Pink

First Day's Are Scary

I can't explain everything that has happened in my life to you. I can't really explain the pain that I've endured. I can't tell you how many nights I've sat in my room, crying, knowing I had no one to come save me. I've had a cruel and unforgiving life. But really who hasn't?

I don't want to sound like I'm complaining by any means. I just want someone to understand that life sucks. Life isn't fair. Unfortunately, it takes some more time than others to understand that. Like me.

I guess I should start at the beginning for you all to really understand what I'm trying to say, the point I'm trying to make.

It was a normal day in a small town in Kentucky. The sky was clear but there was a slight chill in the air, telling us that fall was coming soon. It was my first day of public school. My mother had homeschooled me up until 4th grade.

My mother had fallen ill during the summer. Doctors said it was a cancerous tumor resting on her brain. They said there wasn't much they could do. But that's for another time. I'll try to spare you the grueling details of my mother's parasitic tumor.

I woke that morning filled with excitement. I couldn't wait to make new friends and finally be a kid that others would know and love. Mom always told me that I was special. She said I was like no other. I had blond hair that fell to my shoulders and bright, shiny blue eyes. My eyes were my moms favorite part about me. She loved how much expression and passion they showed.

I was short and had a small tummy and my ears stuck out a bit but I didn't see a problem with it. I loved everything about me. Even the large, pink scar that covered nearly half my face.

My scar showed me good and bad memories. They showed me memories of my father and how brave he always had been. He was a firefighter. One of the best around I always thought. Some days, when he came home from work, I could smell the burned wood on his skin. I didn't understand the concept of that smell at that time. I only thought of it as home. Not as someone else losing their home.

The irony of my father being a firefighter is that he died in a house fire. Our house fire. The fire that gave me that scar. Mom was out on a business trip for the weekend so it was just Dad and I at the house.

He wanted to treat me so we stayed downstairs and watched movies in front of the fireplace that night. He ended up falling asleep before he put out the fire. I didn't know. I didn't know that if you put certain things in the fire it would pop. I didn't know that. I knew that the fire was pretty. I knew that I liked to watch it consume whatever it touched. But I didn't know.

So when I put a plastic bottle in it, imagine my surprise when the plastic popped in my face, burning the side of it to a char. And then imagine my surprise when I kicked the poker and caused a log to roll out of the fireplace.

I couldn't hear my screams of pain. I couldn't hear them over the roar of the fire as it caught the couch Dad was laying on on fire.

But when it caught his leg and quickly ran up, his screams were all I heard. They were all I felt. I couldn't hear the fire alarms blaring in my ears. I couldn't hear the first responders pull in my yard. When his screams stopped, everything did. I didn't hear anything.

I didn't know.

I didn't know.

I looked closer at my scar in the mirror and turned to look at my dad's picture on the wall. I smiled and walked to it.