Timelines

(Written at the end of Junior year)

The night wasn’t any different than any other. I was sprawled out in my room, the ceiling blurring as I procrastinated on the growing mountain of homework that lay in a jagged line across my desk. The was phone pressed into my ear, my screaming anchor to reality. A friend chatted incessantly. Some boy was just the perfect person and oh my god she had to have him and did she even know his name?
I was called down for dinner. The blue of the carpet was dulled by years of abuse, streaks from riding down them on the back of the ginormous red dog I had insisted on naming blue. There were stains here and there, a testament to the fact that ours was not a show house. People lived and moved and breathed here. They were human, made mistakes, held a glass just wrong so that a sprinkling of wine managed to actually touch the carpet. A drop of blood in the middle of the living room from that time when Mom was cutting my nails. I didn’t even notice the pain until she murmured “oops” and I looked down to find my finger gushing a red river that consisted of one drop of my life.
Dinner. Monotonous. My place, my brothers, my fathers, my mothers. “How was school?”
“Fine.”
“Learn anything new?”
“Sure.” Droning, and half coherent, but tonight wasn’t like that. Instead, “father... moving out… we’re not happy.” Broken words to match the breaking heart. Chili turned to dust. It piled up, clogging all my thoughts and sensations. My throat contracted, desperately attempting to digest, as my mind flew in a million different directions. I needed to be gone.
“You guys handled that one great.” My brothers words floated after me, drowned out by the gunshot as the bowl hit the counter. Out. Out. Out. Images flashing, the slideshow on steroids, as picture after picture slipped through my memory.
The little girl on the swing, mind-warped from the idea of a loss of parental figure. “Would you guys ever split up?”
“No baby, your dad and I are very happy together. You don’t have anything to worry about.” The sun beats down on my already tan skin as the swing creaks on its hinges and I fly higher and higher, with warm comfort below to catch me should I loose my grip and fall.
“Sometimes things don’t work out, but that doesn’t change the way your father and I feel about you.” The comfort slowly slips away, like the grains of sand used to when I was that little girl at the park. Some things don’t work out. Most things don’t work out. I never wanted that much, just an intact family there, the steady pole to hold onto throughout everything.
Anger and bile rose like the tide as another memory pushed past the rest. Hurt, accusations. Shouting fills the room, the sound cramming itself into the corners as it flees from the words sure to follow. Emotional daggers, so sharp and strong that they could pierce the strongest armor, and bring a person to their knees from the pain, begin flying. “You are just a suck up little bitch.” We limp off the battle field, weak kneed and bleeding, to lick our wounds and forget the past.
Pain. Whirling and spinning, as I groped at the phone. My one time attachment to reality became an escape portal I was desperate for. I had to go. I had to leave. Too much hurt. On overload I whirled as -
Thunder claps, roaring as the flash immediately answers. My dad and I sit, staring up at the infuriated sky, watching as lighting illuminated the street, throwing into view the silver of a scooter before the figure was swallowed by the blackness once again.
I barrel through the door, the already cracked white pain shattering just a little bit more in my rush to explain it all. “Mommy! Mommy! I have something to show you!” I grab her hand and tug, impatience making me forget that there were bones and mussels attached to my handle. I hear laughter behind me as she trots after my excited little legs. “Mom! I want to show you something.” It wasn’t my voice. It was to boyish. My hold is ripped away as she turned and disappears into my brother’s abyss.
I stared at the door handle, terrified. Hurt. Reality. Truth. It lay on the other side of that splintered protective wall. The metal was cool beneath my fingertips, slippery. Groaning in protest, the doorway widens, and I am forced to face my most desperate of fears.
Five years later I discovered the truth: my life is not a continuous timeline but instead it is made up of a multitude of flashes and snapshots, hours of boredom on end, epiphanies, and emotions that manage string together in a jumbled mess that I am somehow supposed to sift through at the end. There are defining moments, and random bits and pieces that are remembered because of a long lost effect they had on me, but when the truth comes down to it, I am simply my memories, my experiences, and my emotions.