Independent Wrtiting #3 (part one of three)

Losing some is the hardest thing anyone can ever go through. I wrote this piece to express the pain that still exists from losing my friend. This piece, even though it is an independent piece it completely non fiction. So basically I’m letting anyone who reads this to read into a part of my life. A part I wish I could relive with everything I am. Because even a simple sentence can change history. Looking back on it all there were so many opportunities to tell him everything, to fix my stupidity. God, I was such a spoiled little child.

My story is long and twisted. It all started over a year ago. With Sean, a now, ex-boyfriend. We broke up and like any typical teenage girl who fancied herself “in love” I was devastated and burrowed myself into a dark and glooming hole of cold unfeeling emptiness which I was determined to never come out of. It figures that that hole would be the true cause of my future pain.

Many nights I stayed up until an absurd hour crying on the phone with my friend Jon. He had been with me through the entire relationship from its senseless beginning to its rugged end.

On one of these many nights where he failed to calm me down he had his friend over. A boy named Chuck. I had heard plenty about him but had never met him. When Jon said that I should talk to him I refused and even got angry with him that he would suggest something so asinine. As if I was going to go pouring out my soul to some stranger. But my protests were futile.

I was silent and hostile to him, thinking that he would eventually get bored and hand the phone back to Jon. I was wrong, however. Instead he considered me a challenge to crack and simply spoke to me about his life, music anything until he finally got me to start talking.

It was so strange how easy he was to talk to. I didn’t have to elaborate or explain myself like I did with Jon. He instantly knew what I meant and understood everything. He had managed to do what friends I’ve known for nine years had failed at some many times. He figured me out. We spoke for hours, until I fell asleep, on the phone with him.

The next day I called Jon to ask for his number. He was extremely reluctant.

You see my dear Jon had had a crush on me for over a year and he believe that I was starting to have feelings for Chuck and would have him as a rebound guy.

Finally I got him to understand that I simply wanted his number because I never thanked him. He had no idea who I was and yet he tolerated me and had helped me more than anyone I’ve ever met.

It took me two days to work up the courage to finally call him. Would he even remember who the hell I was? Would he think I was just come pathetic little girl who was now clinging to him? Would he think I was creepy for asking Jon for his number?

My fears were apparently absurd. When he answered the phone my voice was shaking as I told him who it was. His reply shocked me.

“Hey girl! I’m glad you called! I was actually asked Jon for your number and I’ve been working up the nerve to call you for a few days.”

That was the very beginning. We talked for at least two hours everyday. He was my best friend and the only one I could truly talk to about anything without fear of judgment. We were so close for so many months.

Then it all went down.

Pop Culture Assignment

“Who are you to say what is natural? What is natural? Your hair certainly isn’t. Look at that piece. Looks like you picked it up off the road; midst rotting. Every week I come and listen to your madness, your hypocrisy, your hatred, discrimination, damnation! I’m sick of it! I’m not ashamed anymore! You can not change me!”

I was finally free from that awful place.

I’ve tried for over a year to make myself into something I’m not.

I’m bisexual.

It all began about a year ago, when I finally started to accept who I really was. I admitted it to myself and my friend. Now came the really hard part, my parents.

My father. He holds reads from his Book of Lies. What a hypocrite. What happened to the man I once knew? Ever since I admitted who I really was he began to preach what he used to damn. He invites over every teenage boy he knows. I’m not even allowed to have girl friends over unless we stay in the living room and he is home. I’m not a lesbian. I don’t want every girl I see. Same goes for guys.

I live in this small town everyday. My friends support me and love me no matter what. Why can’t my own father? My own flesh and blood. Why can’t he just love me for me? His own sister is a lesbian and he always told us to accept people for who they are.

My mother, she does. She accepts me, encourages me, and supports me. Of course she didn’t completely at first. She didn’t want to believe me at first. But once she began to get comfortable she hugged me and told me everything will be alright. It was such a relief too. I get enough stares at school. Enough condemnation from my peers who just do not understand.

When I told them that I was bi they both were shocked. Who wasn’t? I’ve had how many boyfriends? No one had ever even considered the possibility. Not even when I joined the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA). They thought it was just a phase, something I would grow out of. Until Teresa. Then it finally sunk in. At first they sent me to support groups. I was willing, naïve even at first, thinking “Ok a support group will support me”.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

It was at my church and all they did was tell us, myself and the other “troubled adolescence” that we were disgusting, vile, deemed unworthy by God and damned to Hell if we didn’t change our wicked ways.

I believed them. I cried. Said I wanted God back into my life. To lead me, to love me. I went to confession every time I saw a girl and thought that she was pretty. I tried. I tried so damn hard! But not all the love in the world, not all the penance could change me. There are not enough Hail Mary’s, Our Fathers, or Holy Water in the entire Vatican to change who someone is.

I know this now. Now I understand that this is who I am and I can not fight it. I am no longer that same weak little girl who bent to her fathers will. Now I decide for myself who I want and what I want.

We have not truly spoken in months.

When I told him I wouldn’t return to the Group, I’ve never seen him so mad, so ashamed. That’s what hurts so deeply. His disappointment. But I can’t let it get to me. Ever. If he can’t love me for whom I am, as I can for him….

I have a boyfriend that I love now. My mother is happy for me. As happy as she would have been if it was a girlfriend. My father, all he had to say was, “Does he know of your sin?” No, he does not know of my sin, because being who I am is not a sin. What he does know is who I am and loves me anyway.

Maybe one day so will my father.

....Don’t hold your breathe.

Lives Assignment

July 1st, the very beginning of summer. Summer ’06, it held such promise didn’t it? New people, new adventures, new times that I won’t ever remember.

I had plenty of nights I wouldn’t remember, trying to drown away the memory of what happened that day…

Chuck, my dearest friend, why did you have to go so soon? He was only 16 and had so much more to do! On that fateful night there was a fireworks show at Candlewood Lake, as there is every year. My foolish friend was drunk and he was stoned and decided to go swimming with his two brothers, Andrew, 19, and Danny, 11. After only a few minutes Andrew and Danny lost track of Chuck. They got out of the water, thinking that he had joined the crowd watching the display. They looked for him for 15 minutes before returning to the lake. Before finding him face down in the water 20 feet out from shore.

He had been such a good swimmer too.

When I got the call the next night that I would never see my best friend, my love ever again, I didn’t even cry. I dropped the phone, fell to my knees, my faced burned like I was going to cry but nothing came out. Nothing but an ear shattering scream. My dad came running, my mom slowly behind him. He shook me for a good 5 minutes, I’m told, yelling at me what was wrong, failing to make my screams stop.

When I finally found the words all I could utter was “Charles Bennett”. My parents had never met him and were bewildered as to my meaning. When my dad finally caught on he went to his computer and typed in his name and came up with a 1 sentence, “Charles T. Bennett, 16, of Wondy Way, Danbury, passed away unexpectedly on Saturday evening, July 1, 2006”.

From that day on I was thrown in a whirlpool of events. Calling out of work, going to his dad’s house to help take care of Danny, telling our friend Frankie, the wake, the funeral, and finally the burial.

I tried all summer to forget, to never remember that I didn’t tell him I loved him and that he was the best friend I could have ever asked for.

The wounds have received from his passing still have not fully healed.

Through his death I have learned to always so “I love you” too often. Because you never know when one day you’ll turn around and they’ll be gone. Every so often I look up to the sky and wonder if he is up there, watching. I wonder if he knows everything now, if he truly understands. I wonder if he hears me when I speak to him. I have to believe that he does, that he really is up there, somewhere. Because if I don't, then that means that there is nothing after. Than he is just laying there......Such thoughts are forbid in my mind.

Reilly Assignment

“Be tough as nails.”

Funny how such a simple statement can change the whole course of ones existence. She spoke these words to me when I was still just a little girl and never have I forgotten them. And I never will.

Yet now, it is my strength that cuts her so deep; my ability to keep even the kindest and most charming people out. It is something she had always wished for me, something she herself has perfected.

She is sick. Has been since she was diagnosed in 1984. Multiple Sclerosis, street name MS, believed to be an autoimmune disease (a disease in which the body attacks its own tissue). In MS, inflammation and scarring of myelin occurs. As a result certain nerve functions in the body slowly stop working. Much like AIDs it can not kill you. Rather complications that result from it or infections due to a lowered immune system do.

1984. Twenty three years. In that time she has bore and raise four children. Cooked for them, driven them to and from one activity or another, put up with their tantrums (that are quite frequent), given them advice and taught them never to take anything or anyone for granted.

I do not remember a time that she was healthy. And by healthy I mean able to walk on her own. Even at age four I’ve had to help her, one of my very first memories. MS takes away peoples ability to walk. Despite her handicap she is determined to be as independent as possible, something she prides herself on, even after surgeries.

However, now even that is slowly slipping away from her. Around mid-January she began to have severe pain scissor through her life. It occurred in her mouth. All of us believed that it was as simple as a root canal. Then it got so bad that she wasn’t even able to eat or talk without screaming in agony. She couldn’t sleep unless she was sitting up straight and even then after only an hour or so she’d jolt awake as another wave of anguish flooded her senses. Sometimes her cries woke me.

We soon discovered that it was not a root canal problem. In fact, it had nothing to do with her face, directly. It was her trigeminal nerve. This nerve controls sensations in the face. To stop the pain she was prescribed, yet another, pill. It killed the pain alright, and all independence she had. You see, it not only relaxes the trigeminal nerve but all nerves in her body. As a result all the benefits she was supposed to receive from all her surgeries (including a spinal tap) were reversed. Now she is constantly tired and unable to drive, cook, clean, everything she did everyday to stay semi-independent.

Now all her responsibilities fall on me, being the eldest and most reliable in the household (now that my older siblings have all grown up). I drive, cook, clean, I’m tough as nails just as she said I should be. But now that hurts her. Because whenever she reaches for me I pull back. No connection, no attachment, no pain for when she goes.

Land of Confusion- Disturbed

I must have dreamed a thousand dreams
Been haunted by a million screams
But I can hear the marching feet
They're moving into the street

Now, did you read the news today?
They say the danger has gone away
But I can see the fire's still alight
They're burning into the night

There's too many men, too many people
Making too many problems
And there's not much love to go around
Can't you see this is a land of confusion?

This is the world we live in
And these are the hands we're given
Use them and let's start trying
To make it a place worth living in

Oh, superman, where are you now?
When everything's gone wrong somehow?
The men of steel, these men of power
Are losing control by the hour

This is the time, this is the place
So we look for the future
But there's not much love to go around
Tell me why this is a land of confusion

This is the world we live in
And these are the hands we're given
Use them and let's start trying
To make it a place worth living in

I remember long ago
When the sun was shining
And all the stars were bright all through the night
In the wake of this madness, as I held you tight
So long ago

I won't be coming home tonight
My generation will put it right
We're not just making promises
That we know we'll never keep

There's too many men, too many people
Making too many problems
And there's not much love to go round
Can't you see this is a land of confusion?

Now, this is the world we live in
And these are the hands we're given
Use them and let's start trying
To make it a place worth fighting for

This is the world we live in
And these are the names we're given
Stand up and let's start showing
Just where our lives are going to

E. E. Cummings Assignment

it may not always be so; and i say

it may not always be so;and i say
that if your lips,which i have loved,should touch
another's,and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart,as mine in time not far away;
if on another's face your sweet hair lay
in such a silence as i know,or such
great writhing words as,uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;

if this should be,i say if this should be-
you of my heart,send me a little word;
that i may go unto him,and take his hands,
saying,Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face,and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands.




life may not always play nicely;the wind whispered
soon the walls will close in,surrounding you laughing,bitterly
mocking, you unable to see what which way to run
for help,the one you once believed was love;holds the lever that is now controlling your end
echoing you’ll scream,and sob
i love you i love you,help help help,
The wind will grin evilly at you demise;

when life refuses to play fair, fair by its own limits-
surround your dear heart,make it cold ice;
hard granite stone,become cold and unfeeling,
laugh at doom,Fear not one thing.
then kiss the hand that beats,catch him off guard
and crush him with the walls, whispered the wind.

Lee

Applause and cheers echo in the
Long hall as the beginning of a new journey
Begins.

She meets his eyes
Mirroring his starry filled gaze with her own
She watches him pass by her
A new journey begins.

Standing she follows as she always has,
Wondering
What will become of them? Everything
Will be different

He takes his place and she hers at the
Snow white table
So elegant, so deceiving

She accepts his hand
The hand of a master
And gracefully, regretfully
Glides with him across the
Icy floor.
A new journey begins