green, personal essay Options

[audory]

The blinding green surrounded me, wrapping me so tightly in a familiar comfort that I almost found it suffocating. But relief washed up on me in the form of the gleaming yellow beams of sunshine that penetrated their way through the empty spaces where the leaves failed to overlap. I could feel the breeze, that soft wind of whispers, gently rocking my hammock. And for a brief moment, I let myself get lost in my sanctuary. Here, I thought with my eyes closed for a sweet second, this very moment- this is paradise; this is peace.

And for that brief, sweet moment, my thoughts became reality. The world put its journey on pause and breathed for me and me alone.

The second stretched on for an eternity as I allowed myself a quick moment of weakness to open up to everything I had previously attempted to block out- the memories, imperfect fragments of a long-lost perfection. I hated being influenced but "The He's," as I liked to call them, from my tumultuous summer had indeed changed me- The He's and the kisses and the goodbyes; the skin and the hands and the legs, legs, hands, and skin. I kept the first few He's vulnerably close to my heart but after that, they came and went, like the summer breeze that rocked and then paused, paused and then rocked.

I could not remember their faces. I could hardly remember their names. All that remained was the confusing emptiness and the echoes- echoes of a past that could have been the present, echoes of a passion I once had. But some echoes resonated louder than the rest. I experienced strong, burning flashes of emotions and moments- interlocked fingers, dancing to a quiet, resonating humming, elevators, the scratch of stubble and grass, tearful, heart-wrenching goodbyes.

I had never experienced such farewells before. I can no longer walk into an airport without feeling my stomach turn over and a throbbing ache. There was nothing sweet about the first goodbye; only salt, the saltiness of tears so intense that it obscured my eyesight. I walked down the terminal and I never looked back. Bravery? Bravery had nothing to do with it. I was a coward. Had I a shot a glance over my shoulder, I would have been unable to continue. And at that moment, I promised myself that I would never, never be hurt so badly again. I would never allow myself to be so vulnerable, so easily affected.

The second goodbye, there were no tears. As for the third, fourth, tenth time- I never even uttered the word goodbye. I wanted to believe that I was prone to them. But in reality, goodbyes frightened me.

The goodbyes did not prove to be damaging. Rather, it was The He's themselves. Two weeks, two days, two hours, however long they stayed in my life, they impacted me in ways I never expected.

There was the fleeting, yet strangely satisfying lust (it could not possibly have been love) that I felt each time. The way I felt small and protected and safe or the way I smiled, or at least, the way my heart did.

What did I care if, in the end, I was just used up and discarded, like a piece of trash, carried away with the ever-changing winds? The He's: they made me feel content with myself, even if only for a quick bittersweet moment. It might have been lust, it might have been reckless, it might have even been terribly damaging- but it, whatever it was, was real, I tried to tell myself, it was real.

Reality was hard to grasp, especially when it was diminished to the confines of my memory. People, real, live, breathing people, were hard to imagine when I refused to give into the past and call. The He's became mere letters in my address book and reality became surreal.

The memories themselves however, were immortal. I never forgot them but like immortality, they were unattainable, something I could only dream of and never fully grasp.

And I so desperately wanted to grasp onto the fleeting goodbyes of my memories, I so desperately needed to hold on for dear, dear sanity. And even though my experiences were second-rate highs, one night paradises, I was addicted. To me, the past became perfect and in my search to reinvent it, I let my current life slip through my fingers. I searched not for substance, but rather, for fleeting satisfaction- any show of affection that would get me through the day, the week, the month. I added more He's to my growing list and I forgot all their names and all their faces. Eventually, they became tally marks, hastily scribbled onto scraps of paper: convenient, quick, and heartless. And even though in the long run, I was hurting myself, it did not matter, for my present thirst was momentarily quenched. I filled my world with a variety of false appearances and emotions. That, I reasoned, was far better than the solitary reflection that was right there in front of me. For I had no more strength for the harshness of reality where I could not even look at myself in the mirror without seeing tears form along the edges of my midnight black, mascara- caked lashes. No, there was no more room for the disappointing sadness- life needed to be filled with the remnants of yesterday, the small pockets of nothing that to me, were everything.

So while I wrapped myself in my falsely perfect world, the pace of actuality sped on by. My friends stopped attempting to understand me (only a few stuck by). I stood to the side as I watched myself get replaced. My guy friends, the ones that used to call me to arrange a get together, the ones that I used to be able to laugh with hours on end, now scooted me off their speed dials and made room for newcomers, girls who were wise enough not to share their problems with the unconcerned public.

At first, I wanted to believe that I was imagining all of it. After all, I was still invited to the birthday dinners, the movies, and the hang outs. But at the birthday dinners (one in particular), I sat at the edge of the rickety, uneven table while everyone else clustered around the other end. I opened my mouth to speak, only to get drowned out by the chatter of friends and inside secrets to which I remained an outsider. I left early. The "new" girls were crowded around the birthday boy, the way an army of ants crowd a discarded, half-eaten lollipop. I escaped after a brief hug and an even shorter "hope you had a good birthday." The newly-seventeen- year-old and I have not talked since.

There was a time when the boys referred to me as their little sister. I had always been "just Audrey," just the girl on the sidelines who offered up her advice in exchange for nothing at all. And I grew to accept that. I grew to accept that my place was behind the scenes as the good friend. But to be discarded so easily- it was a slap in my apparently naive face. I could no longer depend on the backbone of friendship, since friendship itself meant nothing. And for the life of me, I could not understand why we drifted apart so much. Like so many others, I blamed myself. Maybe I changed too much. Maybe I let The He's of my past influence the present. Maybe I just never should have burdened anyone with my problems.

Nothing I had learned, nothing I had experienced, prepared me for losing friends. I dealt with it the only way I knew how, by turning a blind eye towards the entire situation. I told myself I did not care. It took a lot of convincing on my part, but I made myself believe. Consequently, my old life developed on its own and drifted further and further away from me. I became just another passerby, an observer holding the snow globe that isolated and insulated me from my crumbling reality.

I felt that I had nowhere to turn. My previously strong belief in friendship was quickly replaced by insecurity. I disregarded the He's as boys who did not care, who were only there to serve as brief entertainment, who only needed me for brief entertainment.

I wanted to believe that I had developed indifference, but my subconscious begged to differ. Oftentimes I was caught off-guard in the confines of my very own, carefully decorated room with its multiple, color- coded, book-filled shelves, as that dreadfully empty feeling of being alone gripped me until my sobs left me gasping for air. Or I would wake up in the middle of the night to find that once again, I had fallen asleep with my makeup still plastered on, and once again, my tears had left all of the eyeliner, eyeshadow, and blush streaming down my cheeks and onto my pale pink pillows as an evidential array of red and black stains.

It was a hell I could not seem to find an escape from. Just when I thought I had everything under control, just when I thought I could begin to trust again, the uneasy feeling of absolute worthlessness would sneak back from behind me and push me into depths beyond my understanding. Occasionally, it would throw in a few tricks- a few He's that led me to believe that maybe I had found an end to the madness; maybe I had found a savior of sorts. But it was always a distraction, a mirage, a lie.

There was one He in particular that I thought I would put an end to the cycle. He was considerate, a good friend, I said in an attempt to convince the close friends that had stuck by me. They shook their heads in quiet defiance, but I was determined to make this He the last name on the ridiculously long list, so I ignored their disapprovals.

As it turned out, the quiet, disapproving friends were right. Considerate was the last of his traits. And he was anything but a friend. In my trek to make him the last of my tally marks, I became one of his checkmarks, another notch on his studded belt. In the realization, I felt a pang of sadness, but overwhelmingly, it was anger and betrayal. I had been played the fool. The poor, but idiotic fool that placed her trust in yet another small pocket of nothing.

The list of He's continued on after that. I continued to glance at my life from afar and I continued to barely escape each passing day. I gave up. I had carried my hopes this far, I had carried my dreams my memories my optimistic versions of a fantasy-based reality, but the real reality had carried the cold, hard truth and in the end, the truth outweighed everything I had left. I gave up and I gave in.

-------------------------------------------

The eternal second finally ended as I opened her eyes and found that I was back under the comfortable, suffocating green canopy of leaves. The breeze had ceased its rocking and my hammock lay in a still scene. Then, the sharp murmur of voices drifting out of the nearby propped-open doors yanked the world back into its rotating, routine cycle and the breeze picked up right where it had left off. The interruption ended my train of thought and my haven lost all sense of peacefulness. And for the last time, I pushed the memories into the dusty, desolate corners of my mind, turned the key, and attempted to lock up and forget everything I carried with me once and for all.

[WillTeddy]

wow i can't believe this hasn't gotten a reply yet~

To go into so much detail and depth in emotions and articulations of words i must say each sentence left me hanging to read onto the next

i must admit i was like oh my, how am i gonna manage reading this when i scrolled to see the length but boy am i glad i finished it

excellent and i wish to see more of these long "essays" though i much prefer to call them artistic pieces of emotions written down on e-paper on a forum :P