Junior Year

                Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but rising up every time we fail.           

~Ralph Waldo Emerson 

            I guess I should start the day that it all started, the day that I came home from school and all the life was sucked out of me, the day that one person lost their life, but I lost my soul. It’s funny because I remember that day like it was yesterday, yet, all my memories of that day are hazy.  I remember the shrieking coming from the basement as I ran to dial 911. When I picked up the phone my dad was already on the line begging the operator for help. I could hear him screaming her name louder and louder as if that would bring her back.

                  My little brother was sitting on the floor shaking in tears, my older brother was sitting on the couch with silent tears running down his face, they were in agony they were waiting helplessly for news that I already knew to be true. I walked into the living room shutting the door, leaving behind me the first of my four very strong walls.

                  I remember feeling such relief when I shut that door, my father’s helpless cries grew smaller, I couldn’t hear my little brother cry, and my older brothers haunting silent tears were nowhere to be found.

                  The only thing I felt that day behind those walls was why am I not in pain? Why am I not sobbing or screaming? Why am I numb? And when the pain and confusion became too much I covered my ears. My second wall was built.

                  Jump to the wake, I had gone shopping with my aunt that morning to pick out a “funeral friendly” outfit. What does that even mean, a funeral friendly outfit? Someone just died and my main concern was supposed to be what I was wearing? Oddly enough, as much as it bothered me it was. I hadn’t felt anything in the last four days. I had slept and ate well, all good signs according to the family shrink that my dad had been forcing me to go to.

                  I had seen her three out of the last four days; apparently death can be very traumatizing for young children. I remember thinking, “wow really, you don’t say?” when my shrink told me this. I had been in her office for about an hour now and I still had an hour to go. There were certificates everywhere on her wall; it was nice to see that she was so modest.  I can’t even remember her name because the second I walked into her perfectly arranged office, to meet he perfectly pinned back hair, and her boring pantsuit outfit I shut her out. I plopped down on her coach nailing the third wall, shutting the world, and my problems out.

                  I had developed a numb state of mind; living with walls built up is like living half alive. You are present and you know that the things around you should be affecting you but they aren’t. It was like I was in a comma and I could hear the people in the hospital room talking to me, and I wanted to tell them I could, but I couldn’t find a way to squeeze their hand to let them know I was okay. Through all my numbness I was crying out for a hand to squeeze, for someone to recognize that I was still in here that I wasn’t just this cold stone person that everyone had been making me out to be.

                  My physiatrist’s voice finds its ways inside my walls and brings me back to reality. “Natalie, you have to let someone in. you just lost someone very important to you it isn’t healthy for you to shut people out like this.”

                  I looked at her and her certificates from Harvard, and Yale, and her stupid little pad and paper that she had been evaluation me on for the past couple days to “see where my mental state was at”, and I lost it.  I stood up walking to the door turning back and smirking “this is all bull shit. You sit here with your stupid pad, and your diplomas from Harvard and you think that just because you are certified you can honestly tell me what I should be feeling right now? Let me ask you a question, has your mother ever killed herself? Has your mother ever abandoned your entire family?” she paused to write something down on the pad.

                  “That was a very good break through, you are obviously angry with your mother. This is good sit down, I can help you through this.”

                  I couldn’t take it any more. I just wanted to disappear; I turned back to the door slamming it behind me nailing down the last of my walls. 

                  Jump back to when I was six years old, and my mom was going to visit her parents in Connecticut for the week. It was the first time I had ever been away from her. I remember driving to the airport and crying because I thought that if she left she would never come back. My mom held me the whole way there assuring me that she would always come back, and I believed her. Sure enough a week later she returned telling me that she would never ever leave me forever.

. As I sat in the front pew of Saint Mary’s church, the place I had been baptized twelve short years ago at my mother’s funeral I couldn’t shake the anger of that empty promise. I was angry at myself for believing her, where was she now when I needed her most? The sun shined in through the window hitting my mother’s coffin reminding me where she was, bringing me back to reality.  I sat amongst sobbing people, people who didn’t even know my mother that well, and there I was her daughter, and I couldn’t shed a single tear. I remember just wanting to leave the stuffy church and change out of my funeral clothes and into my regular clothes. 

                  That’s all I wanted to be, normal. I was tired of the sympathetic looks and all the casseroles the neighbors had been bringing us.  I just wanted to go back to school, back to soccer practice, back to the way things used to be.

                  After the funeral we went to the Deer path Inn for the reception As soon as I got out of the car I made my way to the bathroom seeking privacy in the bathroom, only to find that no matter where you go you can’t escape the truth. I sat in silence as women made their way in and out of the bath room offering me their condolences, as if that was enough to make my mother come back. I remained locked inside of the bathroom until the end of the funeral, and all of the people had left. I was beginning to like it behind my walls. It was safe, and clam. There were no shrink to tell me how to feel, there was no hysterical women at the funeral crying on my shoulder, but most of all there was no sympathy. Sympathy that I didn’t even deserve.

                  Jump to the last thing I ever said to my mom, three little words, words that I used to spend every day wishing I could take back. Words that at twelve years old I had pinned as the sole reason for why she did what she did. We were arguing, I can’t even remember why now, but the last thing I said before I marched outside of the door to go to school was “I hate you.” but I didn’t. I didn’t mean it and now it was too late to tell her that.

                  Jump to the first thanksgiving, Christmas, her birthday. The first ones after she died were the worst. My family would get all-sentimental and I would sit there silent and cold behind my walls as an outsider in my own home. Even if I had wanted to break through my walls, they had grown much too tall and strong for me to break out or anyone to break.

                  Jump to eight grade, just a year after the incident, how my teachers, family, my friend’s parents would marvel at how well I was doing, at how strong I was. They would talk about how happy I was, how I was so resilient, how they had so much respect for me being able to be the way I was everyday. 

                  Even these kind words failed to break through my walls. After a while the walls got old, but they were my safety blanket, I thought that in order to be strong you never cried, you never felt badly for yourself, you never felt at all.

                  Jump to every birthday where unlike every other girl my age I didn’t wish for a new phone, a car, or tickets to the Jonas Brothers concert. Every year I wished for the same thing, and that was to feel. I hadn’t cried once over my mother in three years, in fact I hadn’t cried over anything in about three years. I had shut myself out completely from the world. I lingered in the shadows that my walls had created, waiting for something, someone to save me from myself.

                  Jump to the four-year anniversary of her death when I wouldn’t even go to her grave sight, claiming that field hockey practice had run late, but really it was because whenever we talked about her I became uncomfortable, I just wanted to forget her. I hated her for making me be like this, I hated myself for allowing myself to stop living. I hated the guilt I felt in my stomach the first time after she died when I laughed so hard it hurt. I hated the jealousy I felt when I saw girls mothers pick them up from school, while I waited for my babysitter Jody to get me. I hated that I hated so many things that if it weren’t for what happened I wouldn’t hate. I hated how even though everyone thought I had control of my life it was spinning out of control.

                  My soul was broken and bruised from all the times I had tried to break down my walls. My heart was heavy with four years of guilt and sorrow weighing it down. My body and mind were tiered from being the strong one, the one who never cried, and the one who was always holding it together when no one else could.

                  Jump to Halloween 2010 the night that everything changed. I was excited to go out with my friends, who doesn’t love Halloween? Jump to the crowded party in the basement of a kid who I don’t even know, I was having so much fun with my friends.

                  When the noise became to much I made my way to the bathroom, I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror fixing my makeup. I was running over my eyelid with my eye shadow when I felt my scar.

                  It was the scar from the time when I was five, and I had been running down the hill behind our house in St. Louis and I had slipped and cute my eyelid. It was the tiniest little cut; everyone waved it off except for her. She sat and cleaned out my eye fearing that I would get an infection. My father told her she was over reacting and that I was going to be fine. The next morning I woke up and my right eye was swollen shut, and a huge scab had replaced the tiny little cut that had been there the day before.  My mother took me to the doctors right away, and when they told her it was a minor infection, she refused to listen. She took me to two more doctors until one of them discovered I had an infection that could spread to my brain. They told my mother I could have lost my eye if she hadn’t have brought me in today.

                  I don’t remember much about that day, I was put under while they were flushing out my eye and ridding it of infection, but I do remember how my mother had done what ever it was she had to do to protect me. She had brought me to three doctors, demanding that they take another look at me when they waved me off as just a little girl with a big cut. I had been so proud to be her daughter that day, I wanted to be just like her, strong, not scared of anything or anyone, but the truth is she was weak, and afraid, and dead.

                  Jump back to me in front of the mirror on Halloween.  I closed my eyes; I had never been able to wrap my head around the fact that she was dead. Whenever people asked about my mother, not knowing that she was dead I would allow them to fill in the blanks. Sometimes she was away at work, other times my parents had a nasty divorce and my father had custody of my brothers and me. I found that if you told people what they wanted to hear they eventually stopped asking questions; nobody likes to hear bad news, so why tell them? I had avoided the truth that she was dead, she had been dead for almost five years now, but I was still alive I had time to live.

                  Opening my eyes a single tear ran down my face. I touched it almost shocked; I smiled as more tears broke through my walls and made their way down my face. It was if the floodgates had opened destroying every wall I ever had. I sank to my knees too overwhelmed to stand. When my body hit the ground I was sobbing. I was sobbing for my mother, I was sobbing for my family, but most of all I was sobbing for me.

                  Jump to every time since then that I have allowed myself to cry. I realize now that strength doesn’t have to be cold; I don’t have to linger in the shadows of my walls anymore. Strength is being able to cry, strength is not the absence of fear, but it is having fears and not letting them defeat you. Every time I laugh now, every time I cry, every time I yell, my soul becomes a little bit warmer because I am no longer numb, I am a person again. I am not normal, and I will never be normal, but the thing that I will always be that no one can take from me is strong.

Analysis

My junior year I began to write more fearlessly, and I think that is what has really helped me grow as a writer. I used to be really afraid to write anything about myself because I didn't want people to see me be vulnerable. I am a really strong and closed off person by nature so writing about my life was really hard for me at first. This Piece was and still is the most personal thing I have ever written in my entire life, and that is why I am so proud of it. Also my Junior year i started to master the art of showing and not telling and stopped trying to sound so smart. I was amazed at how well my pieces turned out when I just allowed myself to write a piece with my actual voice verses the the voice I thought the reader wanted to hear. I really started to enjoy writing as a junior as well and writing became less of a chore and more of a hobby. To sum it up, my junior year was a huge learning experience for me and my writing started to get really good (but actually this time) and it was fun for me to see that.