Post by Squish|Flint on Apr 1, 2011 20:50:14 GMT -5
This is a narrative I did on the day I got lost for Writer's craft :P Put it up for giggles.
With all the insecurities and pressure I had been facing as a female in grade nine, the last thing I needed was unnecessary stress. However, Life had decided I needed more surprise adventures in my high-school year. The last bell rang and I was free from a rather monotonous school day of review and unit prep. Still weary from my first period session of fitness testing in Physical Education, or ‘Gym’ as we students liked to call it, my movements were sluggish and half-hearted. I only realized how heavy my textbooks were after I fed them in my backpack and slung the knowledge-laden bag over my aching shoulders. Just the thought of crossing the field that separated me and my Mom’s van made me groan, but I forged ahead, the promise of a soft bed and dim room a balm to my tired mind and body.
Since I hadn’t really established a friend base yet, getting out of the school was a fairly quick and simple process. It only took minutes to cross the field, marching with drowsy purpose to the sidewalk where I would wait for my Mom. It was a relief to be able to dump my heavy bag on the concrete and simply wait for my transport. I could let my mind numb as I tried to turn off my brain and suppress the echoing thoughts of today’s lessons. The state of Not-thinking was bliss. Not-thinking meant I could delegate the responsibility of awareness to someone else. I remember checking my watch, an accessory I found myself obligated to wear at the time to fulfill my convoluted image of the proper student, which apparently required to always know what time it was. It was around 2:40 pm, ten minutes or so after the dismissal bell had rung. I heaved a sigh and resigned myself to having to wait for my ride, which –at the time- I had no way of knowing wasn’t going to show up.
I remember the creeping of anxiety prickling at my subconscious, a feeling of heaviness or pressure, as if the sensing a tumultuous rainstorm. I checked my watch again, trying to trick myself into making the movement casual, but it only served to bring my wariness to the front of my mind. 2:53 pm. It was odd for Mom to be so late. She wasn’t exactly a timely person, but I didn’t think it was capable for her to forget about me. I reasoned she must have been waking up from her nap and was rushing her way. I told myself I would wait until 3:00 for her. I had somehow convinced myself I could wait seven minutes in peace, even though moments after I began ceaselessly looking around, expecting her to pop around the corner any moment and begin apologizing sheepishly, which was her specialty.
The seconds dragged on longer than I would’ve thought possible. Each tick of the minute hand on my watch was like a nervous twitch in my brain. Paranoia slid through my veins like burning ice. What if she has gotten into an accident? Or one of my grandparents were in the hospital. My wild imagination was soon taking leaps and bounds away from the realm of logic and delving into a chaotic world of worst-case scenarios and story-book dilemmas that were rooted deeply in the right side of my brain. After what I thought to be a suitable amount of time, I checked my watch yet again. 3:07 pm. She still wasn’t here.
How will I get home? I knew I was lost the instant I realized I had to walk home. I had never had to trek home before, Mom having faithfully arriving to pick me up every day for the first half of my high school debut. It was hard to fight off the encroaching feeling of abandonment when I was standing alone on a sidewalk, having just watched the entire school population file out and leave for home, even the stragglers having retreated for the day. I was completely and utterly alone.
I had to start walking. I robotically stooped to sling my backpack into place once more, its weight settling heavily along my shoulders. Then, without a plan or clear path, I set off in the general direction of my house. I felt a rising sense of self-criticism well up inside me. I had lived here in Milton almost all my life. It shouldn’t have been possible for me to be lost. Especially considering I have been traversing back and forth from my house to the school nearly every day for the past couple months, taking the same route each time. The reason being I had often slipped into that ‘numb’ state, where my eyes would stare listlessly out the window, glazed with apathy and unseeing of the world drifting by behind the glass of the van.
There was no numbness as I crossed the street, attempting to retrace my steps from what I remembered from this morning’s drive. Only painful awareness. All the houses had blank faces, unfamiliar in their coldness. Had my birthplace always been such a frigid place? In the moment I became lost, my surroundings transformed, warping into a foreign...no... an alien terrain, everything different from what I remembered, but so similar it was hard to tell if I was making any progress. I never slowed my pace. Somehow, I felt I could survive as long as I didn’t slow. Even as I came up on the first turn, I barely paused as I assessed both options from a distance. Left... or right? Left. I didn’t have a good feeling about the direction, only a feeling that was less awful than the one I was getting from pondering the right turn.
The street curved slightly as stretched endlessly beside the rows of aloof houses. I was right in the middle of a nice looking neighbourhood, surrounded by houses. Yet I knew I could search as long as I wished in this little maze of streets and not find the home I was looking for. I continued walking. I was tempted to pull out my geography book from my bag and flip feverishly through its pages to see if I could find anything of use. However the book remained zipped up. I knew it wouldn’t help me. It seemed ludicrous that, after all these years of school, I could not find anything in my teachings to apply. Hadn’t I gone to get an education to prepare me for the ‘real’ world? Yet there I was, shoulders throbbing with the pain of carrying a semester-full of wisdom in a world as real as it gets, and I could do nothing but keep my feet moving. My back is beginning to get sore and my head twisting itself into knots, pounding in a tense headache, begging for release. I couldn’t let my mind fall numb though...not this time.
I had to rely on my own abilities, in which I was rapidly losing faith. There have been so many streets that veered off the road I tread on, like the many tunnels buried under and anthill, each one of them carrying the potential of being able to lead me home. I had passed every one of them. Something told me to keep going. Not to be tempted by the rushing sound of traffic on the other side of the branching streets. I knew when I finally reached my second turn. There was another school here, this one just as inactive as mine had been at this time. Another left. The pain in my lower back and ankles was getting harder and harder to ignore, even as I shifted the bag’s weight from one side to the other. Being lost hurt.
It was when I began thinking I would be wandering forever it happened. I recognized the street I was on. It was the one house. It had little Christmas lights littered all pell-mell along its roof, most likely neglected from last winter. They always winked forlornly in the sun when we passed them in the van. The recognition gave me what I didn’t know I was looking for. Peace. The tension in my shoulders eased, though the pain lingered as black smoke does after a blaze. The streets regained life once more, seen in their vibrant green lawns and the tiny flowers that dotted their gardens. The trees provided brief moments of shade, coolness settling over me before the suns rays swathed my slumped but earnest figure once more. My eyes flitted from one side of the street to the other, constantly catching the little details I had seemed to have missed all the years I had been past them, committing them all to memory. After my final turn, my watch reading 3:46 pm, I saw home. Once my gaze alighted one the unassuming structure, I knew one thing for sure. No matter how flawed or forgetful I am, I would never lose my way home again.
With all the insecurities and pressure I had been facing as a female in grade nine, the last thing I needed was unnecessary stress. However, Life had decided I needed more surprise adventures in my high-school year. The last bell rang and I was free from a rather monotonous school day of review and unit prep. Still weary from my first period session of fitness testing in Physical Education, or ‘Gym’ as we students liked to call it, my movements were sluggish and half-hearted. I only realized how heavy my textbooks were after I fed them in my backpack and slung the knowledge-laden bag over my aching shoulders. Just the thought of crossing the field that separated me and my Mom’s van made me groan, but I forged ahead, the promise of a soft bed and dim room a balm to my tired mind and body.
Since I hadn’t really established a friend base yet, getting out of the school was a fairly quick and simple process. It only took minutes to cross the field, marching with drowsy purpose to the sidewalk where I would wait for my Mom. It was a relief to be able to dump my heavy bag on the concrete and simply wait for my transport. I could let my mind numb as I tried to turn off my brain and suppress the echoing thoughts of today’s lessons. The state of Not-thinking was bliss. Not-thinking meant I could delegate the responsibility of awareness to someone else. I remember checking my watch, an accessory I found myself obligated to wear at the time to fulfill my convoluted image of the proper student, which apparently required to always know what time it was. It was around 2:40 pm, ten minutes or so after the dismissal bell had rung. I heaved a sigh and resigned myself to having to wait for my ride, which –at the time- I had no way of knowing wasn’t going to show up.
I remember the creeping of anxiety prickling at my subconscious, a feeling of heaviness or pressure, as if the sensing a tumultuous rainstorm. I checked my watch again, trying to trick myself into making the movement casual, but it only served to bring my wariness to the front of my mind. 2:53 pm. It was odd for Mom to be so late. She wasn’t exactly a timely person, but I didn’t think it was capable for her to forget about me. I reasoned she must have been waking up from her nap and was rushing her way. I told myself I would wait until 3:00 for her. I had somehow convinced myself I could wait seven minutes in peace, even though moments after I began ceaselessly looking around, expecting her to pop around the corner any moment and begin apologizing sheepishly, which was her specialty.
The seconds dragged on longer than I would’ve thought possible. Each tick of the minute hand on my watch was like a nervous twitch in my brain. Paranoia slid through my veins like burning ice. What if she has gotten into an accident? Or one of my grandparents were in the hospital. My wild imagination was soon taking leaps and bounds away from the realm of logic and delving into a chaotic world of worst-case scenarios and story-book dilemmas that were rooted deeply in the right side of my brain. After what I thought to be a suitable amount of time, I checked my watch yet again. 3:07 pm. She still wasn’t here.
How will I get home? I knew I was lost the instant I realized I had to walk home. I had never had to trek home before, Mom having faithfully arriving to pick me up every day for the first half of my high school debut. It was hard to fight off the encroaching feeling of abandonment when I was standing alone on a sidewalk, having just watched the entire school population file out and leave for home, even the stragglers having retreated for the day. I was completely and utterly alone.
I had to start walking. I robotically stooped to sling my backpack into place once more, its weight settling heavily along my shoulders. Then, without a plan or clear path, I set off in the general direction of my house. I felt a rising sense of self-criticism well up inside me. I had lived here in Milton almost all my life. It shouldn’t have been possible for me to be lost. Especially considering I have been traversing back and forth from my house to the school nearly every day for the past couple months, taking the same route each time. The reason being I had often slipped into that ‘numb’ state, where my eyes would stare listlessly out the window, glazed with apathy and unseeing of the world drifting by behind the glass of the van.
There was no numbness as I crossed the street, attempting to retrace my steps from what I remembered from this morning’s drive. Only painful awareness. All the houses had blank faces, unfamiliar in their coldness. Had my birthplace always been such a frigid place? In the moment I became lost, my surroundings transformed, warping into a foreign...no... an alien terrain, everything different from what I remembered, but so similar it was hard to tell if I was making any progress. I never slowed my pace. Somehow, I felt I could survive as long as I didn’t slow. Even as I came up on the first turn, I barely paused as I assessed both options from a distance. Left... or right? Left. I didn’t have a good feeling about the direction, only a feeling that was less awful than the one I was getting from pondering the right turn.
The street curved slightly as stretched endlessly beside the rows of aloof houses. I was right in the middle of a nice looking neighbourhood, surrounded by houses. Yet I knew I could search as long as I wished in this little maze of streets and not find the home I was looking for. I continued walking. I was tempted to pull out my geography book from my bag and flip feverishly through its pages to see if I could find anything of use. However the book remained zipped up. I knew it wouldn’t help me. It seemed ludicrous that, after all these years of school, I could not find anything in my teachings to apply. Hadn’t I gone to get an education to prepare me for the ‘real’ world? Yet there I was, shoulders throbbing with the pain of carrying a semester-full of wisdom in a world as real as it gets, and I could do nothing but keep my feet moving. My back is beginning to get sore and my head twisting itself into knots, pounding in a tense headache, begging for release. I couldn’t let my mind fall numb though...not this time.
I had to rely on my own abilities, in which I was rapidly losing faith. There have been so many streets that veered off the road I tread on, like the many tunnels buried under and anthill, each one of them carrying the potential of being able to lead me home. I had passed every one of them. Something told me to keep going. Not to be tempted by the rushing sound of traffic on the other side of the branching streets. I knew when I finally reached my second turn. There was another school here, this one just as inactive as mine had been at this time. Another left. The pain in my lower back and ankles was getting harder and harder to ignore, even as I shifted the bag’s weight from one side to the other. Being lost hurt.
It was when I began thinking I would be wandering forever it happened. I recognized the street I was on. It was the one house. It had little Christmas lights littered all pell-mell along its roof, most likely neglected from last winter. They always winked forlornly in the sun when we passed them in the van. The recognition gave me what I didn’t know I was looking for. Peace. The tension in my shoulders eased, though the pain lingered as black smoke does after a blaze. The streets regained life once more, seen in their vibrant green lawns and the tiny flowers that dotted their gardens. The trees provided brief moments of shade, coolness settling over me before the suns rays swathed my slumped but earnest figure once more. My eyes flitted from one side of the street to the other, constantly catching the little details I had seemed to have missed all the years I had been past them, committing them all to memory. After my final turn, my watch reading 3:46 pm, I saw home. Once my gaze alighted one the unassuming structure, I knew one thing for sure. No matter how flawed or forgetful I am, I would never lose my way home again.