Stream of Consciousness Assignment

It starts with darkness.

It kind of always starts with darkness, doesn’t it? That’s not even me being my usual melancholy self and trying to see the worst in things, either though. It’s just; things always start out in the dark. Take birth for example. That poor kid sits in that poor kid’s mother’s stomach for nine months in the dark and then one day: BAM! That kid finally gets to see the light, whether it likes it or not. Another fad that begins with the dark would be a crisp winter morning—and that’s where we’re starting today.

My alarm woke me at its usual time:  5:57 am. I don’t like to go with the normal times like 5:30 or 6:00. So I’ve went with 5:57 am for the last three years of my life and it’s been working fairly well for me. Obviously, it’s dark. I mean, it’s a winter morning in Vancouver. Oh joy. Also, of course it’s a Monday. Because all cliché bad days are Mondays, right? Right.

“Would you please turn that damn music off? It’s early, god damn it,” a familiar voice called while banging on the walls.  

“I’m working on it, sis,” I mumbled, switching my radio alarm off, which was blasting ‘Second & Sebring’, my favorite song of the last three years. My sister hates my music. Unfortunately, she’s not a fan of metal or punk and would rather listen to something a little less “demonic”, such as Justin Bieber or One Direction, which in my opinion, is closer to demonic than my music ever will be.

“Thank you,” her pesky, high pitched voice shouted from the other room.

“Yeah no problem, hellspawn,” I spit under my breath. You see, my sister and I don’t really get along too well. Like I said, she likes pop music and I like punk music. She likes Seventeen Magazine, and I like Lord of the Rings. It’s very unfortunate, as you can see.

While opening the door, I made the ever so courageous decision to turn my music back on. I needed my tunes to do my makeup, I mean, how else am I supposed to get ready?

“Ariana! Didn’t I just ask you to shut that off?” my sister, Rachel, whined, poking her head out of her room.

“Oh, did you? I don’t seem to recall. Sorry!” I said, putting on my best sarcastic voice with a snarky smile to match.

“Brat!” she said, slamming the door as Austin Carlile’s voice rang out through the house. My dad had already left for work. As for mom, she died a while ago. I’d say it’d have to be around four or five years ago now. I mean, I was around eleven when it happened so that sounds about right to me. So if you hadn’t guessed by now, I’m sixteen as of three weeks ago.

When she died, everything changed. I was already fairly depressed before that but, hell, did that send me downhill. But now, five years and three suicide attempts later, I’m still here. I’d say the only thing that got me through it all was my music. And that brings me back to ‘Second & Sebring’, my favorite song. It’s by Of Mice & Men, which by chance, is one of my favorite bands. The song, you see, is about Austin’s mother, who died when he was seventeen. This song sure did help me through a lot when it came out. I like to think that if Austin got through his mom dying, I can too.  

I dumped my makeup bag out onto the counter of the bathroom. Surprisingly, nothing fell to the ground. Instead, everything settled into a rather organized looking pile. I dug around in it for a moment, looking for my blackest eyeliner. I needed it and black and red eye shadow to complete my latest obsession: imitating Taylor Momsen’s eye makeup. I always do my eyes first because of all of the black eye shadow, which causes a lot of fallout which would ruin my foundation if I were to do that first. But enough of that girly stuff, who needs that anyways.

As I was finishing up my makeup, ‘A Match into Water’ by Pierce the Veil came on my playlist.

“Hell yeah,” I whispered, cranking up the volume.