There has always been my family...

And My Family.

Day 1

I was born.
This girl was born to her parents not knowing anything. Living her life through school and music with her sisters and little brother, this is her life.
This is her family.
This is my family.

9th Grade

I meet a girl, and she is the definition of deafening headphone music and larger than life punk rock music. These types of instantaneous connections are too strong to ignore.
I knew right away, we would be friends.
She introduces me to her friends and I find myself in a group hug of my new friends, people who decided to accept me.
This is her family.
This is my family.

10th Grade

The same girl is my closest friend. But I am not her closest friend. I feel her pull away to be somebody else, and that is okay. I will often run to her crying and sad and she will do her best to pick me up. And she does.
The friend group we have is more like home than the house I sleep in. I forget about my parents and find comfort in the arms of my friends.
I feel conflicted about which family means more to me.
I tell her, "I know blood is thicker than water."
She tells me, "The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb."

...I have never heard that before.

Is this her way of saying that we are more family than anything?
Maybe we are.
Or maybe we were.

We walk together knowing that we are never giving up on each other.
This is her family.
This is my family.

11th Grade

I meet another girl. A friend of a friend. Jealousy builds. Attention is a fight nobody wants to lose, I have become the 3rd party nobody asked for.
Families are supposed to fight. But now my family is not one that will fight for our happiness back.

But I want to.

I always have.

But I cannot fix this because I am not the only person involved.
Why are we fighting?!

Day X

I wish I could take back my mistakes.
One friend describes her life connected to 4 people... one of which is no longer talking to her.

And that one friend is also part of my family. And if losing 1 of 4 people you love is a tragedy, than for me...

It is losing 1 out of the 2 people I have left.
The two people I care for most will not talk to each other. And I am the biggest mediator the world never needed. But I cannot let go of either of the two people I love and care about.

I initiated the disaster. I started the dominoes. And I will pay for it.

I have to.

Nobody expected this catastrophe to affect me, or her, or the boyfriend, or the girlfriend, or the best friend, or the lost friend...

The victim
The aggressor
The manipulator
The cryer
The coward

Me

I cannot fix this with my own two hands.

I look at the two people I care for most.
They will not talk to each other.
And to a point, it is my fault.

I look at them.
We all had to suffer and bleed for this covenant of friendship and family.

This is their family.
This is my family.

This was my family.

I'm Sorry...

*For everything

I see writing and suddenly my brothers’ poetry comes to mind, and I realize his writing is not poetry, it is tragedy. Something we both share but we will never talk about it, it is not something we want to talk about.

I see pictures I the polaroid I never took becomes to clear to me. This photo is the still shot I wish I could hold onto.

Every time I see my friends change their style, they become a new person while still retaining their old personality. I will take the time to remind them of how beautiful they are.

I wish there was more I could say...

When I see your face early Monday morning I can’t stop myself from smiling because you’re here. You’re here and I’m here with you.
And I could listen to you talk all day, about the things you like, the things you hate, about the things you just can’t get off your mind. And I listen, because that’s what good friends are supposed to do.

When you are my company I am on the edge of paradise. And you are just on edge. If I was having a bad day you were having a bad week and I didn’t want to have to trouble you with my problems, when you are already suffering. So I back off and I listen.

It’s not that I’m not strong enough to hold on.
It’s that I’m not strong enough to let go.
Because letting go of the greatest thing that ever happened to me will surely result in me losing everything I am.

But this isn’t about me…

I wake up the next Monday morning and I look to see if you’re still here. You look better than you did the week before and I am more than grateful. Because if I was able to help you in ANY way at all, then I am one step closer to getting better myself.

You ask me if I have anything on my mind… I pause for a minute and wonder at what I should say.

Because maybe today is the day I stop hiding that list of worries. And you’ll listen… Because that’s what good friends are supposed to do.

Right?

I have never felt stronger than when I allow myself to make choices that nobody else would dare make for me. Because I am the divide between the words “yes” and “no”, I am a choice.

This choice comes to us in many forms but for those of us who wonder about how many choices we have left, we ask ourselves, “Where can we go from here?”

I have never attempted suicide, but I have thought about it many times. I have seen death in many forms. Usually, they come in the most harmless appearances.
I too, have held pills in my hand and felt the weight of death. And it didn’t weigh anything.

Death is a lightweight… and a heavy subject.

I rely on my faith to pull me together but if you turn things the opposite way they can become something terrible. My faith’s cross turned upside down is a representation of the devil and a simple necktie turned upside down is just a fancy way of hanging yourself.

Simple things can become deadly if you let them. The window you used to gaze out of, marveling the world, is now a doorway spiraling downward and few people stand up when they get to the bottom, but everyone stood tall at the top.

A plastic bag can hold your food, a necessary thing for you to live, but plastic can take you oxygen away, another thing you need to live. You need water to live, but you also need water to drown, at least in most cases.

There is a red rope hanging on a hook on my bedroom ceiling, representing a story from the bible, a woman wanted to be saved because she knew that her city was going to crumble into pieces. So she hung a red rope from her window for God’s people to find her and take her away from death.

But the red rope seems to close to a noose now…

So why couldn’t I do it? Why couldn’t I even try to attempt a choice only I have the ability to make, why can’t I do this to myself?!

I know there are people who will actually consider a choice, and go through with it, or they will fail and suffer afterwards. But for me… I have wondered who will miss me when I go. Who will be the first to know, the first to cry, the first one to consider the same choice I made after I made that choice, this choice… Is mine to make…

But I decided to stop. This is not a choice I make for me, it is a reminder that I still have another day, that I have another chance. I am the divide between “yes” and “no”. So for the people who still care about me, I looked death in its eyes… and I said “no”.

Just between you and me, clowns…are extremely creepy. And whoever decided that clowns were funny and appropriate for children….. Just noooo.

But even though I hate clowns, I’ve seemed to become one. My red smile on a white coat of paint that is my face.

No…

I didn’t always look like this. I used to look like you. But now I have this, A red painted frown plastered on my face and guess what?!

It’s stuck there.

This is not the kind of make up you can just wash off, scrubbing the skin until it start to bleed and I can’t take the pain anymore.

And I don’t just mean the physical pain. I tried to paint another colour onto my skin, I tried to cover it up but I can’t. People still see it, they ask about it as if it bothers them more than it bothers me.

Yes! Of course! Eyes up here remember? Stop staring at it. Don’t ask me about it, it’s been there for too long…

My clown face can scare people. Do I look like a scary person to you? Is there a reason why children are afraid of me? There is still a person underneath this face paint, underneath this skin.

And people say clowns are supposed to be funny, no wonder people find my face so easy to laugh at.

Come on! Tell me it’s funny, TO MY FACE. I dare you, tell me exactly what it is, and why it’s so funny. I can laugh at it too you know, because I’m supposed to. I’m supposed to just laugh it off.

At the end of the day, I decided to visit the house of mirrors. I walk down the hallway mirrors on both sides and I stop in front of each one and stare at myself in the mirror.

I’m not happy with what I see in it. I’m not content with it, I am not okay with this image being forever, I don’t want this to be me forever.

So, one day, I will find a mirror that doesn’t show me like this, and it exist in people’s eyes, these mirrors exist in the people who see me the way I should see myself. So when I look into the eyes of my friends and family, I can see myself, and I don’t look like this.

One day, I’ll find a way to get this red frown off of my face one day I tell myself.

One day, I’ll stop being a clown…. And I’ll start being me again.

It’s 11:30 at night, and I’m staring at a screen that no longer notifies me that anyone I know is awake. For I am once again avoiding sleep, but I am waiting for a reason to stay awake. I do not want to sleep for fear of never waking up, but if you send me a message, I will have a reason to get up in the morning.

Fact: Our communication is more body language than it is words but not that this applies to the text message you will send from your phone. For the only thing that doesn’t involve words in a texting conversation is silence.

You’d be surprised at how often I’ve had to be silent for the sake of others. You see, I have been told by many that I am too selfless, and that I need to look out for myself a little more. But I can’t. I do not have the ability to stop caring about people who need me, even if I am suffering more than they are. It hurts…to know that people I care about are in pain, so I pretend my pain isn’t there.

But slowly, I begin to realize that listening to others and caring for them is not a bad thing, but it does give me a reason to ignore my own problems. I don’t want to ignore my own issues, but I don’t have the courage to tell them to my own friends, why is that?

One time, my brother was so sick he could barely swallow without feeling pain, so I only asked him yes or no questions so he could nod or shake his head to answer. His pain, kept him silent, and my pain keeps me silent. The only difference between his situation and mine is that my communication with him was working and this silence within me prevents me from even saying hi to people.

I want to tell people everything, I want to have 5-hour conversations about everything that makes me silent and I want to be able to send you a text message without worrying about whether or not I just interrupted your life for 2 seconds. I want to tell you that I’m having a bad day, but I can’t because seeing you makes my day so much better that I have to smile. I want to tell you why I hate the weekends because I love school because my friends are at school, and that I had a fight with my parents, and that I hate looking at my own reflection, and that every time I say to someone that I’m sorry, I’m also trying to say that I love them. I am sorry…sorry… I want to tell you that I sometimes feel so much pain that when you say hello or goodbye, I will only have enough energy to give you a small smile and a wave, I am lonely…


I want to get better, I want to say everything and be honest and just WHY GOD WON’T YOU HELP ME?!? I want to play music, and have fun, and live my life, please somebody hear me…

Ding

1 New notification:

“Hey, are you still awake? You seemed a little out of it today. I’m always here for you if you need me.”

It’s 12:00am and I’ve missed the moment where today became tomorrow. So maybe today is the day I tell you everything. Maybe our communication isn’t broken. I write back saying: “Thanks for checking in on me, it means a lot. Now that you mention it, there is something that’s been bothering me, I have something I need to tell you…”