What Fragile Lives We Humans Live

A Story by _TLC_

A series of short stories about little impressionable moments throughout a person's life.

Content

I am content to watch them laugh, smile, giggling, their feelings bubbling from their mouthes through sound. I am happy to see them happy. Everything I do, I do alone, even smiling.

I am an island, listening wistfully to the ocean play and roll around me. The sun's warmth warms me. Stormy days cast me into shadows. I am the silent bystander. I don't mind. In some ways, being an island makes you more connected to the rest of the world than anything else.

Addictive Cuts

I remember having a bad day and coming home from school and throwing my bag at the ledge between by bed and the window and throwing myself into the soft folds of white, fluffy down blankets that cover my mattress. I remember feeling like fingers were slowly peeling my very being apart, like I would implode into myself. I shoved my face into my pillow and wrapped my arms tightly around myself in an attempt to hold my identity together. My very soul felt crushed, my life not worth living, and I pondered release from my misery. What would it feel like to die? What would that form of peace feel like? I started seeing possible ways to end my life in everything I did.

How easy it would be to kill myself if I wanted to! I could use a knife at dinner or lunch, rope at my country house, height at school. All it took was one step down the stairs and I could tumble down into peace. One hit to the head with a bat, one plunge of a fork, one throw of a ball aimed poorly. So easy to end, such fragile lives we humans live. One sabotage of a bus and it would all end and fade into nothing. So easy, such an easy way to escape the pain of living. So easy.

So, sitting, lying, pondering there on my bed, I decided to die. I wanted it to be fast. Perhaps I would hang myself? Or maybe I would just hit myself over the head, snap my neck? In stories of death I now sought inspiration. One day I took a knife to the bathroom and slowly drew the blade across my cheek. Spots of blood formed. I gasped out loud. No, I could not slit my throat, but I could make visible the pain I felt. And the pain felt good. It felt refreshing, like the streams of read that poured from the cut were the guilt that I felt bottled up inside. My pain leaked slowly from the cut, so I made more cuts, bleeding out in my bathroom, watching the mirror, fascinated, the read streaming from cuts on my face and hands, pooling under my chin and in my palms. So much blood. So addicting. So I cut myself some more.

I Must

I must be outside, breathing in and out, the colorful, warm breeze filling and cleansing my lungs of the city smoke. I must leave the city. I must go back to the country, to my home, to my foundation of greens and blues and yellows. I must find my way back to the trickling streams that carry leaves down the mountains. I must dive into the snow in the winter time, chill myself to the bone, rise out feeling more alive than I ever do in the city. I must fall into the pool in New Hampshire, feel the cold water wash over my head, hesitant at first, but then grateful that I stepped in. I must be alone in the middle of the forest with only the company of thousands upon thousands of living beings, from the pulsing sap through the evergreens to the verdant moss under my feet. Everything around me lives, thrives, is, and nothing, nothing, is more perfect than this.

Staring

It's Tuesday. I'm at swim team practice in my bright blue suit with a lot of skin showing. As always, I'm self conscious until I get into the water. Worse yet, the new coach, Roger, I looking at me. Really looking at me, but then quickly looks away when I challenge his eyes with my own. Practice continues like that for the full hour. I can see him looking from the corner of my eyes. It's undeniable and incredibly obvious from the jerk of his head when he looks away.

What is wrong with him? I'm not a display. It's not my fault that I look the way I do. I came here to swim, not to entertain. He keeps looking, damn it! Why?! He head keeps looking, staring rudely at the side of my face, then jerking away again. Once me meet eyes, and he just stares like he thinks I want him to look at me. He acts like I want him to look, like he is fulfilling what I want. But I want privacy! Why can't he just see that?

Roger can't help himself. I've seen it before. I feel like a display that anyone is open to see, and the one who is paying for their admittance is me. Sometimes, when I want them to look, I like it. Other times, I wish they would look away. Now is one of those times.

I throw myself into swimming as hard as I can, trying to drown my frustration in sweat that dissolves into the water. Of course, like always, it never works. I swim Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. I dread Tuesday and Thursday; Roger is always there, staring. Always staring.