Saturday, November 13, 2010

An Empty Place

She barely understood the feeling which had settled upon her. She sat alone, away from the prying eyes of the world, in a place frequented by none but the rats, a place, abandoned, secret, safe. There among the concrete walls, the empty windows, she bent her head and sighed, that forsaken girl who couldn't find her place.

It's not that she was a stranger to the places she visited, to the people she spoke to, but still she felt as though she was an outsider, looking at a life she led, created by someone else and lived by someone she didn't recognise, despite how they looked like her. And no one saw through the plastered smile on her face, to the loneliness and vulnerability below; they shook her hand, they laughed with her, they all looked, but no one saw.

She came to this secret place, where she could be alone, left to her thoughts, and guarded by the trees, and the concrete walls. She'd lost someone once, and though this was not the source of her sadness, sometimes the memories would tear through her, and rip open the wounds once more; she would bleed and she could cry and scream and wish that she hadn't lost them, so that they might come and make it better, the way they always used to. Nostalgia washes over her, and she cannot escape, though she struggles and tells herself that it's all in the past and for good reason.

Other times she cries for almost no reason at all; tears run down her cheeks, hot, and she doesn't even fight them, just lets them go from her eyes, and hopes to find a reason for them. Most times there is nothing. She finds that she cannot say what she wishes to say, for fear of shattering decorum, for fear of not doing her emotions justice; for fear of sounding stupid. She soon realises that although she has never left her family, she's lived alone all her life.

She returns to this spot, every time the melancholy feeling takes hold, and just sits there with her thoughts and the voice which runs in her head. Sometimes she walks away with determination, other times with depression, but sometimes, just sometimes, she walks away proud of her place in the world. She realises that for someone, the world would be a much lonelier place without her.

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