alone. Only the top of a muffin, the bottoms taste weird to me. They weren't the same as the tops. I guess I have a weird way of doing everything, but it’s not like anyone watched me eat anyway.
I walk as silently as I can to my locker to avoid any unpleasant conversation. Usually it works out fine. My teacher sometimes tells me "Good morning!" I look forward to that. Sometimes Mrs. Green is the only one to talk to me until third period. Other times everyone has something to say.
I twist the lock, "45 left, 5 right, 25 left, then pull up." But nothing was ever that easy. So I repeated the process until the locker finally decided I'd suffered enough that day.
Shoving my back-pack into it’s small, cramped mouth was the next challenge. I always over-pack it, just in case I forgot about an assignment. I usually forgot, anyway.
7:40 a.m. "I am alive," I say to myself.
8:30 a.m. I walked to art class. People look at me and I can hear someone behind me talk about my hair, but I keeps walking as if not a word was said. I keep my head straight and don't make eye contact. I didn't know then that it was not my loss to be ignored by them, but their loss to not be noticed by me.
10:00 p.m I’m laying in bed and my mind races with thoughts of new beginnings. This tends to happen, making my crippling insomnia worse by ten-fold. I knew if I just tried to calm down and get under every blanket, that i’d eventually fall asleep, but tonight I didn’t want to. I wanted to think. I wanted to dream without falling asleep. It would be hard, but I hoped that if I thought long and hard enough, I’d talk myself into thinking I had some friends. I’d think things like “that girl has complimented you two days in a row, text her.” and “he laughed at your joke..talk to him more.” But by the time I woke up in the morning I was able to talk myself out of everything. I made no attempt to text anyone back. I made no attempt to talk to anyone more. I was a lost cause, and anyone trying to change me was more insane than I was.
September 1st. My mom is standing near the window in the kitchen washing dishes. Her short, black hair tied into two ponytails in the back. Her make up is still done from work and she hadn’t yet taken off her shoes. She's tired but as she dries her hands she said to herself,  “Everything is perfect now, maybe I can get some rest.” And then I watched her kick off her shoes and go to her room to sleep until dinner where she’d then do more to make herself believe she had achieved whatever it was she is looking to get out of today.
But my mom wasn’t always so delusional. She’d have outbursts of hopelessness and sorrow. Sometimes she’d mourn the death of every man, woman, and child that has ever lived all in a day. Sometimes she wanted to take a cruise around the world. Some days she was too afraid she’d drown.
My mother was ripped out photographs from magazines clipped onto a board above a teenagers bed. My mother was dates on a calendar that no one bothered to fill out. She was a raincoat in the Atacama Desert. She was so much but so little. She is alive.
September 12th. I carried books at my side, careful not to drop them while going down the hallway. I was always careful. I dressed up today, a sweater, leggings and my favourite boots. I truly looked nice today, but few people told me. Few people told me anything.
October 10th.  I think people will stop pressuring me to stop and slow down when they realize all the roses smell the same.
October 17th.  Mrs. Green told me that today is magical. She told me today is a day for love and to be happiness. She wouldn't say why but there she was, standing in front of me telling me about a man pushing a couple off a cliff. She puts her thin arms and under-oxygenated hands on her slender hips and looked at me. She looked at me with such hope in her eyes that not age nor sorrow could take from them. And then she asked me.
October 18th.  What is magic? I don't think magic is about flying or spells. No, magic is not about wizards and witches. I wouldn't even go so far as to say love is magical. Love seems s natural to me. Natural instinct is to reproduce. People will fall in love with whoever they see fit. There's no choice in that. There's no magic. I think what magic is actually not how you feel but how another person feels. And even more so, what they do. Magic is the thought that someone you love could actually love you back and show it. Magic is confidence. Magic is trust. Magic is the things that won't come naturally but are still there. People are spiteful, but even anger is magic.
October 20th.  My mother came home late tonight. She was out drinking with her boyfriend last night and ended up walking home. She wants to be so much more than she is, I know she does. He is a 1,000 lb. anchor and she is a row boat. They do not work together and people will get hurt if they try.
October 25th.  I sometimes get an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach. But it wasn’t a sickness and it wasn’t butterflies or even anxiety. I simply didn’t feel right. I try to ignore it but something told me that whatever I was doing then, wasn’t what I could be doing. I wasn’t being mischievous. I wasn’t hurting myself or others. What was wrong was that i wasn’t living.
November 1st. If lies were magic my mother would be a magician. So would everyone, for that matter.
November 5th. I woke up early today. Not due to any alarm, my body just did not like being unconscious anymore. It wanted me to get out of bed and live. It wanted me to eat and drink and be happy. My body wanted me to learn and it wanted me to experience life. Unfortunately, i did almost none of that. Instead i rolled back over and slept thirty minute past my alarm. Its familiar beep beep beep was no match for my ability to ignore what hurts me.
I grew up being taught that you can tell how dangerous a person really is by how lonong they can keep their anger pent up inside, and now most of the time we'd argue and bicker back and forth about who didn't close the tops to the nail polish and why I didn't clean the cat litter before she got home, but my mother loved me no matter what. You'd think it's just what mothers do. They're supposed to love their kids. But they don't. They don't have to love you. No one has to love anyone. Hell, I could live 'till 100 with not a single person telling me they love me and that'd be that. I'd die alone in a big house on a hill with my cat and who would know? I can't tell them when I'm dead. I can't come to them and tell them I've passed. They won't know. But my mother, my mother loved me. And I love my mother. From the way she always let me take naps in her bed to the way she put so much time into preparing dinner every night, even if we didn’t have much food in the house to eat. Nothing in the world could stop her from being the most kind-hearted, generous person I know.
November 13th.  She hasn't come home yet.
2014  My grandmother rushed to get me in the middle of the night. I went with her willingly, desperate to feel the warm air inside her black 1996 Chevy Impala. It had been snowing all day and now that it’s night it’s only gotten colder.
“Grandma, when will I be going back home?” I asked.
“Not to long, dear. You’ll just be staying with me for a little while.”
I did not know much then but I did know these things: my mother was gone, her boyfriend skipped town, my grandmother had just lied to me, and I was alone. I knew very well that i was alone. Perhaps too well. I was enrolled in a new school with new people to avoid and homework to forget. There was now no Mrs. Green, there was now no looking at my feet. There was just me.
Usually, I'd be okay with “just me.” I'd have no problem being alone. I’d have no problem being left out. I'd have no problem sitting in the back of the room charging my phone and eating my muffin. However now, my stomach possesses that uncomfortable feeling 24/7. I wake up and fall asleep to the feeling. I shower and brush to the feeling. I tie my shoes and look out the window to the feeling. And only now do I think I can describe it, empty.
My Grandma worded hard to make me feel comfortable in the time I spent with her, but there’s something about utter sympathy that you cannot mask. Sympathy that burned the back of your throat like the first hit of a cigarette every single time you’d try to say a word about the incident. Sympathy that made me feel pathetic. And even more so, hopeless.
I tried not to say as much as I used to. I tried to make friends and be normal. I tried not to think about my mother. I tried not to seem so weird. I tried. I tried. I tried.
2015  I found myself on the roof of a building. I was 4 stories up and that number would soon decrease. The sky was clear with few clouds, the wind brought a chill but I couldn’t be bothered wearing a jacket. It wouldn’t look good on camera, and I wanted to look good for once in my life. Tons of people gathered  around, thirty maybe even forty, all here to see me. They think I’ll die, they’re not here to coax me off, they all secretly want to see me jump. They remind me of the people who watch Nascar just was to see a crash, they don’t care about the endless left turns by the quick moving vehicles. They all secretly want to see someone hurt or worse.
They would not cry over my death, but they would cheer if I come down. People either ignore the cruelties of life or focus on them, anyone willing to stand on the ground and stare up at me, was more than willing to ignore the result if they needed to. If things don’t go the way they expect to and I come down, they would not be cheering in celebration of life. They would cheer to break the silence. They think what they are witnessing right now is the loss of hope and potential, but no. No, it’s the opposite. What they're witnessing is greatness. Bravery beyond compare. Some do yell for me to come down. They tell me there is still life yet for me. They, much like my alarm clock, have underestimated my ability to block out what I don’t want to hear. My grandma is probably driving here right now. Just as quickly as she did the day she got me. And she'll be able to see me soon. I jumped off the ledge and I flew.

“They say terrible things happen to good people. Consequently, I am not one of those good people. I am one of the terrible things.”