Paris Wills is a dreamer. His father always said he got it from his mom, an artist who was unlike any other. Her virtue was painting, and Paris' is poetry. No matter where he is, Paris finds inspiration for his poems.
In the summer after his sophom...
I leave the cemetery moments after she does, kicking the auburn leaves which gently rest on the sidewalk. The chilly wind blows at my nose, shining it up, turning my cheeks bright red. I don't want to go home, because I know I'll only feel more alone. My father will certainly be there. It's late and work ended hours ago. There was a time when I hoped he would inquire about my whereabouts. I wanted to know that he cared, but he could care less about me. It transcends me - he could care less about the entire world.
He refuses to listen. He won't go to therapy. I tell him it'll help him. He can be Dad again. He can make yummy dinners and tell shitty jokes. Yet he refuses. So after a while, I gave up. I gave up on a lot of things. I gave up on my father, I gave up on my friends, I gave up on school. What is the point of living? What is the point of anything? I could die in the next hour, and everything I've ever done would be worthless. Who would remember me? Who would shed a tear if I just walked right off a bridge or swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills? I know I shouldn't be thinking like this, and these thoughts never last long. Still, when they do come, they're all that occupy my mind. I don't even dare mention them to anyone. What if I'm committed? What if I spend the rest of my high school years in solitary confinement, deemed a dangerous menace to myself and to the world? At least out here, I can go outside and take a moment to breathe. I can write poems on bus stop benches and watch Mrs. Owens walk her dog every afternoon.
Despite hating life, I would rather experience something than spend the next decade staring at a blank white wall.
As I reach my house, I struggle to open the door. The moment Mom died, home wasn't home anymore. It was just a house. A lonely little cottage with plain beige walls and a sad small brown roof. The rooms were the same, but the love that once radiated out of them had fizzled away. It became nothing more than a place to sleep, a place to eat, a place to shower, a place to piss, a place to shit. The essence of home was gone. I didn't even bother putting up the Christmas decorations this year. My father was livid when I did two years ago, in fact, it was one of the only times he actually said a word to me.
"Take that shit down!"
That was all. And, as soon as he said it, I stuffed the lights, the stockings, the tree, and all the lovely little ornaments in brown cardboard boxes and stacked them in the closet. They were abandoned, tossed away forever. Just like me.
I've grown to hate this place. It's really quite dull, bland, disgusting. Plain beige walls, inside and out. No life, no love,nothing to make it seem like it is anything more than merely four claustrophobic walls. Shortly after Mom died, my father took down every single photo. All the ones on the wall, all the ones on the shelves, all the ones on the tables. There were ones of him and her, ones of the three of us, ones of me, ones of our family. To this day, I have no idea what he did with them. Did he trash them? Did he burn them? Did he line them up in rows and stomp his feet on each and every single one until there was nothing left but broken glass and crooked frames?
Sometimes I feel just as plain and empty as this house. I was such a happy, jovial person. My mom always said I had the optimism and radiance of a little toddler. I would write poems for hours while she painted and hummed little songs with her soothing voice. Her smile captivated, and I expected her to always be around to sing to me. But I was wrong.
Before Mom died, my father always told me that they named me after Paris, France, the city where my mom studied art. She loved making art as a child. Grandpa would tell us stories about her love for drawing and sketching in notebooks he would gift her. Growing up, it was only the two of them. Her mom had passed in childbirth, but Grandpa had managed to stay sane. He knew how important it was to stay at peace for his daughter. I don't know how he did it. In only three years I've practically given up my entire life. I've taken away everything in my life that brought me happiness. I stopped reading. I stopped putting effort into my schoolwork. I stopped talking to my friends. I just stopped caring, and when I stopped caring, so did everyone around me.
My friends stopped talking to me. Soon enough, they didn't want anything to do with me. For a while, I didn't want anything to do with them either. Or at least, that was what I thought I wanted. I guess I put up my own plain beige walls, making me less of a person, a mere imposter of who I once was. I didn't want them to see the sadness in my life, the part they never saw when I had been happy. I didn't want anybody to see that part of me. I wanted them to remember me as who I was, that charismatic, bubbly persona I displayed before my mom died. Now, I wish I had given them the chance to see me this way. I wish I had let them in, let them help me. But it's too late. I can't take down the walls I built up because that's all everyone ever expects from me. Even if I try to take them down, they won't believe it's the real me. They'll think I'm faking it, making myself look happier than I really am. And yeah, maybe I am. Maybe some of it's an act. But whose life isn't a little bit of an act? Whose life doesn't have some lies in it? Perhaps if I had a friend in my life, somebody who could love me, then I could drop the act. I could be happy again.
Yet who will love me? Who will want to deal with the mess I've become? Maybe it's better this way. Maybe I should keep up these plain beige walls, let them stay around to keep me from others. Despite being afraid of solitary confinement, I put myself in it. I withdrew myself from the world, let myself become void of anyone or anything important.
Clearly, I can't expect to always be happy, but every day I wake up and the world is a blob of gray. There are zero ounces of color in my life. I look around my room and see those plain beige walls. I look outside and see the looming gray clouds that cry, the same ones that have hung over my head since the day she died. I'm trapped in my own melancholy prison cell, and I've swallowed the key.
Just once, I want the clouds to break. I want to see the sky turn blue. I want to see the bright aqua waves of the atmosphere. I want to see the golden gift of sunrise. I want to see that light at the end of the tunnel. I refuse to live in darkness any longer. I am trapped in a hole deep below the Earth's surface, helplessly trying to claw my way out. Frightening, unforgiving darkness strangles me, throwing me around like a helpless rag doll. There is no way out - no way to escape this treacherous cycle.
Unless someone can pull me out.
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