Live and Learn

San Diego is a huge city. Many sights to see. I live here, but I don't see any of them. Everything about it amazes people, but I don't think that any of it could interest me. Around two years ago my grandmother, who I happened to be very close with, died. She was one of the only people who really understood me.

After she died, I closed myself off from the world. I rarely talked to my friends and slowly we stopped talking to each other. I became closed off, my life took a turn. My so-called "friends" spread rumors about how I was depressed, and who know what else. Soon enough people called me names, verbally bullying me. I try my best to not pay attention to it; I don't like to cause myself any pain.

My mother had been depressed about her mother dying. They had never really been close until recently, she regrets not getting closer before. The result of them never really being close had an affect on my dad; he was disappointed in himself for not knowing his mother in law sooner.

Every day is a struggle for me. I never want to go back to school. All I can think about is all the pain that they have caused me. The only way that I actually am able to get through it is that I log on to the Internet and read. There is a website that I go to, www.writearstory.com. People write their own little worlds and they have a choice whether or not they want people to read whatever they write. A lot of people in my class go on there and write. That's the best thing about it. They could never know that it's me.

Every day after school I will log on and see if they wrote something different. I will write down a response, mostly criticism, honestly it's karma if you ask me. I guess that it just turned into a habit. I go and see other stories and give criticism. It's just something that happens.

Everyday for me is torcher, going through the halls of school with their worlds haunting me like a ghost. As I walk home I replay everything that they ever said, everything that they ever did. All I need is to get rid of my anger.

I logged into my computer and find a new story. I read through it and as I'm reading I can tell that this person loves to write stories. They were good but I knew that they would never be good enough. So I told them the truth, they would never be able to be a good writer.

Later that night as I went to bed I felt like I ate too much dinner. Oh, well. I'm just too tired to care. As I went to bed like always I think about all the things that people say to me. What's unusual about this is that I'm now thinking more about what I said to others. I think about the reactions. I never think about this, but I suppose that it could have something about the new story that I read. It was about bullying. It was almost like she knew what it was like.

I shot up looking around in cold sweat. I don't know why this is. I look outside the window and by that I can easily tell that it's in the middle of the night. Just as I'm about to look at the clock I hear a dinging noise. It has to be our old grandfather clock. I usually tend to stay asleep whenever it dings. I look at my own clock and note that it's midnight. Not the time to be awake.

Just as I'm about to go back asleep I hear a scream. A loud scream coming from outside. Not one that people would want to find out to what had happened to cause the said scream.

I look out my window again, only this time to see what had caused the scream. I sighed as I found nothing outside. As I turned around and found straight in front of me was my grandmother.

My dead grandmother. I rubbed my eyes and sure enough she was there.

"Leah," she said to me. "Why are you doing this to yourself?"

"Doing what?" I asked her. "Seeing you in my dreams? Honestly this has to be a dream, a good dream since you're here."

"Why are you not being who you are?"