A Year of Novembers

Chapter One

        I started out by thinking that I was insane.

            Or, at least, testing the boundaries of sanity. The thoughts I had plagued the town I grew up in- a tiny town that was enveloped in southern hills. They weren't generally fans of unconventional thinking. They tried to shut me up anyway they could, tried to stop me from listening and taking in every bit of information I could.

            People don’t expect children to question an accepted truth, nor do they like it. They believe that age affects your ability to think critically, and that children should idle away their days by placing their concerns in petty things. I was different to them. I thought differently and saw life through eyes that had belonged to no one before. It looked better through my eyes, believe me. I got peeks and glances into the world they believed in and decided I’d rather live life my way.

            My father was the talk of the town because of me. His neighbors criticized him for raising me to be a problematic child; they would cross the street with their children if they saw me walking towards them. I was ridiculed and hated for being strange. I spent my days in school gazing out of a window and silently begging to escape this meaningless town. My grades suffered as a result, causing my teachers to gossip about my “delinquency”.

            When I was eight, my father decided that I needed to change. He entered my bedroom while I was reading, tried to talk to me.

            “Sophia,” he had sighed as he sat at the foot of my bed. He looked down and ran his fingers through his graying hair- a nervous habit I’d quickly picked up on- and breathed in. “I wanted to talk about something.”

            I moved to sit closer to him. “Yes?” I ask. I watch him with curious eyes as he glances up at me and smiles reassuringly.

            “It’s about your…little problem,” he starts. “It’s scaring people.”

            “How?” I inquire softly. I already understand that my “little problem” is my tendency to be profound. Being annoyed by a key feature of my personality was understandable, but being frightened by it seemed a bit silly.

            “Sophia, we do things a certain way here. You know that,” he explains.  I nod silently. “Well, the way you think- it just ain't the way of things. People don’t want to be forced to question what they think. It’s a bad world out there, and you gotta have a lot of faith in something to make it through the day. People’ll believe in God or Buddha or their kids or even themselves, but we all have faith in something that helps us breathe a little easier.” He runs his fingers through his hair again and swallows. “They don’t like it when you make their mind question how well-placed that faith is. It scares them, Sophia.”

            My throat tightens so much it hurts. Unreleased tears in burn my eyes. “Are you one of them?” I breathe. It comes out as a pathetic kind of wheeze that I pray my father doesn't notice.

            “No.”

            There is a small dent in his cheek, like its being sucked inward. He’s biting his cheek.

            He’s lying.

            It hits me like a slap in the face that I scare my father. The only person I have ever had to sympathize with me is frightened by me. He is just like everyone else.

            I want to say so much, want to say so this is why you never loved me like I thought you were supposed to, but it’s me. I am the reason my father was always coolly distant. I am his embarrassment and his burden and I cannot blame him for that.