This is just something I'm working on. It's not done and its for a school assignment but I thought some of you would enjoy it.
The downward spiral never ended. Slowly moving the wand around and around being careful not to hit the pole and create the electric shock that would make her start the game over. Was there even a point to this endless cycle of circles? To get to the top without any shocks… Take one guess how many times that actually happens.
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She entered the world as a mistake. Destined to end up with nothing until she was given a gift from the gods to be invited into a family that could give her everything a girl could ever want. Over the years she grew into the prestigious young lady that appeared everyday while she still lived at home. Doing most of what she was told and following the rules. Getting good grades, and keeping friends. She wasn’t the most popular but she was mostly content in her social standing. While she longed to be accepted by her classmates she also knew she has solid friends who would never leave her. That’s something she counted on. A lot.
From about 6th grade to 8th grade she started to get the reputation she now held almost anywhere she went. At school she was known as the girl who was, for lack of better words, a slut. Despite the fact that she had actually done very little sexually and had only had one boyfriend in 5th grade who didn’t really count at all,q it was a surprising reputation. And one that she didn’t particularly like at all. For a while she tried to defend her status by telling the truth. That she really had done nothing, but eventually she went along with it, making up stories about when she was slightly younger and how she had done this with that guy and had done something with that girl at a party at a friends house that didn’t exist. Things that were normal stories for someone who might have been in high-school or college, she told at age 11 and 12.
Despite the reputation she had at school, at home, she had become the perfect little girl. To her parents she replied to the usual questions of ‘how was school’ and ‘how are friends’, with, ‘school was fine’ and ‘friends are great’. At home drama almost never existed between the friends she considered to be true. Grades were kept up to the standards she and her parents had set. Even her relationships with her parents were thriving. She and her dad had never been closer. They were the perfect pair as she had truly earned the title of ‘daddy’s little girl’, and as far as things went with her mom things were pretty good as well. A few disagreements here and there but for the most part the family was intact. To the outside world she was an upbeat happy tween. Someone who their younger children could look up to. Someone who they called a role-model… Whatever that is…
Everything was perfect on the outside, but inside… she felt more alone than ever. Her soul was slowly falling down a black hole from lack of living. She could be completely surrounded by people and friends and people who loved her and still feel completely detached from everything. Especially during her 8th grade year.
Her father had died of cancer in February of 2006. She had made the choice herself to go back to school literally the day after, but what effected her the most was the feeling that she had everything a girl could possibly want. Even after he was gone for the most part, yet still felt completely empty. She felt a lot of the time like she hadn’t really experienced life and the first time she had ever felt like she was, was when her father died. Although even then it was only for a short few moments as she cried in her bed for 6 hours after hearing “He’s gone.”
Her dad was everything to her. The bond they shared was like no other and loosing that bond and loosing him was something she knew she would never fully recover from. He was the one she always went to for anything. If she wanted something, she went to him. If she needed someone to talk to, she went to him. If she needed a buffer from mom, she went to him. He was her everything. He was her Dad.
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So much of her life had been handed to her. Almost as if expected to be. And yes she was given this so called “gift” of being adopted into a family that could provide everything for her regardless of if she needed it. Now, I know this sounds spoiled but so many of her friends that she had lived completely different lives. They struggled. They suffered, and they actually worked for what they had. Yes, she did have friends who were like her, and were privileged. But a few of them and a lot of them as she grew up continued to struggle. They experienced real things like fun, and pain, and struggle, and true happiness. You hear people say all the time “the happiest people I know are the ones who don’t have anything.” She believed them.
What she wanted was to experience life. She didn’t want to be handed everything, she didn’t even want to be given anything if she could have it her way. And yes it was hard not to ask for things she wanted she still tried really hard to at least try and earn what she got. Or save up the money for it. She wanted to experience real struggle, and true happiness. To be able to say she’d done something with her life rather than being given everything. What did she have in her life that she could say she’d accomplished? She felt like she had nothing to show others. Nothing to be proud of. She had the person who grew up getting what she wanted and being told she didn’t have to do anything when all she wanted was to Actually do something.
As she sat in her room, now at boarding school her senior year she put on the music that she had started listening to at the beginning of the year. No lyrics, no story to tell except the one that she created. It was the only thing that she could find that let her listen to what her thoughts really were. Most of the time, they were about absolutely nothing. Her mind was blank.
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All I could do was think about how little I had done for myself in my life. Normally you would think it would be exactly the opposite, but truly, despite the fact that I’d had the privilege to travel the world, and spend time with some great people like my Dad and his co-workers all of whom I looked up to, I still felt like I hadn’t lived. Like I hadn’t experienced life. I would constantly sit in my room listening to music all afternoon after classes changing the song till I found one with lyrics I could relate to. But what I thought I related to were lyrics of heartbreak and fairy tales all of which I just hid behind minute after minute. My escape was music and movies and drawing because they created a world that I could be myself in. They let me create the rules and control what happened.
