Finding home
They are laughing. Just like normal teenagers should. There they are walking and singing a song out loud because they have no worries. No responsibilities. They are free. As I watch them from my bedroom window, I feel a deep longing within me so strong that I have to hold back tears. Sometimes I think it's not fair. How much they belong. How much carefree they are. I recall some of the girls that I'm watching from school but not all of them. Well you can't blame me. It's been a while since I went anywhere. What will happen if they look up and see me watching them? Should I wave? They probably won't remember me. I never did belong at school. I never belong. The people that talked to me only talked to me because they pitied me. I don't want anyone's pity.
I walk back to my mirror and take a good look at myself for the first time in a while. I hate mirrors now. They depress me. My eyes wander from the thinness of my thighs, the flatness of my stomach and all the way to the top of my head. My hollow cheeked head. My bald head. The head that gives it all away at a first glance. My cancer. The eyes looking back at me are different somehow. They seem sadder and more sunken in. They're not my eyes anymore. They're strangers.
I turn back from my mirror and look around my room. This is not what a teenager's room should look like. The black scribbles on my wall of my writing make the room seem dead. It's a crazy person's room. Am I crazy? The bed is all rumpled and my bedspread is lying on the floor. Clothes are scattered everywhere and my cupboard doors are flung open, one of them hanging from their hinges at being flung open so hard. I don't care though, that is the least of my worries.
My dad calls my name from down below. Well more like murmurs it. He has given up. They all have. Well so have I. It's too late and I'm just going to have to embrace them, It. Death. I wonder how one prepares for death. I bet they die with their loved ones. Lucky them. I'm going to die alone, I never fitted anywhere. Not at school or at home, my parents just think I'm a responsibility. A stupid 'issue'. That's me Lena the issue. My hearing has become more acute. I can hear everything. Bird's wings flapping, cars engines stalling down the road, and the dripping of the tap. Drip. Drip. Drip. All this without even trying.
A lawnmower struggles to turn on outside. It coughs then stutters, and then coughs again. It's an endless cycle. It's never going to turn on just give up. Like me. I walk to my window and look outside again. There is Adam my neighbour. And there is the evil lawnmower. Adam is kind of cute but he knows about me, so he pities me. I don't know this for a fact because I have never spoken to him since dad decided to get empathy from someone. For all his 'hard work' at making things work out for this family. Pfft, what a load of rubbish.
I'm too busy being a cynic that I don't notice at first that theirs absolute silence from next door. But I'm jolted from my thoughts by rocks being thrown at my window. I look down and frown. Adams standing next to the fence and look what's in his hands. Rocks. He's looking at me and calling me down. Should I go? I don't want to face the pity in his eyes. Or the sympathy pats on the back. But I'm so tempted that I give in. I run downstairs, past my annoying father who yells after me about where do I think I'm going? "Hell!" I yell back. Take that load of rubbish dad. Nobody mess with the crazy girl.
I run past the fence and into Adam's front yard. He looks bigger up close. Much bigger. I think he's eighteen which would only make him two years older than me. Some part of me-a part that still lives- is yelling Hallelujah and is breaking into a victory dance. Not yet my wild friends, he still has sympathy and we shall never forget that. He turns around and my gaze instantly finds his. The piercing blue to the dull forest green. I was making my way towards him but I stop. It's not his eyes or looks that stops me. It's what his eyes are projecting. No sympathy, pity or sadness. Just laughter and mischief. That's it. A feeling rushes from my head to the tip of my toes and touches my heart. A place so deep that I thought it never existed. All this from a first glance. But I knew what it was and I liked it. It feels new and comfortable. Who would have thought that it would be with this boy? That after my sixteen years of wandering this earth lost and afraid, not being able to share my thoughts and problems. Who knew I would find comfort here? That I would find my way home. At last.
