Heaven

          It amazes me every time I go there. Most people might think I’m crazy, but it’s a release. Zeke and Miley’s house is my sanctuary. They’re the few friends I really have, especially since I started college. I hate college so much. I’m on the verge of dropping out. If I do that, I’ll probably quit my job and stay there forever. Zeke and Miley would take care of me. They always do—just like tonight.

            Mom and I got into a fight again. This time it was over my hair. She hates that I dyed it black. I told her it expresses my personality, but she thinks that’s crazy. I still wear my skirts like I always do, though. I barely shop at Hot Topic. I just wanted black hair.

            Her words pierce like a knife though when she says the words “You’re stupid,” once again. I walk out before she can see the tears. I drive away to my real home, where Miley greets me with her beautiful smile. She has the most beautiful chestnut colored hair I’ve ever seen, and her eyes are soft brown. Zeke’s hair color is the same. The two look so much alike—although both beautiful in their own way. My tears keep falling, so Miley passes me my escape. “Take it,” she says. It’s Friday, so they’ve got a good supply.

            Friday also means their friends are coming. All their friends from around—mostly college junkies—that Zeke and Miley know from places I don’t. I’m sticking around for this. You’re damn right I am.

            Hours pass, and I find myself in a world unlike the one I’m used to. And He’s there. He’s even more beautiful than my saviors. At first, he spots me. But once I see something I like, my face turns to a smile and I’m no longer sad. His touch is like soft velvet and the perfect spring day, where you can feel the wind breeze through your soul and you’re free. He’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever met. He’s perfect. I know immediately He’s the one I’ve always imagined—the one I’ve always hoped would save me from my life full of turmoil. He’s finally here, and I’m free.

            Miley hands me more and more before we exit company and consume ourselves in our own world. He understands my need to escape, and has his own. We kiss, we make love and we succeed in reaching perfection. In that moment, light turns to blackness and we rest.

            I wake up.

            I’m on the bedroom floor of Miley’s room with a headache. I only remember bliss from the night before, but now I also remember the pain of what happened before I came to my home.

            He’s not here anymore.

            It’s Saturday, though, so I figure He’ll be back tonight or next Friday.

            I can wait. I can wait forever for Him.

            I make my way to my clothes, which somehow got spread around between two bedrooms.

I go home, to a mother who immediately wants to know where I’ve been. “Home,” I say, “Somewhere where people are actually good to me.”

            “You mean your deadbeat friends?”

            “Don’t ever talk about them like that! They love me more than you do!”

            I slam the bathroom door in her face before I look in the mirror and prepare to shower. The smeared makeup on my face shows the love I’ve found written all over me. I feel blessed.

            Miley and Zeke flee from town for the night, so I stay at home on Saturday night, wondering to myself where my new savior could be. The rest of the week is just the same. School matters less, even. Miley and Zeke are having another night of sanctuary come the weekend, and my entire week is set on it.

            The weekend comes, slowly enough through my desire to find a reason to live anymore.

Mom tries to stop me when I leave, but I tell her she can kick me out for all I care.

I go to Miley and Zeke’s, this time less sad, but more afraid of having lost my new savior. Zeke passes it to me again, and I search. I find Him, again. This time He seems taller, stronger, and I feel even safer than before. Our own world waits immediately, and we escape once again.

            My life has changed. I don’t even care what others think of me anymore. The girls in the hallway are staring and making weird glances, and the guys are giving me strange grins. Suddenly they want me too. They must know about He and I, and that we have something more special than anything they could ever find. Months pass, and each Friday is the same. Every now and then we even have a Friday and a Saturday. Each time He’s a little more amazing.

            Christmas comes, and Mom sicks her judgmental family on me. The ones who ask why my hair is black, why I look so thin, and why my eyes seem to have dark circles around them. Supposedly I don’t act the same. Don’t these people see that I’m happy? Don’t these people see that I have found my place in the world?

I break away, this time more upset than ever. I’m always upset at Christmas, but this year I’ve got something so special, and my own blood wants to take it away.

            Miley takes me in her arms, and passes me my refuge. Where is my prince? I escape to Heaven, and there is my angel. He kisses me intensely, unable to take his loving hands off of me. We leave the publicity, into our own world. We’re not alone this time, though; He’s brought more of his angels. I only want Him, though, I tell Him. I only want to be with Him. He insists on sharing our world, though. I don’t want to, but I am drawn in anyway.

It’s a new kind of bliss. This time it even hurts. Tears come to my eyes because it hurts so much, but He’s there, so I don’t care. I see colored lights this time, before the blackness sets in. This time the blackness forces itself much harder without my control.

            I wake up.

            I’m not in Miley’s room, like I normally am, or in any part of their house. I open my eyes and see Mom. She’s crying. Heaven disappears. I’m in the hospital.

            Mom hugs me, and I say nothing. She seems excited and sad. She gets a short man in a white robe—a doctor.

            “Can you tell me your name, honey?” he asks.

            “August Channing,” I say in an obvious tone.

            “Can you tell me your birthday?”

            “December 10,” I say like a smart aleck.

            “Do you remember what happened last night?”

            “Sort of.” My head hurts now.

            “You know you could have died with the amount of toxins you consumed?”

            “I was having fun.”

            He looked down, as if he thought it was a terrible thing to say.

            “Where are Miley and Zeke? I want to see Miley and Zeke!”

            “August…there are some things…”

            “I don’t want to hear it! I want to see Miley and Zeke first!”

            He looks at me with bold eyes, looks at my mom, then back at me.”

            “Okay.”

            A few minutes later, Miley ends up alone with me in my room. She’s in a hospital gown too.

            “Where’s Zeke?” I ask.

            “Sleeping.”

            “What’s going on?” I ask in fear.

            “They just…they think…” She looks down at the floor. She seems confused.

            “Miley, please. I don’t understand.”

            “It started as a drug bust, and now they’re making a federal court case out of it, August. It’s so stupid. It’s not like we’re the only girls in this school that sleep around.”

            I shake my head. “It’s not like I’ve slept with that many people. Mostly just one.”

            Miley cracks a smile like I told her a joke—a bad joke. My heart sinks. She catches the look on my face, and her smile fades.

            “How high do you get at my house, August? Everybody knows when you party you’ll…well…you know…”

            “What?” My heart starts pounding.

            “Most of us are the same way. It’s part of using the drug anyway.

            “We both sleep with different guys almost every weekend, sweetie. It’s no big deal. And they’re making it a big deal. They’re testing us for all kinds of crap.”

            My stomach twists into knots and I become numb. “Why?”

            “It’s your parents, but me and Zeke are the only ones that know that.”

            “My parents?”

            “Yeah. They brought us here. They made some kind of deal to help us get out of trouble. Rehab probably, and a part of it was testing…for diseases. Don’t worry though.”

I couldn’t talk anymore. My mind settled itself in Hell the next few hours, realizing that my prince charming wasn’t what I thought. I couldn’t cry, because I wasn’t alone and I couldn’t go to my sanctuary. They took me from that place. They took me farther and farther when they talked of Rehab. They listed the drugs they found in my body, and told me how lucky I was with each of them. They told me I wasn’t pregnant, but I was HIV positive. They told me my life is over because I found happiness.

Zeke and Miley are sick too, but not as sick as me. Zeke tells me he might know where I got it from, but I can’t wrap my mind around it enough to care. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do anymore. What I thought was Heaven only lead me to Hell, and now that I’m here it looks like this is where I have to stay. And, for the first time in months, I feel alone, even though the one person I was trying to run from the whole time—my mom—is the one crying on my bedside, telling me to be strong and hold on. I can’t say a word to her. I just can’t say a word.

Letting Go

4-21-07

The phone disconnected. I heard the faint clicking sound that couldn’t do justice for the breaking of my own heart. My eyes burned with tears, and I watched my hand shake as I searched for the number in my cell phone to call him back. It’d been so long since I felt like this—so unbelievably afraid and shocked—that I was hysterical.

            It took three tries before he answered the phone, only asking “What?” in an extremely rude manner. I asked him why he did that, and he could only answer that he didn’t know.

            My entire world was crashing. Memories played through my head of the way things used to be. I remembered the first time he had asked me out. Back then we were kids, just discovering what love really was. We’d never tasted true love before, and we could only tell that it tasted a lot like the sweet things that you shouldn’t always have too much of, but just enough. I remember how awkward the first kiss was, but how the last time we’d kissed seemed much easier and more comforting. Things with him were always comforting. I couldn’t understand why he was trying to destroy everything we’d worked so hard to get. It burned my chest to compare the way he used to be to the way he is now.

            “I don’t love you anymore,” he lied.

            It wasn’t denial that I knew it wasn’t true. I just couldn’t give up on love completely, because he had taught me that.

            “I’ll always love you,” I said helplessly, through tears that were only reaching for his heart to care. He showed no compassion. He showed nothing, but the desire to be free of his tie to me.

            This conversation was the worst ten minutes of my life.

            Ten minutes could not destroy two years, though. Two years of fun, joy, pain, hard work, marriage proposals, one expensive ring, hundreds of dollars of gas money and first-time sexual experiences, that he almost made so hard not to regret.

            We both hung up a conversation of which I did not want to leave, and I cried. Quotes ran through my head of how a person was supposed to stop when the only one who could stop the tears is the one who caused them. I hated the idea of loving once and losing is better than never.

            Even still, I gave up. I gave up my dignity and my way of fixing things when he had told me what he’d done with a girl who isn’t me. I had already watched him try to get me to do something I didn’t want to, as if it was going to fix everything, but I refused. But it almost seemed like teaching him that sex wasn’t going to fix everything would be worth it, but someone else got to do it for me in a way that only hurt me.

            I couldn’t save him.

            He was broken, lost, and had no values. I clung too hard to my own values; a trait that only made me, now, like other times I’d been hurt, to build my walls and let no one into my heart.

            He taught me not to.

            Despite how bad he had made it end, true love is one thing many do not get to taste. He shuts me out now, but I’ve seen something he doesn’t share to others. I’ve seen his heart. That is something one does not reveal by anything physical, but it is revealed through the soul connecting to another. Despite its rarity, true love is one thing that is proven the strongest when it must be let go.

            I let him go, and then, after two years, I learned what true love really was.

Dream Come True

     1-17-07

College was new, you know? Lexy could tell you that much. She could tell you a whole lot more for a girl who hadn’t really even been on a date. She had fought her parents before she was finally able to take out student loans to pay for her dream: A University. She was living on a University campus at last. She’d dreamed about it, you know? She made it through high school by hiding behind everyone, it seemed, because every time she tried to speak it seemed like they were all judging her, and rejecting her even more. She swore to herself, though, that in college, it would all be different.

     So, it was. The first couple of weeks were tough to figure out exactly where she was going with this, but she got herself on the school paper and reached out. She made friends. She even got an invitation to a concert for some of the local bands. Then there was Hestion.

     Hestion was two years older than her, and the lead singer of a rock band that was not that bad. Hestion was a Music Education and Performance major, going to school for singing and guitar and to be a Music Director somewhere.

     “You got a name?” He asked, after being introduced to her by their friend Cadence.

     “Alexandra, but everyone calls me Lexy.”

     “Cute,” he said, which made Lexy feel a little childish and the size of a Barbie doll. Don’t let that fool you like it did her, though, because after to show Hestion made a point of it to ask Lexy to hang out with some of his friends. Thus became her weekend agenda.

     He was her dream. It went from few weeks of hangouts, to a kiss under the stars. He got her around when they went somewhere. He got her friends. She found the life she had wanted, but something still felt off.

     In the back seat of his camaro one weekend, the two of them were kissing and making out. Hestion showed his desires when his hand went up Lexy’s shirt.

     “Hey now…slow down.”

     “Sorry,” he said, “Just in the mood.”

     “Give it time.”

     An experience such as this can seem so miniscule, but it etched in Lexy’s brain like glue. She was more into this guy than she was even sure she wanted to be.

     The next weekend, the same situation was going on, except this time it was in Hestion’s dorm room. The two were making out on his bed. His roommate was out at a party, but the two of them had decided to stay in together and watch movies.

     “Hey…” Hestion whispered.

     “Yeah?” Lexy responded.

     “I know you’re not ready for you-know, yet. So…let’s take it slow. Let me show you something.

     “What do you mean?”

     Hestion’s hand slid down Lexy’s stomach. They both watched it. Hestion glanced up for a moment to see Lexy’s eyes before he moved down to her jeans and inside of them. Her body grew tense as she felt his hand slide down her underwear, and the gasped when she felt him slowly move inside of her.

     “You okay?”

     “Yeah.”

     “Stop me at any time.”

     She didn’t stop him. She let him stop himself once he was finished. She hadn’t told him that she was a virgin, but she was pretty sure he had figured it out, and he seemed fine with it. The couple’s alone times consisted of this mostly. Lexy felt closer to Hestion then she had to anyone. They even made fun out of it, which brought out a side of Lexy she hadn’t known was within her. They even got a little crazy sometimes when they were at the movies. It was a rush for the both of them. Lexy found some kind of safety in Hestion.

     It had been about eight months when Christmas break came along. The two both went home and called each other only a few times. Lexy came home to her parents, and had her younger sister tell her that she had missed her, which was something that Lexy had never heard out of her mouth before.

     “So, Alexandra, have you met anyone?” her grandmother asked at Christmas dinner. Lexy couldn’t stop herself from going on and on about the amazing musician she had been involved with. That was Lexy’s Christmas break: She talked about Hestion nonstop. She had gotten so into it, that by the time it was time to go back to school, she was more than ready. She had missed him so much and only desired to be in his arms again. She realized she loved him, and Lexy had never known love before.

     When she got back the University, she ran to the Hestion’s building before she even thought about going to her own. She ran from the elevator, asking some friends around if Hestion was back yet.

     “Yeah,” he friend Darian said, “he’s in his room.”

     “Thanks. I’ll see ya later.”

     Her heart was pounding. She had never known passion and happiness like this before. She had never lost the loneliness she had always felt before. It was too soon to tell, but she already wondered if she would be with him forever.

     She got to his room, and she barely knocked before she tried the door. She hadn’t noticed what was on the doorknob until she entered.

     The first thing she saw was long blonde hair; hair she had once wished she could possess. The visible amount of skin made it clear what was going on, and at first she didn’t think it was he, until he turned around and she saw his eyes: the empty eyes of a young man who was not in love. Before anything could be said, Alexandra turned around and ran.

Right and Wrong

1-16-07

It is so unlikely, isn’t it? It is so unlikely how two totally different people can end up in this state…this setting…this place in the world. Sure, she had her dreams at hand, and it scared her. He didn’t seem to be going where she has always been on her way to…but yet she holds him so close she feels as if she could disappear into his soul…and that would be all right with her. It’s all too clear that this world is much too harsh and too materialistic, and, overall, it conveys far too many false messages that can make far too many people give up on what will really make them happy. That is true love.

            She starts crying as she lies in his arms. He tries to look at her, but she won’t remove her head from his chest. “Baby, what’s wrong?” he asks, and she just cries harder.

            “I’m just so scared.”

            “Of what?”

            “Losing you.”

            She looks up and into his eyes, and he kisses her. She cries and kisses him back and they both start to cry. But, what are they crying for? They are crying for the loss that they fear is coming. The fear of this loss has been placed in their minds by a world that has too many stereotypes and too many separated categories. It’s just like Romeo and Juliet, isn’t it? It’s star-crossed. Star-Crossed love changes all the rules, just like a girl with trust issues and a vow of purity is changed forever by a boy who has nothing to offer her but his heart. A boy who gave her every single piece, and she feels it. She felt it when he first gave it, and she can still feel it clutched in her possession. It’s more sacred to her than he will ever know.

            They’ve both had it hard, in different ways. Both of their worlds are filled with a lifetime of rejection and pain. Much of this involves the test of faith and the near loss of being able to trust another completely. But they did. After her last boyfriend, the first boy she ever thought she loved did more than one thing to her that she never thought he would, this guy comes along. And after his last girlfriend hurt him in ways he never dreamed she would, this girl comes along. Somehow, the two wind up the rebels of stereotypes and society clinging to the other on a bed in the dark. And as his Christian heart softly whispers “Make love to me,” only you can be the judge of what will happen next. Neither one of them are trying to do anything wrong.

Her Own Reflection

12-18-06

            She often thought she should get counseling. It seemed like some people in this world just don’t deal well with their problems, and she was one of them. The honest truth is that she would never understand how a person can deal well with such problems…when everything comes crashing on you at once and you’re scared of everything every day, and you don’t feel like you’re good enough for anything. She just wanted to hit the reset button on her life because this life just hasn’t come out like she envisioned it, and she was certain that it’s all her fault. It’s easier to think it’s all her fault, and, as much guilt as that brings her, it lets her know that maybe she has had some control of what happens to her.

Counseling seems so severe, and not something she wants to advertise.  “Mom, I think I need to get some counseling,” will only be accompanied with a humiliating explanation that will only make her feel like an idiot. Why does she need counseling? Does she really need it? She thought all of this to herself as she stared in the mirror…stared at the face that she covers in makeup because then she doesn’t look so plain and empty…but she actually looks like she has color to, not only her face, but her personality as well. There’s no doubt that she doesn’t love the effect of makeup, but she definitely questions why she does at times. Maybe there’s too much on her brain about makeup covering up a girl’s beauty, which she has heard from denominations of her religion that have always seemed like they’ve judged her. Maybe it’s just her, when she listens to him ask her “Why do you wear that stuff? You’re beautiful without it,” which she can rarely see. She doesn’t feel like her without her black eyeliner, mascara, she needs eye shadow to draw attention to her eyes…and lipstick…or something to bring attention to her lips. She wants to stand out so badly, but she’s afraid people will think she is too strange to even know. It’s funny how a girl who’s always acted like she prides herself on being different really just wants to be able to fit in somewhere so she doesn’t feel like this freak of nature who won’t make it. So…she stares. She stares in the mirror about way too many things. She goes through her closet and tries to make every piece of clothing she owns look good on her…in her own mind. But, why?

She graduated high school, but in high school, which always seemed like a place that she wanted to figure out how to fit, lives on in everything….college, work, whenever she meets a new person…whenever she sees the same people walk by her, talking to their friends, and demonstrating what seems like something she doesn’t get a chance to have.

“You don’t talk much,” one of few of her friends said, “You seem…anti-social…and no one really knows you because you don’t talk. You really have to show people who you are if you want them to see it.” She’s not so sure she knows how, though. She pushed herself so far back that she doesn’t know how she got in such an emotional twister of her own personality.

The phone rings. It’s him, the one who she honestly does love, yet questions him out of her own insecurity. The sound of his voice just makes her want to scream, “I’m sorry I’m a horrible girlfriend….”one who is supposed to be his fiancé, but she has too many doubts and insecurities…too many wonderings of what’s going to happen. She knows she wants to be with him, she’s just scared that life won’t work that way. She’s got way too many dreams tucked away since she was a little girl…dreams that will never come true, but she’s still putting her heart in them. The truth is, he makes her life complicated when he delivers to her knowledge that he doesn’t have everything she once thought she always wanted…and also doesn’t have everything she still wants. She won’t believe him when he says he’ll move just for her…although he seems to want to stay around here, although it’s hard to know because he doesn’t want to talk about that with her. He doesn’t want to make her mad…to lose her…because he loves her. She knows he loves her. She sees it in his eyes, feels it in his touch, in his actions, in his kiss. Yet the two of them come from different worlds of a lot of things that make life even more complicated and terrifying for her. There’s a lifestyle she doesn’t want. She wants to be a person of God, although she strays away…but she still holds on. Sometimes she just isn’t so sure about who he is, although all she sees is herself when she looks into his eyes.

It’s not right to want to change the one you love. Does she want to change him, or does she just not want him to, in reality, be someone who will only scare her and hurt her? She questions her own reality and doubts it, more than she takes the time to enjoy it. So, why is he still with her? Doesn’t he see that she’s not who he deserves? Doesn’t she see that she has problems that he doesn’t need on top of his own? It bleeds out sometimes that she has issues…she pushes him away…she even hurts him. Yet, this is true love. They both light up when they spend time together, despite the fears and flaws.

The truth is that although he’s sometimes the strangest and most difficult thing that’s ever happened to her, along with being the scariest because of what she’ll do for him. She’s afraid their desires in life won’t mesh to create a shared happiness between the two of them. She’s got so many dreams that are so far away…and the things that happen to her when trying to achieve those dreams just make her more insecure, thinking she’ll never be happy. She almost believes that dreams don’t come true…at least not for her. He did, though. She’ll drown in her dream world trying to make herself feel better…watching old episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where Buffy Summers found true love in Angel, the vampire with a soul who only drowned in his own misery and guilt until a demon of good will showed him her, as she was called a s chosen one, and Angel loved her. He wanted her to be happy, and not to be hurt. The two fell in love, as the story goes, and television has a way of creating this love that seems so true and genuine. A lot of people say that that sort of thing doesn’t exist in real life, but she finally found out it does. He’s her first dream come true. That’s always something she can remember, because he loves her. She loves him more than she ever thought she could love someone. He takes her pain away and makes her feel like she could die without a fear as long as she’s in his arms, knowing where he is and what he’s doing; knowing that he’s okay.

She looks into her own eyes, into the mirror, as tears start to fall,  and she sees him. He’s still on the phone, and his strict parents inform him that he’s reached his limit of phone time, and he has to say Good-Bye. “I love you,” he says.

“I love you too.”