When Time Was Among Us

Opening to the book... in this chapter, you're told about many events regarding Lotte as a teenager.

Inattentive, I was... standing in that field.
It was the exact same one that I had stood in when my Grand-father had died... The exact same one that I had grown up in and met new faces in, a couple of acres up South, I had met my best friend Ella when I was 8... she lived on the other side and I was told not to speak to her. Forbidden to see someone I trusted so well, and so are greetings were secrets. I never did find out why. I remember on my 16th birthday I held a party in that field and she came along half way through, nobody noticed until the hour before it finished. My father insulted her family and demanded that she left.
I looked over, but she had already turned towards South, like it was expected... a tear had fallen down my cheek. Looking back on it now, I never really understood the relationships our family held with others. Never understood the reasons for their actions and... most of the things they had told me. At my fathers funeral my speech was hard to understand, the people gathered around held the same confused faces, for more than the 15 minutes or so that I remained standing up there. I was looking down at my notes and dreading every second of the seconds to come, after the seconds that had just passed. Because every feeling inside me at that point, was the same one. Just repeating itself. Until now I had never discovered what that feeling was, was it love? Guilt? Pain? Regret? or Dignity. Those years would flutter by so quickly that some days I had to wake up an hour early just to think straight, and most importantly think like any other person would. Had my past really effected me this much? Living on a farm with animals to spare and sisters to cry on, you would of thought I'd be a gentle, stable girl by the time I was 18. But no, that wasn't me... for I was the tom boy of the family. The one that was always out, and even at night when I couldn't sleep, I'd throw stones on Ella's bedroom window and she'd wake to find a troubled teenager wanting to run away, but when she didn't wake, I'd try and run myself.
Failing every time, I'd only make it to the highest hedge. Which was positioned at the very end of our land, the amount of times I had tried to climb that hedge, you would have thought I'd be joking. The next day I had woken with bruises from the falls and some more with stumbled attempts to balance myself on the roof. But my family would never know, because by the time I was eighteen I had given up, I liked to think I was apart from them. You see when I was seven, I remember my mum taking me down into the basement to show me some of the dairies she had kept when she was only young. I loved it, she'd acknowledged my love for writing... even if i were only seven at the time, I Loved her for spending some time with me, of course before it would be cut off from my father who would complain about the house work or that his daughters, should be 'keeping themselves amused'.
 "We have better things to do, than run around after you Missy"
I hated him from the age of eight and on wards until I was eighteen, even at eighteen when he had died that year the memories he had scarred me with I would never quite forgive him for.
One included a trip to 'out of town' where he had shouted at me for something I couldn't remember doing, but never will the slap that left a bruise, the words that locked into my heart and those awful gestures that never quite left my slightly disorientated 6 six year old brain, let me forgive him. And that wasn't the only time.

"Lotteee, lets go out today, you've been in here for a least a fortnight..."
Her light brown eyes glistened in the morning sunshine, it was coming through my window... covering half my bed over the floor to the door, where it lingered over the left hand side of it, draped over Ninetta... she was two years older than me, and the only sister i'd seen every other day in nearly two weeks.
She smiled warmly down at me and pointed at the book positioned on my lap... I was writing again, letting it flow, slowly. Letting it come to me, slowly. So that I didn't have to think too hard to find those memories I couldn't quite capture. For I did not want any alterations of my past, everything was to be as it was, like m mothers.
"Not now... its not ready." A year past, but as I looked up at my clock... it portrayed only a few seconds... "I mean not not ready but not complete, i just don't want you to see it ..." I waiting a moment too long. "Nee, how are you?" you you you... the words echoed in my head. I woke to find promise under my bedroom floor, i reached under for my journal. It was 3am and my dream seemed so vivid that I'm guessing it was a memory, something valuable for the Journal. I remember drifting off again with the journal perched on my chest. I dream't more... it seemed so real.
"Well im fine, just been on the phone to Harry. Hes found a job near here so i can start seeing him more ... Now get dressed, you must have written nearly 4 journals by now. And yes... i have been counting." We both laughed, quick and awkwardly.

It was a cold winters morning, Olive, my eldest sister sat downstairs frantically tapping away at her laptop, no one could mistake the sound... it was my alarm clock for this Monday morning, a very early one. I had work down at the 'Bean and Gone Cafe' around 1... it was half 8. Ergh why did she have to work so early? Be here so freakin' early, damn her" I could tell she hated the fact that her writing wasn't up to scratch, she'd shown us some of her works about half a year ago and we all knew it wasn't great, i guess our expressions gave it away as she slowly sank back into her seat, the smile that was once their had rubbed off. It was gone.
"Lotte! You're alive. Hi."
"Yeah, guess i am..." After retrieving my teabags, I slammed the cupboard door purposely.
"Hey, im trying to work Lotte keep it down"
"Keep it down!? How could you say that, 'you' woke me up in the first place, we're the only ones up and im tired, bitter and don't want to speak to you, OK?"
'Right, fine nice to see you too. Its been 4 months"
"You think I dont know that, dads funeral was the last time, right? You've been ... distant."
"Distant, as in 'busy' 'working my butt off'? Yes I have."
I wasnt listening anymore, shes 25 and should have dropped the 'writing' career years ago... its not her thing. But shes too stubborn to realize it.
"I, er needed time to think aswell. Your speech brought a lot of memories back... i couldnt stop thinking about it for ages, how could you have said all those things, they were private." The kettle whistled viciously at me, i raised my voice battling against it. "I said what i had too, and anyway... none of you had the guts to."
"Yeah because it was a time to celebrate dads life, not ruin it all over again."
"What life, he drank, he bruised, he drank."
"How could you?" She was whispering, accusingly
I'd left the kitchen already, i hated her sometimes. She always wanted to get to the bottom of something, this... i'll never understand, cant you leave things unspoken sometimes? Let someone assume, let their imagination speak louder than your weak, bristle voice.
I was nearly Nineteen and a half and no visual path of my future plans, its funny... sometimes i feel like im one of those people who wait for miracles to happen, a wealthy man to come into their lives with a ring in a box and a smile in his month, a year later you have children together and its apparent that you never have to work again, just bring up his children, your children. But miracles seem to be of another era, maybe when The Beatles were around or Marilyn Monroe, people who brought happiness to others. I don't feel like theirs many role models anymore, a society where people make 'themselves' rich in happiness rather than others. A society where our ideas and views of the world have altered into something ugly and different. I dont understand this world anymore and i feel like i should be writing about it in my journals, but my journals are of my life. My expierences and i dont really think im linked to society. I just dont understand the people out there. I think it might have been the first time in my life, that i feel grateful for living in a remote area, but then i think thats the reason why i dont understand society. Its still dark out and as i watch the the night change into the fresh morning, i feel safe. Lying in my bed, i've never felt safer.

I woke again at 11 o'clock, this was too late and i knew it. In two hours i'd be in work, but i hadn't slept better all week, hadnt had any dreams, no alterations of the past, no confused sum up of a memory deluded and twisted in my disorientated unconscious. They're just too vivid and i wish they would, could stop, i feel like i'm traveling back in time every night, revisiting the moments I'd just been ignoring all this time, but just changed so that it feel more real.
Despite this though, every morning i get these sharp pains... then unfamiliar visions. Like im seeing something dangerous, and far on into my future. Its weird and come tonight, i'll write them down. Every unbearable second of them.

Reviews

[marytownsend]

Very nicely written! It grabs your attention right away and makes you want to know where it will end. You have a strong sense of style and form!

[Leslie Philibert]

A good write, clear and professional

[Cole Hayley]

Very expertly written.

[Emma Berman]

I like your style of prose and its clarity.