In honor of my attempt at blogging, I thought it a wise choice to share the piece of literature I wrote for my English class this past semester. This intricate piece was what kick started the blog idea, thanks to the lovely Kyle mentioned later in the story. It's a narrative (obviously), assigned by probably my favorite professor I've had at Northern thus far, Mr. Danial Gocella.
Enjoy.
I strode across campus, the icy fingers of wind scraping across my face and freezing my tears. My cheeks burned from a combination of turmoil, anger, and the ever present feeling of failure. My face felt plastic, hard and unmoving. The tears had seemed to freeze it into place though I knew my face was flushed from embarrassment at the same time. “Please God,” I thought, “don’t let me see anyone I know. I just can’t do it today. I just cannot face explaining this.” My eyes burned from the salt in my tears. I tucked my head down to get out of the wind, and squeezed my eyes shut so no more tears could leak out. ‘I just wanted to feel good enough.’ I said softly to myself.
I felt my phone buzz in my pocket, and after scraping my face with the sleeve of my coat, I retrieved the small black square from the depths. It was Kyle, responding to my frantic text. Don’t worry, I’ll be home soon. I miss you too it said, and it just made my heart hurt to think about the next two months. I felt lost, confused and abandoned. “Stupid best friends,” I muttered. “He goes off to college down in De Pere and forgets about me. Probably found some girl. Whatever.” The point was, here I was. Best friendless, crying like an idiot and freezing my butt off in the middle of the academic mall; class act right here. “That’s one thing about college that’s no good,” I decided while I walked. “Not only do you lose yourself, you lose your best friend.” Without a best friend, how was I going to find myself again? It only took me two semesters of college to redefine just about everything I had ever known and to become a mass of words, ideas and actions that resembled nothing I had ever imagined being for myself. Still, I consoled my racing mind, at least I didn’t turn out like some of my friends. At least I saved a little bit of dignity for me to carry myself back home on.
Not that having that little bit of dignity did much for me. I still hated who I had become. I hated that the self confident, defiant girl I had been in high school had somehow disappeared, leaving behind someone unsure of the next step. I was afraid to make a wrong move and plunge down into the canyon of failure that I had been warned about multiple times, afraid of not being able to handle the real world. What if I failed? What if I fell short of all these high expectations that everyone had built up for me, not to mention the list of feats I had written up for myself. I was on a pedestal, a shaky one made out of pink tinted glass at best; at worst, I can’t even describe.
I don’t think anything I had ever faced could have prepared me for what awaited me outside the hallowed halls of Marquette Senior High School. No one could ever have put into words the things that would come rushing towards me, armed with only a little piece of paper and a cheap red gown with a bedazzled tassel. Don’t get me wrong, I love college. I just hate that to be in college, the real world had to come with.
All this a running monologue in my head as the bass of Lil Wayne coursed through my headphones. “God,” I thought. “I need to stop reading. Who else in the world would be thinking these things to themselves? Maybe I should just write a book, and be done with it all. I mean, even if no one else but my mother ever reads it, at least I won’t have all of these ridiculous words pounding through my head all of the time.” It was like I had the Olympic track team of ridiculous thoughts beating a steady path in my brain, as I phrased words carefully to make the biggest impact upon my oatmeal logged senses. Or maybe I just need a life. Either or, something needed to give.
I paused, reaching the top of the hill. I shivered a bit, as the wind coaxed itself around my body, twisting and turning like a cat. I zipped up my coat the rest of the way, and pulled my hood tight over my hair. I shook my head a little, thinking maybe if I moved it around enough the words would just fall out of my ears and leave forever. “Pft, words.” I scoffed. “Who needs them? All they ever do is get me in trouble. Though,” I thoughtfully pondered, “maybe it’s my fault that the words get me into trouble. Maybe I don’t have enough in me to control them, to take them and train them to make sense.” I paused, foot in midair; Laughing outloud, I continued my trek down the hill.
To pass the last three minutes before I was safely tucked into my little room in Halverson, where I could put the words onto the paper, I began to write what I wanted to say in my head. I started from the middle though, the climax of my tumultuous feelings that had built up as I made my way across the deserted campus.
“
Life is one of those things that no matter how hard a person tries, will never ever go according to plan or even right at all for that matter. What better way to show this then that point of the story where the character finally reaches the breaking point inside their own mind, where they can’t stand to even be inside their own bodies, let alone their minds for one more insane second. This isn’t that story where the heartbreaking jump off of Black rocks happens, but the one where I’ve decided screw that, I’m going to stay around for as long as I possibly can. See how much it hurts to see how happy I am, for me. My choices, my life. No more of this bullshit thinking of others. Every story has that point. You can either run with it, or you can decide not to.”
I had reached the bottom of the hill, and was practically running to get to the doors; to make it to my room and pour out the words that were soaring from every crease and crevice from my brain, fitting together and forming the perfect sentence, then paragraph then page. Those damn words, the ones that never helped when I wanted them had put my life into perspective. I was jumping off of my pedestal and letting the glass fly. College wasn’t about staying the same; college was about taking you apart from the seams and re-defining your life. Those quality fifteen minutes in my brain, searching for the gold mine of self discovery had actually paid off. “For one freaking once.” I was muttering aloud again, and as I rounded the corner by Payne the smokers outside were giving me funny looks.
I laughed, and gave them a coy smile. They looked stunned and I skipped across the expanse where the bike racks would soon find their home again and threw open the heavy fire door. Skipping over every other stair, I raced up to the second floor and danced my way to my own safe house, to my awaiting computer. For those brief fifteen minutes I felt like myself again, but it wasn’t my former self. It was like I had a glimpse of what was to be; what I was going to be when I finally reached the part in my life where I knew I was going to be ok. In those fifteen minutes, I found the end of my story. In those fifteen minutes, I had found myself in the middle of my broken down mental maze, but had found my way out. In those fifteen minutes, I knew that I was going to be ok, and that even though at this exact moment, I was a wreck, that I was well on my way to being successful; To being in a place where I would succeed. That my story was going to take a turn eventually and that all I had to was to just keep sewing myself back up; piece by piece, learning experience by learning experience. In those fifteen minutes, I realized that I was going to be ok.
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