𝙄𝙙𝙚𝙖𝙨, 𝙎𝙝𝙤𝙧𝙩 𝙎𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙀𝙨𝙨𝙖𝙮𝙨

Harieth [ESSAY]

[Written for an English essay assignment: Describe a regular annual event or a regular annual visit to a particular place.]

I climbed the stairs, one at a time, without a rush in my pace. I was just climbing the stairs, feeling the weight of the world ease itself off of my shoulders for every step I took, but the feel of old fear was setting back in again, just like every year. Irrational fear, irrational thoughts, that always sprouted whenever May 16th came around.

Like a clog in the pipes, I could hardly breathe when I reached the last few flights, but not for lack of oxygen. It was the same thing all over again, just like the last eight years of my life. Limitless thoughts had been throwing themselves against my skull for the duration of the timely climb, making me feel all kinds of unwarranted emotions.

I had forced my mind to settle by the last turn, but as I faced the final ten steps with the door to the roof some several feet ahead of me, another surge of feelings I always seemed to forget I could feel came coursing through me, making me feel to throw up and cry and scream all at once. Everything was shakey, from my hands to my knees, and there was that forever unforgettable pain that comes to you when you try your hardest not to cry, a lump that builds in the back of your throat until its saltiness fills your sinuses and pours out of your eyes.

3 steps, 2 steps, 1 step, the door. I raised my hand and felt the handle's cold metal scorch my skin, making the blockage in my throat feel harsher, more real. I tried to breathe deep, but my breath caught itself and I choked slightly before exhaling shakily. My thoughts were raging free and unchecked in an incoherent mess behind my eyes, making me forget when the tears had appeared. All I knew was that they were there now, and they were making it extremely hard to see anything.

I wiped my face with my hoodie sleeve and push the door open, emitting a noise somewhere between a sob and a sniff at the sight that lay ahead of me. The rooftop where my life had been shot at, the bullet leaving an invisible scar, where my life was shifted, to a place where nothing could go back to the old ways, where my life was changed to the point where my brother and I would be made to forever jump through hoops to make ends meet until our time came and we could see Mom again.

I walked to the edge of the roof, my footsteps feeling illegal as I walked where she might have, mere minutes before she discarded her life those eight years ago. Dawn would break over the city soon, but I wouldn't be around long enough to see the view; I could never last so long before the thoughts of joining Mom crept in and grabbed control of the tides of chaos in my head. The rational side of me would never let me jump the same way she had on this very day in the past, but when you are thirty stories up in the air with lines of jouska plaguing your every thought of the last thing your mother had told you, that you hadn't understood until it was too late, rationality was something only someone with the psyche of a psychopath could muster.

I peered down the side of the building, my eyes drifting and landing on every window ledge that jutted slightly out from the wall. I brought my eyes to sweep up through the early world of the city I shared with the other occupants, some of which were already back on the never-ending grind of life, some retiring home for the morning after working shifts throughout the late night. I thought of my brother up in Canada, finally getting the education he deserved after having to put his life on hold to cope with the loss of our mother, to start to build something for ourselves after being left with almost nothing to our names.

Moments of the time short after Mom committed suicide to just months ago flashed into my consciousness and everything felt too real for even reality as I returned to the truth that even seven-year-old me had come to grasp by the third night my brother and I had spent out on the streets, evading our abusive father and his new wife; The world will always find a way to be crueler.

It wasn't even like we had it all. Jayden had just moved schools for the start of freshman year and Mom was working four jobs having finally divorced Dad, but she was still blowing most of what she made on alcohol and cigarettes. I remember clearly the times when Mom would be sat on the floor by the kitchen counter, tears being cried over her face which still carried the bruises and scars from Dad, and Jayden would come to me having looked through the fridge and tell me to pack a sleeping bag, that we would be staying with his buddy Karl for the night.

I brought myself back from the ledge, but not before those deep, dark, tempting thoughts of letting go and cutting the string of life could begin to envelop me with their hypnotic promises. But I thought again of my brother, how lonely he would be if I went to join Mom without him. The crazed part of me that sought relief whispered into my consciousness, telling me that he still has Karl, just like all those years ago. The part of me I had held onto for support for nearly a decade whispered back telling me that Karl would miss me too.

I threw myself down on the roof, a war of thoughts and what-ifs burning up inside me and making my head hurt. I let myself drop my bodyweight back and my head harshly hit the roof, knocking the rivals of my mind together and ceasing the crossfire I seemed to be putting myself through. With my head to the skies, my eyes searching the early morning clouds for something, anything, more tears started to race my cheeks and quickly dampened my hoodie. I felt so, so alone, so full of self-pity, and so conflicted, even though it was so blatantly plain that I needed to keep on going. So many years put into the nothing I was left with, all to give it up? No. It was the sunk-cost fallacy at its finest, but this time, belief had to be acknowledged, the same way the protagonist has to fight the toughest battles. I had no other reasonable option.

I laid my arm over my face, letting my sleeve absorb the remaining tears before I pushed myself onto my feet and steeled myself, preparing for yet another year of facing the burdens of the world. My fists clenched and I looked back up at the skies again, sunlight finally starting to flood the world.

"Watch us, Mom," I spoke bitterly, my voice course after not being used in hours. "Let us make you wish you had stayed."

16/02/2021