Feelings
Old feelings and memories resurfaced last night when I was hurrying to finish the essay I had to do for english. Considering the essay is due tomorrow, not today... that was so gay! (so was that rhyme scheme) any who. the prompt was
Write a narrative essay about revelation. A time in your life that something happened that you've had to change. It doesn't have to be something big, but something that made a significant change in your life.
I immediately knew what I was going to write about, and even if it had never occured I still have the memories from when I was four. So, technically I had something to fall back on either way. I'll let you guys read it yourselves.
San Juan, Odette
October 25, 2004
Period. 3
Revelation
It’s Thursday morning, January 16, 2004 nothing special about this particular morning. Just another school day in Ruben Dario, sitting in my history class, distracted with all the work given. Not a big deal, the usual day in history. Then came science, it was the same ordeal, sit, take notes and work, nothing weird or bad at this point, finally it was our turn for lunch. Last lunch of the day, I had been feeling miserable earlier but shrugged it off as a feeling of hunger.
I wasn’t myself that day, I had been a bit snappy and anti-social, not wanting to do anything but go outside and watch the guys in my group skateboard. The bell then rang, we were released to our second period class, last period of our rotation block schedule. Dreadfully, I walked over to the portable in which French levels two and three were being taught. This year there were only four of us in French three, Michael, Joy, Damien and myself. Joy and Michael were the over achievers, I on the other hand, was lazy and did good work if I was in the mood for it. Damien was on the other side of the spectrum, he never tried, never cared and was always in trouble.
The class started off with Ms. Aspuru lecturing the French two students, seeing as how they were the majority and then rambling on and on about her son in the coast guard. I didn’t mind, I was already beginning to feel disheartened by now, even after lunch. As I sat there, barely listening to the teacher go on about her son, I carved into my knuckle hoping the undesirable feeling would flow out of my body like my blood. There’s something wrong, something is bound to go terribly wrong today, I thought continuing to etch the cross into my knuckle with a pin slowly watching it redden, then blood seep through. I’m not a religious person, yet I continued to sear my skin with the religious symbol for all of Christianity.
Joy noticed what I was doing once I was almost done and the blood was beginning to slide down onto my desk. She looked at me and started telling me of all the diseases and infections I could get from an unsanitized needle. Uninterested, I merely glared at her, licked my safety pin point and said “there, happy?”. She merely sat there, looking helpless muttering about the stupidity of self-affliction, how it was absolutely uncalled for. Ignoring her statements I dug the point deeper distracting my mind on something other than the undesirable feeling of something gone horribly wrong.
Finally, the bell rang! Heaven to anyone’s ears at the end of the day, but not today, in an hour or so I would have wished that day wasn’t early release. I would’ve have wished I was still in class and many more atrocities such as never wishing to have been born. Being outside made my spirits soar, I walked quickly into my mothers office with the sleeve of my sweater covering my hands as usual, Joy by my side. I dropped my school things off in her office and ran outside to meet with my friends. My spirits were ultimately uplifted, I was happy to be surrounded by people I had wanted to be around but not talk to all day. From 2:40pm until three I was fine. I sat there watching the skaters fall and teach each other tricks, watched Joy try to break a mirror for some reason, I no longer recall.
Soon as I sat there examining my lesion I wondered, what’s so horrible about today? Nothing has gone wrong. No later I had thought this when a familiar security guard came up to me saying “Natascha, your mother is looking for you she needs to talk to you now.” Of course, I was terrified. I thought, "this is it, this is the down fall of today, what did I do wrong?” in my mind months of activities played in my head, like a movie in fast forward. Nothing came up, I had done nothing. The security guard walked me to the office door and left abruptly, I went inside only to see Salich, the school counselor standing by a chair and someone else in the office, along with my mother behind the desk. I was careful to cover up my knuckle ignoring the stinging of the fabric pulling some dried blood.
As I looked into my mothers eyes I could see, she wasn’t going to reprimand me. Something went wrong terribly wrong, her eyes were bloodshot and her face red, her blue eyeliner that usually made her olive green eyes beautiful, was smeared and ugly. As I looked at her face, she seemed to have aged ten more years. Alarmed I took a seat, immediately Salich put his hands on the back of my chair. Now, I knew disaster struck, I was the first to speak “what happened? Is my sister okay?” my mother simply nodded yes, Automatically I asked “how’s dad? It’s about dad isn’t it? What happened to dad?” my mother looked down, then looked at me.
I anticipating the news wanting to hear it, but all the same wishing not to know. Then she spoke, “Your cousins called, Diana and Joaquin..”
“yeah and? What did they say?”, slowly my mother replied as if I had to soak it this useless information in “They said they had been trying to call your father, but he wouldn’t pick up his cell phone nor would he answer the house phone…” At this moment my heart sank. The world seemed to have fallen upon my shoulders, I then took a deep breath and responded “ then what?”. Then, as if she had a speech impediment said “ Then, they drove up to Orlando so see if he was OK. When they got there they knocked on the door, but no one answered. Then according to Diana, a friend of your fathers named Charlie stopped by, and told them your father had not gone to work for two days and never called.” In my mind, I was playing this scene like an movie in slow motion. After what seemed to have been an hour of silence, but merely a minute I blurted “dad died… dad is dead isn’t he?” my mother nodded and started to cry.
Clearly shocked, I felt no need to cry, pitiless I turned my face away from my mother and started blankly at the white wall. Then as soon as I took a deep breath a single tear came out, Then it hit me, my father was dead. Slowly as I tried to remain calm my eyes got watery, but the tears were dry. Turning my head to look at my mother, I began to hyperventilate, a terrible feeling, my throat was dry and felt as if some invisible force was choking me. Salich quickly placed his hands upon my shoulders and rubbed them, whispering in my ear to relax, I was going to be fine. My breathing came back down, and suddenly I felt claustrophobic, the white walls were closing in and three adults in the room was too much. I sprang up not looking anywhere but the doorknob, leaped towards it and aggressively opening the door inhaling as much air as possible but it was contaminated with everything unreal.
I ran out, desperate to find Joy. Once I reached the group she saw me, and hugged me tightly. My breathing had begun to excel, but with Joy’s hug I felt as if everything was gone and it was just us as she shushed me and whispered “it’ll be okay Odie, what’s wrong?”. Slowly I pulled away from her, and told her what happened, she pulled me back into her warm hug saying she was sorry I began to cry, but my dry tears were moistened and developed into a river of tears. I pulled away and sat down on the hot concrete grabbing a shard of Joy’s mirror.
With that shard I carved into my left wrist, first tempted to drive the shard into my wrist and pull ripping my veins and muscles, but then thinking better of it. Looking around, I realized I don’t want Joy to see me die in front of her and these idiot skateboarders wouldn’t care. So instead I carved a box into my wrist around my thickest vein so when I would get home I could use it as a guide. It’s four thirty now, time for my mother to leave. Slowly I put the sweater on to hide my abrasions, Joy accompanied me and we got our things. Before I left, Joy hugged me one more time and I felt more love seep from her body than ever before. Climbing into the car I thought about how much I wished to be dead, never have been born just wishing I’d die on the spot. With out my father, I felt as if there was no meaning in life, family didn’t matter anymore Nothing did.
After that, my mother drove me to my sister’s house where she found my wounds and cried, she spoke to me but the words and almost no meaning to me. Slowly my grades slipped, self-conscious and self assertion were meaningless to me. As I had later been known to be the darkest in my group, the pessimist, a constant cutter and anti-social.
From this hardship I now take to heart the quote “you don’t know what you have until it’s gone”. I must say, that quote has more truth in it than most people will ever know. I learned that no matter what I must continue to be myself and not let anything effect me, now when I think of my father I don’t cry as much. However, I think about the good times we spent at Islands of Adventure and Disney along with other amusement parks in Orlando. I think about what would make my father happy, every time I pick up a blade when I’m down I think about my father, and he is there disapproving the act of selfishness I am about to be active in. What I mean to say is, from this experience I gathered that there are many things in life that will hurt you, but your life will not stop there and you must keep going. Make the best of every situation possible.
*everything I wrote is true, you can ask Joy if you don't believe me.a few of my friends cried knwing this side of me.... and most of them only met me this year. Others have just gotten to knowing me and see a side of me i usually wouldn't show. So here I bare my soul to you, my friends.*