Avicii - Wake Me Up

Wake Me Up

The bird's chirping and thumping melody ever playing in my mind should soothe me to sleep, for it's what I've been waking up to for the past seventeen years, but it practically drags me into the world of reality just outside my closed eyelids, and when I open them, unfortunately wide awake, I sigh at my misfortune.

Another day. What I dread every night is the morning after. What I fear is my life and the droning thoughts that come with it. I take heed when stepping out my front door because I know I'm not wanted in this world anymore than I want to be accepted into this society. I suppose, it's that feeling of being lost and out of place that makes me sick.

I roll my head to the side, breathing in the stale air, wanting to catch my breath but not satisfied with this oxygen, and glance at my little sister in bed next to me. She sleeps almost peacefully, though I don't see how she can, but despite my jealousy, I don't wake her. She doesn't want to be here anymore than I do.

Studying the certain things I've made sure to memorize in case I lose everything I have helps stall my pressuring morning. Laneya Grace has her light brown hair splayed out across the pillow; it's highlighted with random strips of gold that glimmer in the sunlight seeping through the torn curtains. Her tanned face is turned towards me and I have the urge to caress her cheek, though I know it will disturb her. Instead, I fix the rumpled hem of her creamy white nightgown with the cheap table cloth material and hand-stitched ripples perpendicular to the vertical row of buttons.

I should be smiling. At least I have someone to share this wretched life with, but there's still a pit in my stomach, begging to be filled. An ominous void clearly yearning for something more, but that longing is yet to be identified. All I know is that I'm not truly me with that space in my soul so vulnerable.

That tune sounding in my head keeps playing low as I stand up from the rickety mattress, grabbing the rusting metal frame on the end for leverage. I walk the few steps of the uncomfortably small bedroom to the even smaller bathroom, which conveys the same deficiency as the rest of our third-rate trailer house.

I rinse my face in the sink, wordlessly attempting to drown my sorrows. With drips falling from the tip of my nose and the edges of my mouth but none from my dry eyes, I grip the sides of the sink with both hands and look up to find a practically unrecognizable girl staring back at me.

She wears a similar nightgown to the child sleeping in the other room, only this one has a different design on the upper half and smaller straps. She has a pale face, hazel eyes darkened by the day, full pink lips, a slender neck, thin brown hair tousled about her bare shoulders, and a dash of light freckles in the very center of what most would call perfection.

The girl on the other side of the mirror, the one narrating—me—is unsure of herself, in every way. It could be my clothes or my saddened expression or the interior walls of this dumpy house I can't bear to call home. But how would I know what I want or what I should be if this is all I've ever had?

I close my eyes and run my hands through my hair wearily until my elbows hang from my neck. From the cracks in my vision letting in the light, I watch Laneya come shuffling to a stop in the doorway. Without a single word exchanged between us, I smile and she returns it. The silence is deafening, even with music playing in my mind, but between the lines of the quiet, I listen to her eyes and her gestures.

She looks down at the inside of my right arm where, just before the crevice in my elbow, a tattooed mark I was born with lies undisturbed. It displays two slightly different isosceles triangles with their bases almost touching, like an off-center diamond with a millimeter of pale skin separating its halves. She's seen it a billion times: on me, on her, on our parents.