Inhaling deeply all of the baggage I felt rested against the door. Cherry red hair that was tucked neatly in a bun was now flowing over my shoulders to the lower part of my ribs. The vibrant feel in my eyes had gone out and was just a pale remnant of what it had been just this morning. One leg was locked and the other bent, too tired, deciding if it wanted to sit or stand.
It felt good to finally be alone and not try to hold in the thunderstorm building up in my eyes. I felt safe to break down against the cool white door supporting me. Just let raw emotions wash over me but when I tried to let it all go nothing came out. I had been holding them in for way too long, not a safe place to just sit down and cry without anyone coming up asking, “What’s wrong?” Sometimes you just want to be and not try to keep some sort of composure. My eyes closed, I wanted to sleep the rest of the day and night away, so I could start anew.

My gorilla of a backpack lay against my leg just making it up to mid calf. I could feel the warmth of my computer still humming inside. I was having one of those feelings of pure defeat after I had tried so hard. Nothing was going right today.
My legs were getting weaker and weaker with every breath I took. Mental exhaustion over took me and I was about to collapse, just lie on the floor and do nothing. I was a sort of in a stupor, as my English teacher might say, but what was the real definition of traumatic? There are tons of people dealing with hunger, cancer, poverty or even worse situations. “Your problem is just a mole hill,” I told myself, “people have probably gone through the same thing as you and survived. Your problem is not going to end the world. Things just happen.”

One last slow breath in and I pulled my spine away from the security of the door. Every single vertebra reluctantly stacking itself on top of each other so I could drag my black bag over to the side of my bed. I pushed the hair that hung lifeless over my head and started to work on my homework. I was a little fuzzy going through a haze all day, just thinking and over thinking as I have a tendency to do. Some small recollection of how my day went was still in the far corners of my mind. The same kids whined another kid cracked a joke with a teacher, inevitably making us behind the daily plan so we would have to make it up for homework. I ate lunch not really paying attention to what I was eating just stuffing food into my mouth. Then I ended up catching a ride home with my friend’s parents because my mom was busy driving my brother to football practice.

The computer was warm against my legs reminding me of how good a blanket wrapped around you feels; a type of shield against the world. I opened up my laptop to see the ridiculously fat fish that should be in a cartoon across my screen and failed to even let a chuckle come out. The slide show I was trying to comprehend popped onto the screen. I looked at it for a solid couple of minutes but nothing was sinking into my mind. It was like I was mindlessly watching television. In each second of empty staring I could just see words, words that had letters that could form other words like the ones that had been said to me over the phone.
The conversation rang in my ears while invisible creatures from another world started to gnaw against my heart again and again. They left me aching to be whole once more without any notion of what had happened this morning. These same creatures then started to carve out my stomach eating away at me and destroying my gut until there was a deep crater of emptiness inside me.

This is IMPOSSIBLE! I’ve kept it in almost all day, I thought I could keep it to myself but I can’t. I need to do… uh well something! This new spark of energy leaped out and I started to pace inside my little room. This fire deep within me burning to get this off my chest was raging and crackling ready to incinerate anything in its path. Looking back and forth I reached for my cell phone. “Talking to someone is one of the best things you can do,” echoed a gentle voice in my mind. My dark blue fingernail polished hand started to dial the number in. As I dialed each digit I became more and more appalled by this idea. What I was feeling couldn’t be explained in words, it was absurd to even think it could be. All of the energy I felt moments ago suddenly faded; leaving me feeling lonely and defeated. Again.
Sighing I sat down on the floor and my hair covered my face. “Why did this have to happen? I can barely function in my normal mind set. Why did you have to take the person who had kept all of my secrets!” I cried out in my head, the Niagara Falls feeling coming back to my eyes. Trying to calm myself I pushed my hair out of my eyes and realized the answer to my problems.

A guitar that looked older than time was right in front of me. It had obviously been through a lot. Any person could see that, it had played for copious occasions. The light brown wood allowed the dark chocolate rings to circle and melt together like on a tree stump. It felt like mine, it was mine, and it knew my soul inside and out. I groped out at like a blind man and started to play the strings. A chord to D chord then to E, the soothing harmonic sounds called out to me and made everything serene like I wasn’t even there and was watching from some distant place. Then the voice of a five-year-old child from my past sang:
“You were my best friend every since first grade,
How could I ever go on?
You were my better half we had a connection,
That no one could ever break.
Why did you have to leave me?
When that car crashed into you?
It wasn’t your time
It wasn’t your time.”
Holding out the last verse my voice started to hiccup and the sharp intake of breath made a small tear run down my red hot cheek. She was finally gone.