Youforia [N.H]

03

Aycie Locke

The thing about being alone is that nobody talks about how it can take the meaning out of your entire life. People talk about being lonely all the time, they talk about how people can feel alone even in a room full of their friends, they talk about how lonely it feels to have no one that understands you, but no one talks about being completely isolated from any kind of relationship your entire life.

Humans are social creatures. When you have no one you quite literally will go insane, it can drive you to the edge of sanity when you sit in silence for this many years.

When you have no parent relationship, no friendship, no boyfriends, you are forced to raise yourself. Ever since I was 5 when my dad left I have been completely independent, my mother's only concern is keeping a roof over my bread and using it as an excuse to do whatever she wants to me, or making me do whatever she wants.

For as long as I can remember I've done everything. Me and my mums laundry, made us both breakfast, lunch and dinner, cleaned the house top to bottom, sorted all the trash out, maintained our weedy garden and got myself to and from school that's an hour and a half away, done all the shopping, ever since I was five, all of this without fail.

Well there were a few fails sometimes... but there were consequences.

I remember being 13 and sitting on my bedroom floor, tears showering down my face for hours on end, i hated myself. I came to a realisation that night that there was surely something wrong with me, why was I so unloveable? I had no one, not a single friend, no dad, and I was an extra mouth to feed to my mother. The world felt cruel, why was I being punished, why couldn't I live an average life like every other kid I saw at school, what could I have possibly done to deserve torture like this?

Every waking minute of the day I was left with nothing but my own thoughts, thoughts that I couldn't just turn off, thoughts that had me wanting to harm myself, had me harming myself, had me wanting to give up before my life could get messier, thoughts that told me I was insufferable, that's why no one loved me, thoughts that picked apart every inch of my body, thoughts that told me there was a reason my dad left, these thoughts never left me, these thoughts are echoing through my mind as I try to sleep at night, these thoughts made me think my life was already over before it barely even started.

I told my mum about how sad I felt as she came through the door one day heading straight to her room after work, she told me I was hormonal and that I would feel better soon. In the next week she bought me a cat, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't so emotionally attached to this cat now, his name is tigger, named after the character from whinnie the Pooh, he's a tabby cat covered in stripes.

I loved the responsibility of looking after tigger, it helped me look after myself. When I fed him, I'd also eat and if he wanted to go outside, I'd go out for a walk as well, caring for something else made me want to care for myself. I also begged and begged my mum for a guitar, I told her I'd never bother her for anything else if I could just have this one thing, for a while nothing happened and I forgot about it, until I left my room on my 14th birthday, outside my door was a simple acoustic guitar with a card

'Happy birthday, mum.'

I was used to celebrating alone, but the day I got that guitar was possibly one of the best days of my life, I dedicated every hour of my time to learning the instrument, especially since it was the summer I had a lot of free time. I'd end up practicing over 5 hours a day everyday. And by the time my next birthday came around, I was already quite good. I fell in love with playing the guitar, it became a way I could drown out the thoughts that harassed me every day, it brought peace to my mind, I so desperately wanted my brain to go quiet and I finally found a way and nothing could take that away from me, so I decided I wanted to dedicate my life to it, I started writing sentence long lyrics that were short but catchy, and soon I was able to write full songs and conjure up riffs and solos on my guitar, i felt so proud of myself that I could make my own music, i felt accomplished that I did something that made me feel good, something that gave me a passion, a goal in life, something I could dream about.