Bloom: Liam (side story)

Liam

A Whisker of Hope

I sat alone in my room, staring at the cracks in the ceiling. I kept hoping maybe they'd offer me some kind of answer, something to explain why life felt so heavy all the time. But there was nothing. Just the silence and the weight in my chest. It was like the universe had decided a long time ago that peace wasn't something I was allowed to have. My mind-it always plays tricks on me, whispers things in the dark corners, lies I can't seem to shake.

"I don't think I can do this anymore," I muttered to myself, but the words barely made a sound. It felt like they were swallowed by the emptiness around me.

I thought about Father George. He was the only one who had ever truly seen me. He was more than a teacher to me, he was the one thing that's stopping me from losing hope in life when everything felt like it was crumbling. He had this way of saying things that made the world feel just a little lighter, even when it was crushing me.

"Sometimes your mind plays tricks on you," he used to say. "It tells you you're no good, but I can tell you this-you are loved, and you are important. You bring to this world things no one else can. So Hold on to it." But he's gone now and took along any hope I had of feeling seen or understood, now the halls at school are just a blur of faces. No one looks my way. No one even knows my name. It's like I'm invisible.

He once asked me, "What do you want to be when you grow up?", Back then I was just a kid so I answered "Kind" but now, as I sit here, it comes to me quietly. "Kind" What a nice word, it seems like a distant fantasy for me to achieve.

After Father George passed away my life went back to the days how it was before him I became alone and a Play thing for the bullies. "The teachers and everyone keeps telling me to change," my thoughts turned bitter. "Why should I? I don't even know who I am yet. They tell me I'm bad before I even get the chance to be anything. How is that fair?"

As days passed by the loneliness grew and it's suffocating. I've always been an introverted person, but now, it has turned into something darker. It's like the voices in my head, are telling me no one really likes me. They're all just tolerating me, hoping I'll eventually leave them alone. Every time someone ignores me, even once, I'm convinced they're annoyed with me. That's why I go silent. I stop talking unless someone speaks to me first. It has become a habit-this wrapping myself in a cocoon of isolation. Silence is my shield. It's the only way I know how to survive. My tears only fall when I'm alone, where no one can see. I've convinced myself that crying isn't strength, it's weakness. But God, I want to cry. I want to scream. I want to feel like something more than a ghost drifting through life.

I remember asking Father George once, "What's the bravest thing you've ever said?" And he responded "Help" and he told me, "Asking for help isn't giving up it's refusing to give up." But how can I ask someone for help? When I don't even know how to talk to parents, I'm just a coward and a disappointment like everyone says. But I can hear and remember the times when I lost hope in life and Father George would often tell me "You are loved and you are important and you bring to this world things that no one else can So never say again that no one loves you." But I don't believe it anymore. Not really. How can I, when every day feels like I'm disappointing everyone around me. There are times when I'm convinced that I am unfit living in this world.

But One night, when darkness felt like it would swallow me whole, I thought about ending it. It wasn't the bullying at school, though it kept going on. It was the constant feeling that nothing I ever did would be good enough for anyone not my teachers, not my parents, not even me.
As I stood on the bridge railing the wind blew against me, staring down at the dark water below. It felt like the only way out. My heart was racing, and I thought this would be the last time I'd ever feel fear. But when I looked down, I froze. The height of the drop - it terrified me.

"Am I really this much of a coward? I couldn't even do one thing right".

Just then, out of nowhere, a voice broke through the mist in my mind. "Hey!! don't do it!" Footsteps approached, hurried and panicked, I froze, terrified, as the stranger got closer. "Please," the voice came again, softer this time, "don't jump."

I felt the railing tremble beneath my shaking hands as I stepped back, my legs were shaking as I sat down on the bridge's cold concrete beneath me. The man reached me, breathless, and immediately started scolding me. His words were blurred in my head and all I could see was his lips moving, "Are you okay?" he asked and I nodded-

Give me your parents' number," he said firmly

I wanted to resist, but I was too weak. I handed him my phone. He called my parents with his voice in a serious tone and urgency. I couldn't hear what he was saying, I couldn't bring myself to care either. All I knew was that when I got home, something worse was waiting for me.

When I got home that night and as i opened the door i saw My father's eyes blazing with anger, before I could even speak, his hand gripped my arm, hard. He pulled me forward violently.

What the hell is wrong with you?" he barked. "Do you have any idea what you've put us through? And what the people are going to say about us when they hear about you, You're a disgrace to this family!"

I stood there silently, his words stabbing deep into me. Then my mother spoke her voice cold and distant as if the person she was talking about was a stranger

"I regret giving birth to you," she said, her lips thin and tight. "Why can't you be more like your brother?"

I laughed at myself "how stupid of me to think that they'd care about me" - "you should have jumped and died there why did you come back? Huh!" Said my father and that was my breaking point I have had enough and I let all my emotions out in my head.

"You want to know why I really thought about killing myself? Huh! It's because I've spent my entire life feeling like a disappointment. You think school is fun? No, It's a warzone for me walking through the school hall every day being torn apart, little by little, and you don't even see it. That's why I thought about ending it because nothing I do is good enough for you and all the people around."

But the words stay trapped inside me, just like they always do. Instead of screaming, instead of telling someone how much it hurts, I go quiet. I retreat It's the only way I know how to survive. Handling things alone is the only thing that's ever worked for me. Or at least, it used to.

The next day I sat in the same place, by the window. The same silence, the same weight in my chest. But then something shifts, and for the first time in what feels like forever, I let myself hear Father's George voice again. "You are loved. You are important." The words hit me hard, and I can feel the tears welling up again. But this time, they're different. This time, they don't feel like despair. They feel like something else. Something small, fragile.

Hope...

Maybe asking for help isn't giving up after all.