Madelyn151
10th April 2003, 03:29 PM
believe it or not, this didn't happen to me (or anybody else, for that matter). i just felt the need to write it. so, yeah, tell me what you think.
Untitled by Anonymous
by me
I was a freshman when it happened. I was in eighth grade. I was a sophomore, a junior, a senior. I had graduated already. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t matter when it happened. All that matters is that it did, a significant little blip on the long, flat line that’s my monotonous life. It’s a moment in time that’s frozen, a videotape stuck in an eternal loop. It hurts to watch, but I have to do it.
I walk into the party. It’s a dark little house, the kind that would be totally silent if not for the stereo, playing a choppy mix of songs. The song changes every thirty seconds, leaving me frustrated and unsatisfied whenever a good one comes on. People are just sitting around a table, cans of beer or cups in their hands. I’m shocked by how much I immediately feel awkwardness wash over me in a warm wave, but I’m more entranced by how big the beer cans are. Stupid little things occupy my time. I search desperately for somebody I can talk to.
“Yay! You’re here!” My friend, perched on the edge of a sofa, is smiling up at me. “My ride ***** is here!”
“Thanks,” I mutter. At least I’m appreciated in some way. I take a seat on what looks like a smaller table, with my feet practically dangling in the garbage can, the bottoms of my socks dragging on the beer cans. I take a look around the room. I can barely concentrate with the rapidly changing music, warping and transforming into bits and pieces of songs, a jumble I can’t make sense of. My head throbs angrily against my skull. Over in the corner, some people are drinking from huge, dark bottles, but they don’t hold my interest. A girl sits, alone, polishing the table everyone sits around, a tissue clasped in her hand. I don’t know whether she’s drunk or just bored. She’s polishing a table made from those reflective mirrors, so when you look in them, you just see yourself, again and again. It’s just you, you, you, you, you, and then from the corners, the world tries to claw its way in. It’s a terrifying view.
The song changes again. I throw a glare at the stereo player, because I need to blame someone for something. A girl I’ve never seen before sits on the sofa next to me, her long mouse-brown hair in a ponytail. She turns toward me and I realize it’s one of my friends. I’ve never seen her hair this long, though. “Hey!” I cry, overly enthusiastically, trying to look less awkward but only making myself seem more so.
“Hi,” she snaps, ice-cold, and turns back to staring forward. I know you can’t win them all, but can’t I win some of them? She gets up from the sofa. Seizing my opportunity, I leap onto where she had sat. That’s when I see it. No, not it. Him. It’s a boy I’ve known for years, but two days ago, I just looked at him and was bowled over by something. I was hopeless, powerless, drawn in by some undertow I hadn’t seen coming. It was a queasy, unsure love, hobbling on baby steps toward some unknown goal that it wasn’t even sure it could reach. And not only do I see the guy, I’m sitting right next to him. Pardon the cliché, but I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I am simply unable to function. Anybody watching me would think that my hands had suddenly become fascinating to me. I manage an awkward smile to my friend sitting on the other sofa.
He has a cup, bright pink plastic with something in it. I pray that it’s water. It isn’t. I figure that at least it’s pretty full, as he sets it down on the table. I stare at his hand, placing the cup down on that mirrored table. The girls over in the corner call him over as they take huge foamy sips from the bottles, slurred words beckoning like harpies. He stands up to go. I don’t know whether to be happy or sad that he left. I haven’t noticed the songs changing, but the stereo immediately snaps into a different song as a different person climbs over me to sit where he was sitting. I sit on the couch and stare into space, thinking of nothing. A thought pops into my head. Life is not indefinable, it’s just that the definition changes every second. Like that damn music, like the person next to me on the sofa, it just changes. It’s a rollercoaster, zooming by incredibly high hills and nauseating drops, but never, ever staying in one place. Life is static electricity.
I actually begin to notice what I’m watching, instead of just staring into space pondering the universe. I don’t feel worthy to do that. And out of the corner of my eye, I swear I see him pointing at me with the girls in the corner, surrounded by beer bottles, too lazy to even throw them out. And I swear, he’s laughing. Laughing at me. I try to imagine what he’s saying, but the terrifying thing is that I can’t. I have absolutely no idea. It makes me squirm inside, my stomach recoiling at my thoughts, and I hug my legs to myself, my feet on the sofa. The person sitting next to me glares at the sudden intrusion to their space, but I don’t care. Detachment only goes so far sometimes. Desperately, I lock eyes with my friend on the other sofa and whisper, “Come with me outside,” and leave. I feel her get up behind me.
Outside, I hug my arms around myself again. My arms are my shield against the horrors of the world. It’s just too bad they make me look more vulnerable to it. “Um,” I say, shakily, “He…he thinks I like him.” He would be right, too. “He was pointing at me.”
“Um,” my friend echoes, squirming. “Aren’t you kind of…overreacting?” She’s totally right, but I need something to occupy my mind besides that music, changing over and over and over. Things can’t just stay the same.
“I guess?” Coming outside was a bad idea. I’m only wearing my socks, and the leftovers from the rain are soaking up to my feet. “But I thought he was so nice…”
“He is,” she assures me. “That’s why, um, look, don’t worry about it. I know this is the hardest piece of advice to take in the world, but you can’t care what people say.” It’s more than hard to just take that piece of advice. I need people to like me. I need distraction from that static in the background.
“Yeah,” I say, not responding to anything in particular. I don’t feel so shaken anymore.
“I’m kind of cold,” my friend admits after a pause.
“Me too. Let’s go back in.” Change keeps coming, faster than anyone can see and too powerful for anyone to stop. We knock on the door. Through the window, I can see only him, sitting where I was in the sofa. I left, he came. I almost cried, he was happy. It’s all on a shaky foundation. We go back inside, and find seats somewhere. I stare at my feet, dangling in the garbage can again. Life has turned a complete three hundred and sixty degree angle on me. I feel like I was looking at a mirror when somebody shattered it, and now I’m seeing the same picture, only totally different. I just sit there, staring, trying to recognize songs changing too fast to know. I don’t want to see my foundations collapsing all around me.
“You gonna go now?” I hear him say to the people he lives near. I hear them agree, and I can feel him get up. He goes up to a boy with which he was talking. “Nice to see you. Just like old times,” he says. Such a nice guy. One of the girls in the corner from before is laying on the floor, beer bottles rolling past her feet, laughing at something. “Going to be okay?” he asks, without a hint of derision or superiority in his voice. Such a nice guy. He goes up to the girl who hosts the party and says, “Thanks for letting me come.” Such a nice guy! I can’t stand it anymore. I jump up from the sofa I was sitting on and stride over. I feel my friend follow. I’d like to think she’s going to support me, but she’s probably just worried about her ride leaving.
“Um,” I say to him. He goes to give me a hug before I can even say anything, and immediately, an angry bolt of guilt like lightning lances down from somewhere and strikes me. How can I say this? How can I not feel terrible? “I don’t, like, like you,” I say, painfully slow, painfully overly enunciated. It’s a lie, but I already feel horrible. Lying is just the icing on the cake. “I was, um, just being nice to you because I figured that you were a nice guy. But… umm… you’re… not?” For once, I concentrate on that music, snapping from song to song. I don’t want to think about how stupid I sound, how terrible I feel.
“Why, what happened?” His voice is too sincere to fake. Oh God, he’s actually concerned. Somebody actually cares. I would have killed to be in this position, but now I’ve screwed it up.
“You were pointing at me,” I shakily mutter. I’m close to laughter. I’m close to tears. I’m close to just running away from all this.
“I wouldn’t do that,” he replies. It’s such a simple answer, but it solves everything. “I swear.” His brown eyes are so painful right now.
“Well…” My mind flutters to the term I used before. “You… are such a nice guy.” And that’s all it takes, and he hugs me. I wrap my arms around him, letting myself melt in this moment, not because he’s him, but because he is somebody that cares. Imagine, somebody gives a damn about what I feel. I break away first, afraid of getting too used to it.
“Bye,” he says, kindly, pulling on a new pair of gray sneakers and leaving with those he’s walking with. My friend runs over, shrieking, as soon as he’s shut the door.
“That was the sweetest thing in the world! I think I’m in love.” And I can actually smile, because I know exactly what she’s talking about.
Later, my friend and I are standing outside again, waiting for a ride from my mom. It’s funny. You can totally destroy and rebuild your own foundations of life, but your mom still needs to come and pick you up. I feel like this is the edge of the world. There’s only the night, the breeze, and this white house, up a mountain of steps. In the distance, there’s the tracks of a train station. Even at this hour, that train will come and it will go. Life has totally changed tonight, and yet it’s completely stayed the same. I still stand here with the angry throb of love pounding against my head. I can still hear those songs changing, and they still annoy me. I am still intimidated by a thing as unimpressive and familiar as a beer bottle. And yet, I’ve found something new.
“What do you know,” I say, staring off into the distance, the perfect quiet of the night. “There’s hope for the world after all.”
Untitled by Anonymous
by me
I was a freshman when it happened. I was in eighth grade. I was a sophomore, a junior, a senior. I had graduated already. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t matter when it happened. All that matters is that it did, a significant little blip on the long, flat line that’s my monotonous life. It’s a moment in time that’s frozen, a videotape stuck in an eternal loop. It hurts to watch, but I have to do it.
I walk into the party. It’s a dark little house, the kind that would be totally silent if not for the stereo, playing a choppy mix of songs. The song changes every thirty seconds, leaving me frustrated and unsatisfied whenever a good one comes on. People are just sitting around a table, cans of beer or cups in their hands. I’m shocked by how much I immediately feel awkwardness wash over me in a warm wave, but I’m more entranced by how big the beer cans are. Stupid little things occupy my time. I search desperately for somebody I can talk to.
“Yay! You’re here!” My friend, perched on the edge of a sofa, is smiling up at me. “My ride ***** is here!”
“Thanks,” I mutter. At least I’m appreciated in some way. I take a seat on what looks like a smaller table, with my feet practically dangling in the garbage can, the bottoms of my socks dragging on the beer cans. I take a look around the room. I can barely concentrate with the rapidly changing music, warping and transforming into bits and pieces of songs, a jumble I can’t make sense of. My head throbs angrily against my skull. Over in the corner, some people are drinking from huge, dark bottles, but they don’t hold my interest. A girl sits, alone, polishing the table everyone sits around, a tissue clasped in her hand. I don’t know whether she’s drunk or just bored. She’s polishing a table made from those reflective mirrors, so when you look in them, you just see yourself, again and again. It’s just you, you, you, you, you, and then from the corners, the world tries to claw its way in. It’s a terrifying view.
The song changes again. I throw a glare at the stereo player, because I need to blame someone for something. A girl I’ve never seen before sits on the sofa next to me, her long mouse-brown hair in a ponytail. She turns toward me and I realize it’s one of my friends. I’ve never seen her hair this long, though. “Hey!” I cry, overly enthusiastically, trying to look less awkward but only making myself seem more so.
“Hi,” she snaps, ice-cold, and turns back to staring forward. I know you can’t win them all, but can’t I win some of them? She gets up from the sofa. Seizing my opportunity, I leap onto where she had sat. That’s when I see it. No, not it. Him. It’s a boy I’ve known for years, but two days ago, I just looked at him and was bowled over by something. I was hopeless, powerless, drawn in by some undertow I hadn’t seen coming. It was a queasy, unsure love, hobbling on baby steps toward some unknown goal that it wasn’t even sure it could reach. And not only do I see the guy, I’m sitting right next to him. Pardon the cliché, but I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I am simply unable to function. Anybody watching me would think that my hands had suddenly become fascinating to me. I manage an awkward smile to my friend sitting on the other sofa.
He has a cup, bright pink plastic with something in it. I pray that it’s water. It isn’t. I figure that at least it’s pretty full, as he sets it down on the table. I stare at his hand, placing the cup down on that mirrored table. The girls over in the corner call him over as they take huge foamy sips from the bottles, slurred words beckoning like harpies. He stands up to go. I don’t know whether to be happy or sad that he left. I haven’t noticed the songs changing, but the stereo immediately snaps into a different song as a different person climbs over me to sit where he was sitting. I sit on the couch and stare into space, thinking of nothing. A thought pops into my head. Life is not indefinable, it’s just that the definition changes every second. Like that damn music, like the person next to me on the sofa, it just changes. It’s a rollercoaster, zooming by incredibly high hills and nauseating drops, but never, ever staying in one place. Life is static electricity.
I actually begin to notice what I’m watching, instead of just staring into space pondering the universe. I don’t feel worthy to do that. And out of the corner of my eye, I swear I see him pointing at me with the girls in the corner, surrounded by beer bottles, too lazy to even throw them out. And I swear, he’s laughing. Laughing at me. I try to imagine what he’s saying, but the terrifying thing is that I can’t. I have absolutely no idea. It makes me squirm inside, my stomach recoiling at my thoughts, and I hug my legs to myself, my feet on the sofa. The person sitting next to me glares at the sudden intrusion to their space, but I don’t care. Detachment only goes so far sometimes. Desperately, I lock eyes with my friend on the other sofa and whisper, “Come with me outside,” and leave. I feel her get up behind me.
Outside, I hug my arms around myself again. My arms are my shield against the horrors of the world. It’s just too bad they make me look more vulnerable to it. “Um,” I say, shakily, “He…he thinks I like him.” He would be right, too. “He was pointing at me.”
“Um,” my friend echoes, squirming. “Aren’t you kind of…overreacting?” She’s totally right, but I need something to occupy my mind besides that music, changing over and over and over. Things can’t just stay the same.
“I guess?” Coming outside was a bad idea. I’m only wearing my socks, and the leftovers from the rain are soaking up to my feet. “But I thought he was so nice…”
“He is,” she assures me. “That’s why, um, look, don’t worry about it. I know this is the hardest piece of advice to take in the world, but you can’t care what people say.” It’s more than hard to just take that piece of advice. I need people to like me. I need distraction from that static in the background.
“Yeah,” I say, not responding to anything in particular. I don’t feel so shaken anymore.
“I’m kind of cold,” my friend admits after a pause.
“Me too. Let’s go back in.” Change keeps coming, faster than anyone can see and too powerful for anyone to stop. We knock on the door. Through the window, I can see only him, sitting where I was in the sofa. I left, he came. I almost cried, he was happy. It’s all on a shaky foundation. We go back inside, and find seats somewhere. I stare at my feet, dangling in the garbage can again. Life has turned a complete three hundred and sixty degree angle on me. I feel like I was looking at a mirror when somebody shattered it, and now I’m seeing the same picture, only totally different. I just sit there, staring, trying to recognize songs changing too fast to know. I don’t want to see my foundations collapsing all around me.
“You gonna go now?” I hear him say to the people he lives near. I hear them agree, and I can feel him get up. He goes up to a boy with which he was talking. “Nice to see you. Just like old times,” he says. Such a nice guy. One of the girls in the corner from before is laying on the floor, beer bottles rolling past her feet, laughing at something. “Going to be okay?” he asks, without a hint of derision or superiority in his voice. Such a nice guy. He goes up to the girl who hosts the party and says, “Thanks for letting me come.” Such a nice guy! I can’t stand it anymore. I jump up from the sofa I was sitting on and stride over. I feel my friend follow. I’d like to think she’s going to support me, but she’s probably just worried about her ride leaving.
“Um,” I say to him. He goes to give me a hug before I can even say anything, and immediately, an angry bolt of guilt like lightning lances down from somewhere and strikes me. How can I say this? How can I not feel terrible? “I don’t, like, like you,” I say, painfully slow, painfully overly enunciated. It’s a lie, but I already feel horrible. Lying is just the icing on the cake. “I was, um, just being nice to you because I figured that you were a nice guy. But… umm… you’re… not?” For once, I concentrate on that music, snapping from song to song. I don’t want to think about how stupid I sound, how terrible I feel.
“Why, what happened?” His voice is too sincere to fake. Oh God, he’s actually concerned. Somebody actually cares. I would have killed to be in this position, but now I’ve screwed it up.
“You were pointing at me,” I shakily mutter. I’m close to laughter. I’m close to tears. I’m close to just running away from all this.
“I wouldn’t do that,” he replies. It’s such a simple answer, but it solves everything. “I swear.” His brown eyes are so painful right now.
“Well…” My mind flutters to the term I used before. “You… are such a nice guy.” And that’s all it takes, and he hugs me. I wrap my arms around him, letting myself melt in this moment, not because he’s him, but because he is somebody that cares. Imagine, somebody gives a damn about what I feel. I break away first, afraid of getting too used to it.
“Bye,” he says, kindly, pulling on a new pair of gray sneakers and leaving with those he’s walking with. My friend runs over, shrieking, as soon as he’s shut the door.
“That was the sweetest thing in the world! I think I’m in love.” And I can actually smile, because I know exactly what she’s talking about.
Later, my friend and I are standing outside again, waiting for a ride from my mom. It’s funny. You can totally destroy and rebuild your own foundations of life, but your mom still needs to come and pick you up. I feel like this is the edge of the world. There’s only the night, the breeze, and this white house, up a mountain of steps. In the distance, there’s the tracks of a train station. Even at this hour, that train will come and it will go. Life has totally changed tonight, and yet it’s completely stayed the same. I still stand here with the angry throb of love pounding against my head. I can still hear those songs changing, and they still annoy me. I am still intimidated by a thing as unimpressive and familiar as a beer bottle. And yet, I’ve found something new.
“What do you know,” I say, staring off into the distance, the perfect quiet of the night. “There’s hope for the world after all.”