A Collection of Short Stories and Poems

Holding On

It is odd to look back and see the things that used to mean so much to us. The way we dressed, the friends we kept around simply because their look complemented ours, or even the way we talked. There are also things I think about such as the way we kept to ourselves. I hold onto feelings of things that no longer matter to me, but to think on them reminds me of times I've spent with people I can barely recognise the face of anymore. It's interesting how time moves us about and makes us question what once was so special to us by pushing those that were so close away.

I can recall with such clarity of a friend I lost in the fifth grade all because of something that seemed important at the time, that being my age. I confessed a few months after we'd been best friends that I lied about my age when we were paralyzed with fear in her house when we thought we heard an intruder. She confessed that she's never actually shaved with a razor like she always bragged about and, without thinking, I confessed I was actually nine rather than the age of ten I told her I was. I suppose she thought it was a joke because when I invited her to my tenth birthday she was furious that I lied about it and she hasn't talked to me to this day because of a hate that sprouts from something she probably doesn't even remember. Why have I held onto that? I don't really care that she's gone now. In hindsight, I can see the way she abused my kindness towards her in order to give a backing as to why she was a good person: if I considered you a close friend, then it usually meant you were a good human being. Kids can be stupid, I guess.

By why have I held onto that memory of her? Do I still hate her for breaking a friendship over the fact that we were actually the same age? What if I'd left her side just because she hadn't shaved as she'd always talk about? What if, then, I deemed her unworthy of my presence as she did with me? Would she be the one writing this about how we hold onto things that no longer matter? Of course, what does matter, then? If nothing matters to us in years to come just because of hindsight, then what's the point of being so caught up in everything now? Your future is still yours to shape, so why are we letting things that don't matter hold us back from things that do, like loving your father or not getting a dog because one bit you long ago? I suppose we all have our reasons, but in the grand scheme of things, what's the point of living if all we do is hate and then retreat back into our homes to think about those things we hate? Doesn't that just make everything unlivable at that point? No wonder the world is so dark: all we've done is grow up on the hate of those before us. Whose bones do I stand on?