The Dying Flower

I am Riley Hershey. I’m 14. A lot of people say I’m emo. They just don’t know me yet. I’ve always been a different person to people. I wear different faces for every person. Others may see me as snob. Others see me as kind. Others see me weird. And others would see me funny. Or so I thought. It doesn’t matter how people see me, it’s 'cause they can’t. I’ve always been the “invisible man”, “the class ghost”, “the voice who is never heard”. I’ve always hated it. The worst came when my parents sent me to a city in the Philippines.

I was paired in the dorm room with my only friends from where I came from. I would stay in the dorm room for hours alone, I was always there. But nobody ever saw me. We had to stay there for 2 months. The first was the worst. Nobody ever talked to me and whenever I wanted to talk I couldn’t be heard. It’s not that I have a small voice, it’s just that nobody CARED. By the second month, hands reached out to me and I made close friends. I would always go to their dorms and chat because they actually SAW me. They actually cared enough to HEAR my opinions, my thoughts. The sad thing was, the more I warmed to my new friends, the more distant I grew to my old friends.

One lonely night, when I was sad and angry at the same time, I came to my room. One of my friends started calling me a traitor, screaming it over and over again. I couldn’t take it. I punched him, straight through the face. I never punched anyone before, and as my fist dripped with his blood, tears came rolling down my eyes. I ran. Slammed the door behind me, covering my face from the people outside. I sat near the lake. All alone. I couldn’t take it, all the loneliness. And he had to call me a traitor because I met a few friends. Why couldn’t he understand? Why couldn’t they all understand? Why couldn’t they ever see me? Why did they leave me to drown in my own tears? Why did I have to be The Dying Flower?