The Pain That Grows Us

Chapter Twenty-Eight

You wanted to know one thing that changed us, what was one event that shaped us into the people we are today. I have thought about the answer to that question night after night, for months, but there is only one night that really changed me. One night that changed the world for the both of us. That was the night Ruby Wilson died.

The world knew her as homecoming queen, prom queen, cheer captain for three years in a row, student body president, and future valedictorian. That wasn't the girl I knew. That wasn't the girl I fell in love with. I knew her as the girl who spent more time drawing the world as she saw it, the girl who was in love with the works of Edgar Allen Poe, the girl who dreamed of studying law.

But that wasn't the girl she was.

She was broken.

She hid behind smiles and activities to hide from the emptiness she felt inside. To run away from the fear that she was failing everyone she loved. The girl who would rather stay with a boy that the world saw as perfect for her, and ran away from the one she loved.
But she was also giving.

She volunteered every saturday at the local art studio and helped kids find their passion for drawing. Then she would go and spend her time tutoring kids that couldn't afford a tutor or were too embarrassed to let their parents know they needed help. She was the kind of girl to spend her free period tutoring someone for a class she passed without even trying.

She was the girl that would give someone her lunch money so someone ate in a day. She was the girl who would invite someone over so they could shower and escape from the nightmare that was waiting for them at home.

She was the girl that saw everything, but how much she mattered in the world.

The night Ruby Wilson died the world lost someone that was too good for this world. Someone who could bring a smile to anyone's face, someone who loved big. Someone that could make you forget why you were angry, or sad, or why you wanted to give up. She was the kind of girl that you just had to stop in your tracks and watch as she walked by. The kind of girl the world would stop turning just to hear her laugh, and not her everyday laugh, her real genuine laugh because those were rare.

The world has been dull since she died.
My world stopped turning the day she died, without her I don't know how to breathe, how to keep going. She was the one thing that made me get up in the morning. She was the reason I went to school. She was my reason for trying.

I find myself wishing I had spent more time paying attention to her. I wish I had threw fucking caution to the wind and lived on the wild side when it came to her. I wish I had more afternoons like the one we spent together in eighth grade. I wish I was someone she wanted to hide away from the rest of the world again, to know all of her secrets. To know why she stayed with Brady fucking Henshaw when she knew I was there.

I wish I knew why she started really hating me.

I wish I knew why those walls were so easy to destroy when it came to me.

I wish I was more like her.

You asked us what was one moment that shaped us into who we are today, but you also asked how we can change moving forward.

My answer is this; I want to be more like the girl that completely destroyed my world in the best and worst way possible. I want to love like she did, with my whole heart and with everything I have. I want to see the world in a way no one else does.

But I want to do something she wasn't able to do.
I want to stop running from my fears.

I want to live on the wild side.