Lost One's Weeping

A girl realizes that while her life seems pretty good, that really, it's nothing. Just kind of a sad story I wrote that made me cry.

She sat back in her chair, resting her head on the empty desk behind her. The teacher droned on at the front of the room. He drew a line on the chalkboard, completing his triangle. He was teaching the formula for finding the area of a triangle, but his words went through one of her ears and out the other, just like all of his lectures did.

The girl put her head down on her own desk, letting her hair spread out in front of her. She wished for the summer, where she was free to spend her time how she liked. She wished summer would come sooner.

A woman opened the door to the classroom, drawing the class’s attention. She said she was a counselor working at the school and she had an assignment for everyone. The teacher nodded at her to continue.

The papers passed back until they reached her. She flipped it around, like she did with all papers, to check if it was double sided. This one was not. She turned it back over to the front, ignoring the woman that was explaining. The paper said “Personality and Your Dreams, Making it a Reality”.

The girl was dubious to say the least. How could her dreams become reality when she learned so young that if she didn’t work her hardest, they were impossible, and she was not an overachiever. But she read through the paper, filling in the best she could as it asked her what it was like to be her, asked her about her.

And that’s when it pierced her like a knife.

The doubt, the distrust.

The weak feelings of love fell away.

She liked science and math, because there was always one correct answer. She struggled to do her best in those subjects, to get them right. She hated English, since there was multiple answers. But it seemed to her they all turned out wrong.

So today’s homework, consisting of what it’s like to be her, about her. She wrapped her brain for the right answers. The girl quickly realized that she had no dreams. No personality.

But wasn’t that fine? She was still living after all.

But there was something that was missing. She thought to herself, why do we sometimes. No. Always say we feel like crying? Say we feel so loney?

She picked her head up, finding the writing on the board was blurred. She looked at the kid next to her, realizing she didn’t know his thoughts when he was alone. Were they like hers? Self-degrading, self-hating?

Who dyed her red heart to black?

The girl wanted to scream. She wanted to scream her questions at that counselor, “Can you tell me who? Come on, just tell me who!”

She realized that while she could solve all the equations the teacher would leave, that the kids around her, the ones that would take their lives, she couldn’t loosen those nooses.

But nothing changed, they all stayed the same. Was it really okay this way? What could she do though? What was the point? She felt it was no use.

The hand on the clock spun. The children around her, like cattle, filled in the paper. Blindly, taken in. Everyone one of them, she thought, was so helpless, so hopeless, could only hide behind a pride. But it was a broken dream now.

She looked back at the paper, still struggling to fill in those answers. Because she was shell of a child that had spirit, that had a dream. She was a fabrication of a sane person, a lie of someone that was happy. She was broken, and she felt it. She had nothing to keep her moving. But wasn’t it fine, isn’t she still alive?

But why did that demon, that lies deep within her, say she just wants to hide now? Say she just wants to die now?

She couldn’t read the blackboard, and the letters on her paper were smeared. She didn’t want to think of the thoughts of her own, the ones when she was alone. Who dyed her little red heart black? She wanted to throw a tantrum, to fight the ever growing doom in her mind. She wanted to say, “Can you tell me who? Just tell me who!”

The girl always knew that grades were important, that adults tried their best to get children to be perfect. But wasn’t a ‘C’ okay? Didn’t a ‘C’ mean average? Wasn’t it the goal to strive for that, but if you could do better, than that was great? When did the standard become an ‘A’? Couldn’t people tell, that the children were dying under such expectations?

She wanted to cry that the dreams she swore would never go out were stolen and thrown down the drain. But who did that? Who? Was it her?

But what adult thought about dreams? The kind that gets told to grow up.

But, to a child, what the hell is growing up to someone so young?

She wanted answers. She wanted somebody to tell her, tell her, where she should go. What she should do. She was lost, and felt it all was no use.