As much as I loathe confessions and revelations, I will tell you that life is hardly ever a joyride as many people believe. I cannot deny that I never received possessions I desired, or else, I’d be exposed as a liar. More specifically the past two months and even my teenage years in general were anything but an enormous chunk of a cupcake.
I remember the events that occurred within this timeframe, while sprawled on my inviting bed. After living in the hospital for two weeks, being home never felt like the best option until now. That night that landed me in the hospital rewinds and replays incessantly in my head. From time to time, I imagine actions that would have altered the consequences and avoided anyone from getting hurt. All I will concede to is to feeling fortunate for a second chance, so to speak. However, I am limited. Lesser blood than I had two weeks ago and forced to walk with the aid of crutches for nearly a month. It saddens me up to this day that I had to suffer like this. Everyone knows the story of that night, so I’ll spare the details and continue on.
I accepted responsibility of what is ahead of me and how I would spend my days: confined to the house, specifically in my bedroom, while attempting to hop around with crutches – something cumbersome I haven’t used in years.
To describe my life I will say, dramatic. Have I caught the suburban sickness? I think so, and I must have been picked as the damn poster girl. Nightly, my peers define fun by falling under the influence of a combination of alcohol and drugs. I know, exactly, what you’re thinking – why the hell do rich, spoiled suburban brats spend their money to feed their addictions? – and to that, I yet need to know the answer. Again, though, I won’t spit out a denial in response to the ‘are you just like them?’ interrogation. Thoughts, imagery, and queries swam through my mind; the more that kept building up made it harder for me to fish and analyze them individually, so I will be relieved from a minuscule burden and sigh. I could admit to the helpfulness of reflecting on my whole being and it strayed from the fact that I was temporarily crippled and bandaged up. Anyway, however, the suburban sickness is all the secrets occurring inside a household, forcing a family to create a façade for the public and just pray that the confidentialities would not be exposed. Personally, I think the majority of it is the undisclosed teenage lifestyle that takes place during weekends and weeknights.
I am the poster girl in a sense, I thought to myself. In addition, I thought of prevention of something that has already occurred – I always do this, despite my desire to avoid it entirely. I always worry about the past while in the present instead of focusing on the promising future. Old habits die hard – as they say – and they kill me slowly. As if I had never reached this foreign thought of a quiet, somewhat intelligent, (you can say) ordinary boy with a hidden mental problem. An individual known to me, my friends, our families, and possibly even you. An individual who practiced with his dad’s collection of expensive weapons, a routine also unknown to everyone. An individual who could straight out name something or specifically someone he wanted, however, knew to death he could never attain. When almost everyone ridiculed him for his unattainable craving – or to softly deem it as a ‘crush’ on non-other than my best friend, Laurie – he disregarded the comments and lived on with his life. But, there was that demon inside of him that lives in fact inside all of us, ready to lash back at his mockers and attain cold, sweet revenge for their actions. What he decides to do is perform his ‘revenge’ on that night and the four of us will get hurt. If only someone, or maybe I would even talk to him so he would not have to keep his feelings inside a huge glass jar.
The dialogue of the both of us confiding in each other skipped vaguely in my mind, but I sensed the gist of it, nonetheless. We are all sensitive. Some more than others, particularly him. I’d be there for him without a doubt. Only if I knew that he was plagued by a foreign disease, that his parents neglected him, and there had been secrets in the household undisclosed to everyone, then that night – the night I figuratively saw the light – would have been avoided altogether. I still remain unsure if things happen for a reason. I came up with irrational and foolish reasoning for his vengeance and why I was personally targeted, but I failed in my attempts to come up with a reason. The imaginative situation ceases with him dropping his weapon only to enter a sobbing fit whilst confessing how much of a jealous, selfish, sick loner he was and everyone would remain silent without needing to say another meaningless word.
It must have been an hour since I returned home from the hospital. I spent those two weeks in a smelly and uncomfortable reclining hospital bed notwithstanding bathroom breaks, brief periods of walking on crutches, and riding on a pleather wheelchair. I cannot stress how relieving home was at this point, especially my clean and perfume-scented sheets. My current state of mind amazed and brought me to recurrent lands of thought. I never want to be disturbed or lose this bliss. I keep on revisiting the past, though, and it preoccupies me in a tedious manner.
I remember. Doctors and nurses tried to calm down our friends and family members – the ones belonging to the four of us, victims, as they called us – who were hysterical that such a thing would happen in our ‘safe’ suburb. I needed blood so my dad and brother, Jesse, came to the rescue to donate some of theirs. I had been deep in sleep for more than a day and everyone saw little motions as a forecast of my awakening. The emotional mother’s cry for her youngest daughter, who was fighting for her life, reverberated around the blinding and white-painted hallways.
And then I roused from the darkness. I fought it and truthfully, I doubted it as did others. Upon first noticing where I had been, I was immediately confused. Oh recall this? A secretly violent peer victimized me. Medics and nurses surrounded me to monitor my recovery. Alright, doing much, much better. Then, they informed those in the waiting room that I had risen, much to their incredulity and alleviation. My parents, siblings, extended family, friends – they all filed into my room one after the other – asked of my present condition. All of this burdened me, strikingly, how I was so slow at processing what was happening in front of me.
It took awhile before I returned to my senses. I kept interrogating nurses about when they would finally send me home, but they enclosed me longer to monitor my fractures and injuries in order to avoid infections and bleeding. I argued with them because I failed to understand that they were simply doing their profession. Everyday I was visited by those I loved during the appropriate hours and each time, I begged and cried for release. Soon, soon, I promise. Stay here first. Stupid answers that I was forced to accept.
My perfect memory continued to produce odd laughter and happiness within myself until I heard a soft knock, or rather tapping, on my door. “Come in, can’t open the door,” I said to whoever was on the other side. Jesse entered my room.
“Hi. Welcome back home!” he excitedly blurted as if I left home for months.
“Thanks,” I responded in a monotonous tone. I instantly thought of how he poorly treated me for the past few months, but then again, he gave me blood.
“I’m glad you’re back. Listen, I’m sorry about what happened and how I acted towards you. I should have known better than that,” he apologized with a sincere look in his eyes.
“It’s fine,” I said, again dully without eye contact. He sought this opportunity to correct our relationship and I was not being entirely communicative.
“That night, people were yelling, ‘Emily got hurt,’ and I repeatedly denied it until I heard ambulances. I constantly told myself that my little sister is immune to the badness of the world. I wanted to keep you safe, like how I promised Dad years ago. I was harsh and rude to you and I felt responsible in some way,” he revealed with teary eyes. I scarcely saw my brother cry and knowing that he was on the verge of tears at that moment made me want to wail.
He felt onto my bed. I rested my right hand on my shoulder to comfort him. I needed to work on consoling people in general. Instantly, the past was behind us both and became insignificant. A brief silence filled the room, but nobody complained.
“You need not cry, Jess. You are not required to do everything, especially look after me all the time. I guess it was going to happen sometime. We didn’t know Rick was insane or that he was capable of resorting to this. It’s crazy. It hurt me when you acted they way you did, like someone I really loved just stabbing and putting me down everyday. It doesn’t matter anymore because I learned to accept it after a while,” I expressed, while fidgeting with my blouse, in attempts to avoid directly looking at him. I continually counted on him because of his exceptional ability to listen and respond accordingly to what I revealed.
“I should have been a big brother and you wouldn’t be like this,” he said in regret. He felt guilty for something that happened in the past. You see, we differ in most areas, however, stay bonded by similar habits or qualities. Our likenesses include constantly trying to alter the past, even when aware that this is simply impossible and bestowing blame on ourselves when we should actually be disassociated from a situation. I glanced at him for a hard moment. I saw a little of my parents and myself in him – his mien in particular.
Returning to the idea of a suburban sickness, Jesse and I tuck away our secrets in a safe spot. When it is just the two of us, we dig into our special box and pick out which secrets to disclose and talk about again. He sensed that I grew tired of dully conversing about that night or my hospital stay or how he failed as a brother. So what a fitting time to reminisce.
Yes, I encounter difficult situations and live under uneasy circumstance – to this, an appropriate example is the inability to stop a maniac who hurt three of my friends and me, thus why I am bound and walking with support. “Remember when we took the blame for Sarah?” I asked. Of course that night we covered up for our older sister’s ownership of weed by innocently lying to our parents that it was ours. Our stepfather restricted us to the basement, where we had to smoke until the stash was finished. For Chrissake! Can you regard this as the illness plaguing us? It was a mere two years ago and was undoubtedly one of the first times I ever tried that illegal substance and in actuality, our parents remain unaware. We never turned to drugs for satisfaction. Sarah did, she suffered, and yet they failed to notice this.
“And that was a school night. I felt crappy and mellow at the same time,” he muttered. Again a quietude lurked in my bedroom for a longer time than before.
“We are poster children,” I finally said accompanied with a choppy laugh, hoping that Jesse laughed as well. He did and made me laugh boisterously. It felt so good. I had not welcomed this emotion lately. Laughing incessantly controlled us and spent minutes producing unusual sounds. Our relationship is pretty odd if you failed to notice. Whether or not we place ourselves on pedestals to represent our dysfunctional society or if there really was a suburban sickness or how much he had loathed me, he would always be my brother.
At this point, no regrets stick to me. The way of life reverted to old times with variances, of course. I was just glad to be home to talk to my big brother. We blathered about occurrences and our favorite subjects that meant a great amount to the both of us. I rested my head on a pillow. Despite the dramatic and unpleasant moments in my life, I thought, I cut through to find a way to manage – to live, to survive, to seize the past and use the experience to build a better tomorrow.
It was becoming late. “Have you ever had random shifts from a sanctuary to a hell and vice versa, be it physical or mental?” he wondered while catching me close my eyes.
“Every single day. You’ll understand why I see it as either the illumination or burning of my life” I lastly said, then, falling into a deep slumber. Despite previous moments of despair, somehow several puzzle pieces of the destroyed picture returned. All had not been lost, but rather I learned that the world never stops orbiting – not even for me.
![[send message]](https://www.writerscafe.org/images/mail.png){kind=small}
![[befriend]](https://www.writerscafe.org/images/friend.png){kind=small}
Share This
Email
Facebook
Twitter
Read Request
My Library
Flag Writing