It's 11:11, and I'm Not Making a Wish | Teen Ink

It's 11:11, and I'm Not Making a Wish

November 2, 2016
By CampbellJM SILVER, Wyckoff, New Jersey
CampbellJM SILVER, Wyckoff, New Jersey
7 articles 0 photos 1 comment

11:11 just passed.
And I wish I had made a wish.
But if I had a wish,
I just used it.


If I could wish for something,
I’d wish my nights weren’t so sleepless
and my days not so lifeless.
Concerns build and dreams fade
Like the cold of winter.


I am scared to close my eyes.
I am afraid of my own mind.
Dark and simple,
and within a second
deep, disturbing, detailed images
that can’t seem to escape my skull,
Leaving me with shivering in my naked bone
ready to burst with a trembling hand.


If I could make a wish,
I’d wish that it’d all be okay.
The stress of school, friends, and decisions,
would all disappear,
and the fog would clear,
and I could see.


I’d wish my family wasn’t broken
and that my past relationships hadn’t been torn to shreds.
A disappearance of stupid selfish choices.
To make a ghost of acting without thinking about themselves 
or those who love them.


I wish life could be okay again.
I wish time could stop,
That I could be innocent and young forever.
That I could never learn how a life of beauty
could be destroyed and burnt to ashes.
But that is impossible.
The damage has been done
The fight is finished
forgiveness not relinquished
My face has been blemished
With the tears you caused.


I wish a lot of things.
A lot of stupid yet important things.
Things that everyone has to deal with.
Changes, improvements, bad to good.
But why am I so special
that these things should be abolished from my life?
And that is where the problem lies
Like a lifeless animal waiting to be slaughtered.
I am not special.
But I ask myself, is anyone?


The only way
you can feel okay
To avoid wasting another day.
Hide the pain.
It’s what everyone tells me to do,
But I’ve seen someone else listen to you,
And I’ve seen the road they ended up walking.
The pain that should be punished,
That should be out in the open to deal with.
Playing hide and seek in his head,
Drowning his sorrows deep in bad decisions,
one on top of the other.
Building his own towers of regret.
I’ve tried to change him,
But he’s so stuck in his own head.


I wish we were all exempt from assumption,
That not even the prideful would make cuts on scars
without knowing those healing’s true feelings.
What goes on at home,
In my head and
When I lie in bed at night,
My eyes glued to the ceiling to avoid tears from spilling.
As if I removed my eyes from the spider web,
The room would flood from all walls. 
This occurrence and lack of knowledge
is an ongoing assault to the weakened.


Along with the wounded,
the arrogant are suffering. 
Concealing it differently, but feeling the same emotions.
Of harm from events and circumstances
Of deep ditches of sorrow.
Of not wanting their lives.
I am the wounded.
You are an arrogant.

Some do not make it out of a burrow
they’ve created for themselves.
A few fighters never arrive to see the sun.
They fall in and don’t give effort to climb out.
Nor do they want to because
To the wounded there is no way out.
And if there is,
They’re just as good as dead in that pit,
Because the land above isn’t kind
Or good
Or worth living on. 


To others that isn’t true.
While the rest believe it is their only hope
It is a reality.
When you’re parents tell you not do something,
You want to do it more.
When you tell me that death isn’t the only way out,
I believe it more.
Indirectly you plead to me,
There’s always another way out.


If you’d rather teach me to look up
show the sun shining through the top,
Perhaps I would respond.
Demand to wait for help
Command to not be abrupt with decisions.
Distract and disembark.
Tell me once that final choice is made,
A lid of dirt is placed over my crater,
A lid of cedar over me,
And tears of loved ones to water my soil above,
No digging out.


If I had made a wish,
I would wish the 8 billion people alive could realize this.
I would wish I could realize this.
I would wish that those causing this pain,
You,
Could realize it.
Realize that you are the one digging the trenches
with a shovel of hate,
And constructing the coffin
With words of saws.


One person can not change this on their own.
I cannot change everything by myself,
Without the realization of this there will continue to be
42,000 deaths by suicide in America annually.
I will not just be a statistic or a sob story.
But unfortunately that only brings us to 41,999 wishes.
If I could make a wish,
I’d wish for 42,000 wishes to hand out to each angel falling,
To hand to each soul drowning.
But the wish I had is gone,
Without even one remaining for myself.
Wishes must become a reality.


If I had that wish,
If I could do it,
I would climb out of my hole,
And make it to see the world,
Be a leader.
No cedar.
No dirt.
No tears from anyone but me.
And wishes turned to wills.



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This article has 2 comments.


on Nov. 15 2016 at 4:48 pm
CampbellJM SILVER, Wyckoff, New Jersey
7 articles 0 photos 1 comment
Thank you so much!

on Nov. 14 2016 at 7:30 pm
E.B.Whitaker BRONZE, Portland, Oregon
2 articles 0 photos 1 comment

Favorite Quote:
Words, are our most inexhaustible source of magic. --J.K. Rowling

This is heartbreaking and raw and beautiful.