Hi ^_^ I'm Jamie and i'm in the 11th grade. I was flabbergasted to learn that I had to write creatively in Creative Writing, which has led me to interesting places. I don't find a lot of motivation to write very often, but with this story, an epiphany came to me at work like a brick thrown at my head. I am not proud of a lot of my writing but I am proud of this.
The Space Between
When you don’t think you’re worth anything, you tend to waste your own life in a way that leaves permanent scars because you can’t see your future ending up to be anything other than a dead pixel on a television screen. You’ll turn to the things that give you euphoria in the present and hell onwards, because that’s all you know. That’s all you’ll ever know until the day you die.
My opponent smells of whiskey and cheap cologne. His fists are covered in the blood rushing from my nose. My gut aches and my head throbs as I stagger backwards a third time, the score 3 to none. I blindly swing at the man ahead of me, squinting through the blood flowing down my eyelids, waving a red flag at the angry bull charging at me with hooves like iron. He lands another blow to the side of my face, sturdy and hard to the jaw. I finally lose my balance, tripping over my own feet, falling into one of the tables near the bar. It falls out behind me and lightning bolts of pure pain spread through my skull as I fall onto the beer-stained hardwood floors.
Bar fights aren’t uncommon in this place. Stupid men often made stupid bets they couldn’t keep and decided to let their knuckles settle the dispute instead of using their heads. Because of how used to it everyone is, all of the people paid no attention to the blood seeping into the floorboards. That was until the heavy thud of my head hitting the wood planks, splitting parts of the worn oak down its veins. The crowd finally turns and stares. I slowly start to stand up, then fumble my way out the door, leaving everybody behind me.
The pain doesn’t hit me until I look up at the crescent moon and it stings me to my core. Adrenaline has led me to places where the drawbacks outweigh the benefits too many times to count, but never will I learn my lesson, no matter how much blood is spilled. I can feel the back of my head getting stickier as the consequences of my actions drip down my hair and onto my neck. The edges of my vision are blurring into nothing as I drag myself to the side of the building and slump down against its familiar concrete walls. I can feel my heartbeat in the pulsing veins of my hands and pounding inside of my ears with every movement I take. Everything feels so warm but so cold at the same time.
I can’t help but feel as if I am dying as my eyes shake while I look up at the stars. They stare back at me, they are Heaven’s angels and they mock me for wanting something that I will never have, they will never give me a second chance at what I yearn to go back and change. They are not the ones at fault though, they are only reacting to what’s before them. Maybe they are sympathetic, though I doubt it. I know I wouldn’t be. I would turn a blind eye too to the man whose life is spilling out of his head and won’t bother to call the police. He knows that there is nothing worth saving.
If there is a God in this sky that I stare at, I don’t doubt that he is forgiving, and that he gives people second chances, but he will not do that for me, as I am undeserving of it. If there is a Heaven, I will save the time that I haven’t wasted by not praying for something I know I won’t get to. He isn’t going to give a second chance at life to the guy who didn’t want it anyway, because that would just be a waste, and he doesn’t do things like that. I am not angry at him for leaving me down here where I will die and stay dead.
Drops of water start to fall on my face. They cup my jaw and brush the hair out of my face as if they are my mother. They wash the blood off of my forehead and my neck, but the rain doesn’t wash away my actions and my memories. Nothing will ever forgive how I pushed away every person that has tried to heal me in the past. No person deserves to cry over someone that refuses to be healed. I can only hope that all of the people I have hurt are moving on and will forget me like space will forget the solar system when it dies off. Right now, all I crave is the love that the rain gives me, because that is all I need.
The rain shifts into a downpour and forms little lakes in the craters of the pavement, so I look at myself one last time, but I fail, because the man looking back at me is not me. He is bruised and bleeding like an abused dog leashed to a chain-link fence. He is suffering his own consequences and he will die in this alley. He will die with me, because though he isn’t me, we are bound as one and we will die like it.
The blood from my nose drips into my reflection like watercolor.
One of the universal human experiences is questioning what happens after you die. Many people are scared of what’s next, and care about living enough to want to continue anyway. Others are more scared of living, or hate it just enough to not want to anymore. The space between wanting to live and wanting to let everything go is a tightrope and I have walked across my whole life, waiting for a wind to sway me one way or another, so I don’t have to make the choice myself. The wind finally hit me.