Born of starlight and shadows

~Part twenty three: Hannah~

I've said this before, haven't I, friends? I've mentioned that I am terrible at sitting still for long periods of time. Now that I am thinking-pondering, maybe?-about it, I'm realizing: you'd think that would mean I was at least somewhat athletically inclined as a result, wouldn't you?

I can remember running around the house-which one, I couldn't tell you, though-as a child, my dad coming after me, pretending like he was some sort of monster coming to come attack me. That made me laugh.

The ghost of that laugh echoes around my head until it dies.

And, sometimes on the really bad days, when it was just me, alone, in a nearly-empty, unfamiliar house and stacks of emotions ready to crash down, I would take out my phone, press shuffle, crank the volume way, way up, and let the song work its magic.

If the music was loud enough to drown out my own voice, I'd sing along. But-before you jump to any conclusions, it's not because I didn't like the sound of my voice. No, mostly I just wanted to be able hear the amazingness that was whichever lead singer's voice.

Call me a fangirl, and I suppose you'd be right.

Really I was just looking for a distraction. I'll tell you this from experience: nothing is quite as distracting as dancing around the house (yep-I did that too, on more than one occasion), hiding behind the music like it was some kind of shield.

Sometimes I didn't even dance, I just ran around the house, the sound of my favorite songs drowning out the echoing footsteps. It gave the illusion that I was actually going somewhere.

Moving along with my life.

Its slightly ironic-maybe? Symbolic? Ooh, wait, fitting. See, I'm not completely stupid. I can English-somewhat.

Its-no, not slightly. Its almost fitting that was how I spent my time, considering what I just told you, about what I did when I was really, really young, at that time when nothing mattered.

Anyway. Aside from these activities, I never did much of anything vaguely athletic. If I'd ever had the chance to do sports at any of my schools, maybe I would have discovered some hidden talent.

But, I didn't.

So, I can't even claim this weird, slightly annoying part of me is an indicator of some hidden, mysterious part of the girl that I am, the girl that is Hannah Jones.

I can tell you that it mostly meant that, when I wasn't at school, at home, on the move, helping fix meals, which were the main things that occupied my life, I would scroll through the ridiculously long list of games stored on my phone-looking back, maybe this was my own way of making up for the nonexistent list of phone calls, texts, or notifications of any kind-debate for a solid five minutes, sometimes, about which one to play, then tap, scroll, or click my way through as many levels as possible, trying to keep at least my hands busy.

I never could suffer through watching TV, you see. Maybe I could get through a couple episodes of something, short episodes, mind you, but much longer than that and I was just done.

I'd heard people talk about how they fell asleep during movies sometimes, when it was late at night especially. That wasn't my problem.

Something else you should know about me: I had never been one of those, hey, I climbed in bed three seconds ago and now I'm just gonna...drop.....off...to....sleeeppppp [insert snoring noise] people.

Ever.

That could be for a number of reasons, but anyway, it was basically impossible for me to just nod off.

Anyway, the reason why I never could focus on the screen was because my brain just disengaged after some time.

The time was slipping away, yes, and the couch was, I supposed, comfortable, but my brain was slipping into the same state it did during a particularly long school lesson.