• Whether it came from the drop of a pencil or the insistent scratching from the chalk against the chalkboard, everything was overwhelming. The laughs and giggles that came from everyone else in the ever-shrinking classroom became louder and louder. When my hands touched my ears and pressed against them, there was an instant silence amongst the world and myself.
    My eyes drifted to the clock and for a second I had to reassure myself the day was almost over. Hand-in-hand, I would grasp time and make it advance so I could escape from the lower depths of my prison. My hell.
    It wasn’t always this way, but isn’t everything like that? Back then, I always said the right things and wore the best outfits. Now, I lay here in a never-ending silence. My demons always resurfacing. The path in front of me is my only escape, but something is standing in the way. Was it the gesture of the boy who sat behind me? Or the whispers of the girls in the back?
    Slowly, dreadfully, painfully, the giggles in the room grew louder and turned into this menacing clamor. When I turned and faced the girls in the back of the room, they stopped and stared at me. I felt something turn the wrong way inside my stomach and I wanted to barf. The girls gave me a disgusted look and I ate it right up. The moment I turned back around, I felt this sudden relief inside myself.
    My eyes, once again, began checking out the clock in the classroom.
    Five. Four. Three. Two.
    The bell rang and I shot up and out of my desk. The teacher shouted something in a language I couldn’t quite understand. My shoulders found their way up and shrugged. As I walked the hallways of the school, now cluttered with the other students, I walked in silence. My head was hung low and my headphones in my ears. The world around me evaporated and I was by myself in a pit of darkness. The darkness curled around me and kept me warm. It welcomed me with open arms as if to say, ‘Welcome back! I missed you!’
    Too many times I had come to this place, this emptiness. Something inside me was falling apart and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I just went along everyday feeling sorry for myself. The thoughts and emotions I received from my mind threw me into a world of extraordinary sadness. It was beautiful.
    Sometimes I had wished that the past never existed and I could move past this pit of solitude. I guess things don’t always work out the way you want them to. My story begins last month. I suppose that’s when it all started. The perfect girl, the perfect looks, the complete perfection. This is the real dream, right? Perfection? Maybe that was just my imagination. The complexities of being a young teenage girl.
    Friends were my ultimatum. I had so many of them and so many to hang with. Life was never dull, nor upsetting. I had a boyfriend and was amongst the greatest people throughout the whole school. Who knew they would become my kryptonite?
    Like most teenage drama, I had it. It all started with a party invitation. I should have known better, but I shrugged it off and thought ‘What the hell? Why not? I’ve never been to one before. What could possibly go wrong?’
    I went home and told my mother about the party. Obviously, she disapproved. My dad and her were going out of town and she didn’t think it would be appropriate going to someone’s home that she didn’t know the night they were going away. I told her she was going to ruin my life by not letting me go. I pulled the whole teenage girl routine. I told her she was the worst mother ever and she was out to ruin me and my friends. I even told her she only cared about herself. Two nights later, I would regret the things I said for the rest of my life. The events that took place that night will be up to no one to retell but myself. I had gone to this party knowing full well something could happen and sure enough, something terrible happened. In front of all my friends, a video was played of my boyfriend cheating on me. Was it the cheating that bugged me? Of course not. It was when the girl who came out that he had cheated on me with saw the video and looked at me, completely horrified. I won’t lie, I wanted to attack her. Everything in the air that night wasn’t right. Of course there’s more, why wouldn’t there be?
    After the video finally shut off, she looked at me once more and gave me this pity look. She knew it was coming, but she was horrified. How does that work? How could she feel horrible, yet pity? Then it happened. A woman comes into the house and calls out my name. I turned to face the woman and my eyes grew wide, ‘A police officer, at a time like this?’ She called my name out once more and I raised my hand like I was in grade two, afraid of what was going to happen. She asked me to come with her and my legs trembled. When I moved forward I fell to the ground and passed out. To this day, I don’t know why I passed out. I wasn’t upset all that much by the police officer. The video? Maybe. But the police officer? No.
    The woman officer woke me later, I was in the hospital at this point. I went to sit up and got an extreme head rush. The air in the hospital was musty and smelt of old things. I frowned and looked at the police officer. She had her hat off and was holding it. Bad sign. She told me there was an accident and my parents had died. She explained to me what happened, but I couldn’t follow. My mind went somewhere else and for the first time in my life, I felt the darkness. For the first time in my life, I felt completely and most utterly alone. I had no one. My mom was gone and so was my best friend, my dad.
    The following morning I was signed out of the hospital by my mom’s sister, my aunt. She had a kind soul and we got along great, but that was before I changed. To this day, I still cannot shake the sins off my shoulders. I can’t rid myself of this ache inside my heart. It yearns for a release, but I’ve chained it to myself and padlocked it so it weighs me down. This guilt, this sorrow, it’s my permanent burden to bare and I can’t bare it any longer. My mind, my body, my entire entity is decomposing into something I cannot describe. Everything I used to know about myself has disappeared with my parents and my friends.
    When I returned to school I was welcomed with nothing but dirty looks and confusion. No one knew what happened to my parents except those close to the family. They had enough respect to keep it amongst themselves. Everyone knew about the video though. For some reason, something so small had caused the whole world to turn against me and I never stopped for one moment to fight it. I just accepted it. I allowed myself to turn into nothing but a target for the whole student body.
    When I reached the doors to escape from the hellish school, I stopped with my hand placed on the handle to open the door. I turned and looked back at the students laughing and talking about their days at their lockers and smiled. I turned back around and pushed the door open, escaping into the daylight.
    Freedom, sweet and glorious. Freedom, good enough to drool over. I had made my decision and I would stick with it. Tonight would be my outing. Tonight when darkness arrived, I would welcome it with opens arms and tell it, ‘Thank you for joining me! So glad you came! I missed you!’This empty shell I had become would crack open tonight and spill. It would release itself into the wild and be free from torment and depressing situations. It wouldn’t be long, no, it wouldn’t be long at all. Walking the small streets further and further away from the school was resplendent. I couldn’t help but begin to fall in love with the silence amongst the world and I. Tonight, I would become one with the world and its obscurity.
    When I reached my new home, I walked inside. The door was unlocked but no one was home. My aunt usually came home from work for a quick snack and left to go back to work, leaving the door unlocked for when I came home. Kind soul, right? I kicked off my shoes and left them at the door. As I walked through the kitchen, there was a note on the table, ‘Won’t be home til late tonight. There’s chicken from yesterday in the frid-‘ I quit reading it and smiled to myself. It was better this way. I wouldn’t have to worry about her interfering.
    My feet carried me up the steep flight of stairs and down the narrow hallway to my room. I let out a much needed sigh and turned into my room. It wasn’t much of a room if you ask me. A bed, two dressers, a small closet that only fit perhaps five of my dresses and about six of my thick, warm sweaters. That was all the small closet could hold. The room had a fairly good sized window adjacent to the doorway.
    I dropped my bag to the floor and walked to the side of my bed and slumped back on to it. I laid back and stared at the ceiling. A smile crept on to my face from one cheek to the next. I closed my eyes and slowly drifted into a deep sleep.
    When I awoke, it was dark outside and I was surrounded by it inside the small house. I sat up quickly and looked across my room to a digital clock that sat upon my smaller dresser. 8:03pm. I rubbed my eyes and stood up, slipping off the light sweater I was wearing and dropped it to the ground. I had on a t-shirt underneath the sweater and it stuck to me like glue.
    I walked out of my room and into the bathroom, yawning and mumbling to myself like a crazy person. Maybe I was going crazy? I stretched out my arms above my head and laughed slightly at my insane ability to blow all this over like nothing. I was strong, that’s all. Insanely strong. My mind and heart had become this impenetrable fortress of solitude. The only person capable of breaking through it was my father, but he’s gone, right? The man was phenomenal. He had the ability to always make me smile and keep me happy. I always looked forward to coming home each and every day. If I had fought with mom, he would make it seem alright and explain to me why she was so angry at me. Everything seemed flawless with him around. Now, without him here beside me, everything is dank and dark.
    As I walked into the bathroom, fear struck me right then. I smacked myself with my hand and scorned myself. This woke me up and I walked right into the bathroom and opened up the drawer to my aunt’s medication. I looked and saw the thing of sleeping pills. Truth was, I never slept, I never slept at all. I’ve been so consumed in myself with everything. I shut the drawer quickly then re-opened it. It took me five more tries before I opened the drawer and finally took the bottle of sleeping pills and pain killers out. I retreated back to my room and shut the door behind me, putting the chain across. A gift from my aunt to give me more privacy, considering the door never shut completely anyway.
    My eyes stared at the bottles as they had the clock earlier. I tossed them around a bit before opening the sleeping pills and taking one dry. The pain killers were my extras. A back up maybe? I took another sleeping pill and laid back. Was I really hurting myself? Or helping myself? I took another. I thought about my dad, my mom, the video, my friends, my life, my aunt. I thought about myself and then it hit me. What was I doing? What was I really doing? I took another. Was this really what I wanted? My eyes narrowed and I threw the two bottles at the wall and cried out, extremely furious with myself. I was a coward! A phony! What would I possibly gain from this?
    I stayed laying down and closed my eyes. Twenty minutes went by before I got up and went to the bottles again. My mind had gone blank once more and I picked up the bottle, downing two sleeping pills. Then my mind began working again. I downed another. I ignored the voices in my head and turned away from the truth right in front of me. It was everyone that I couldn’t stand. It wasn’t myself, right? The world was against me, wasn’t it? It was nights like this that seemed all to absolute. Tonight was the loneliest day of my life.
    With my parents gone, what more did I have to lose? I grasped the bottle in my hand and took another. My stomach began to curl and I got up and unchained my door, I ran down the hall and into the bathroom and lifted the toilet seat, throwing up. I gagged and coughed. As I leaned over the toilet seat, a hand touched my back and I looked up. My dad was there. He was patting my back and telling me everything was alright. Mom was there too. She was smiling at me and telling me how proud she was that I had survived so long. I smiled back and began to cry.
    I had never known I could be so foolish, so incredibly stupid. Tonight was the perfect night. Tonight was the night I realized my errors in judgement. Tonight I began living. Tonight was the perfect night.