She.

 She went to school lived with both her parents and her older brother, she had a best friend, a big imagination, toys, everything a child could want. She could imagine herself flying on a magic mat, while fighting a dragon. She was happy. Until the moment she was called to the office in 9^th grade to find her older brother already there telling her to fetch her stuff they had to get to the hospital, their mom had been in a car accident. Her mother died that night while holding the hand of her young and naïve 15 year old daughter and with all her loved ones surrounding her. After the death her Aunt stayed with them for 3 weeks while she tried to get a hold of herself, she told herself the she was now the woman of the family; she had the responsibility of cooking and cleaning right? But time went on and she never got to that laundry instead found one day that her brother had left, yesterday had been his 18^th birthday. Why had she not known? With her brother gone and her father a quiet, lost, mute, she felt lost. Where was the scent of her mother’s lilac perfume and the touch of her loving arms? Memories of her brother’s previous birthdays came flooding back. And all she could think of was that she could maybe find solace in drugs and not have to feel so alone anymore. Who was she to love? Who was there to love her? Nobody she thought, it’s just her in the emptiness, in this dark and scary world that she had discovered. And so she started, her savings from the age of 7 were quickly blown away as it was hard for a girl like her to find a cheap dealer. But instead of bringing comfort, the drugs made her feel invisible; she watched her grades, weight & popularity level drop. She was coughing and wheezing, quite possibly dyeing. But wasn’t that what she wanted? To be with her mother again? The drugs trapped her in memories, distorted memories, her mother, of her brother and happy father, of moments of laughter. But instead out came spiders from her friends mouth, the walls turned to purple holes, she felt crazy, she knew she was turning mad, but all she really needed was a hug. From her mother, from anyone really. She felt that she was all alone in a crowded room, she was to afraid to even look in the mirror and see the resemblance between herself and her mother. She wrote poems, to try and make things stop swirling and sort them into letters, words, verses. She had after all always gotten 90’s in English class. The poems helped her sort out her feelings, and keep calm. But that small comfort temporarily ended after her father found one of her poems and started asking questions. This was not the girl he knew who wrote happy poems about daisy’s and brought them home for father’s day.  He sent her to talk to a shrink with gray walls in his office and a lumpy blue couch. The shrink eventually found out about the drug abuse and sent her to a rehab center, he told her time was ticking and she had to pull together and do something with her life. During those hours sitting in that office she tried to focus, really tried, but she just felt to empty without a joint between her fingers. She felt even lonelier.  She found herself feeling alone she began think about things, real things, about the fact that there was nobody left in this world that cared. Who would miss her if she left? Who or what did she have? Nothing. Nobody.   

I have lost my balance
I have lost my balance

There is space…
Beneath me
above me
beside me

There is space,
Time is falling,
Fear grips me

I used to dream of flying wings lifting me,
suspending me in time and space.
Now I am searching for something to hold on to
what can I hold on to?

The lady there at the rehab center, Anne, thought she really had potential with her poems, she even got a few published in the local newspaper. She left the center after 6 months with big dreams, a renewed life. She knew that they were people there who loved her, not drugs, not the cuts, but people, friends, and family.  Her brother occasionally started coming to check up on her, to make sure she was doing well and focusing on school. Life was beginning to fall into place. Some people still judged her, called her the “druggy” or “Addict” even teachers at school looked down upon her. But her grades were top of the class again. She was on her way to becoming a physiatrist, to help girls like herself so they would not have to go through the tough time she did after her mother died.  She was in her second year of

University when again, grief struck her family… That sunny day going with her father to a yearly check up at the family doctor… He had to get a blood test, just to make sure he was okay the doc had said… Then the report came, he had been diagnosed with cancer. It was curable. But she just couldn’t take it. She realized she was too weak, she couldn’t bear it. What would she do if he died? Loose someone else, fall back into the sate she was once been in. That mother’s day after having visited her mothers grave and laying freh flowers on it, and after writing one last poem to explain…she kicked the chair. It killed him.  Having to see his little baby’s stone cold face dangling by a rope. He blamed it on himself, said he should have been a better parent, taken care of her after her mother died. He realized he should have thought about her before himself. And so to punish himself he decided not to take chemotherapy, but join his wife and daughter on the other side.

There are lonely nights when you see no hopeAnd you're feeling short of breathe
Like a whole damn world is a braded ropeIn a noose surround your neck