To The One

1

I was alone. I had always been. The room was dark and the night fell down the orange sunset, the blanket of stars slowly pushing away the clouds. I could see the moon casting an ethereal glow to the world below, as if everything has its own light. I gazed at the stars through my window, silently wishing for something I always did. I looked at an empty page on my table and started writing.

How far are you,

you beautiful stars

I longed to reach

and steal 

and keep between the pages

of my favorite book

for like a star, I shall

one day die 

and I shall be

a dust 

in a dying universe,

forgotten

forever

I stood and clutched my notebook. I went out to the dandelions fluttering across the wind, chasing the monsters of the night. The sky was cobalt, almost black, the stars twinkling like tiny diamonds blanketing the night sky. I walked towards the meadow and lied down with my elbows under my head, my notebook forgotten by my side. I closed my eyes for a while. I could hear the soft mumbling of the wind, the mellow chirping of birds that I could almost believe that everything was going to be alright. I am so tired of how the monotony of life sucks life itself out of my veins and I bleed, I bleed until I get so weak I die. I die a little everyday.

I slowly opened my eyes to the reality I longed to escape from. I sat up. I took a long look at a page in my notebook and reread the poem I wrote just a few moments ago. I remembered a line from the Little Prince saying how the stars would all be laughing as I looked skywards. My star is in there.

I stood and slowly walked back to the apartment I have lived in for two years, mourning at how empty life had been for me for quite some time now. 

I woke up to the blinding streaks of the sun. I got up, took a quick shower, and gathered my things for school. It was yet another day of a boring soundtrack, something I got used to over the years.

I had always been alone. I had no friends. For them, I was this loner who isn't liked by everyone because I was too shy to interact with them. It had always been like this. My only friend, Atarah, died last summer because she was too tired to breathe. I am all alone now. And I have nothing more to lose. 

I put on my headphones to mute the surrounding sound and drown in the music to forget my unbounded solitude. I am not sure how this drudging life gets me to move everyday. At least after my best friend died.

"Hey," a boy towered over me. I kept a tight smile and hurried off.

"Woah woah woah wait," he caught me, "so how's your summer?" he flashed a smile, a small and flirtatious smile.

I began to shake, struggling to keep still. "I, uh, I have to go, bye," I ran off and didn't look back.

They say I am too afraid of people. I say I am scared of what they are capable of. It's better to keep myself away from danger than to be sorry for myself. The world is scary enough to live on.

I gazed at Atarah's locker longingly, remembering her last words for me, "Live. For yourself." I felt hot at my throat but I tried to fight back the tears threatening to fall.

The bell rang and I rushed towards Philosophy.

"For your first task, I want you to imagine yourself dying. I want you to write a eulogy which you think people will say about you when you die. You have half an hour to finish. After which, you will share your answers."

I stared at the blank page of paper in front of me. No one will even attend my funeral, except maybe for my parents who were a thousand miles away from me now, so how would I know what people would say about me? A lifeless writer? A boring student? A careless friend? I racked my brain for an answer but I struggled to come up with something. 

"Isabelle," the professor called, "You go first."

I took a deep breath as I stood and walked past the curious glances around me. I was trembling but I did my best to stand still. I stared at my paper.

"I didn’t know who Isabelle Rivers was at all. Sometimes she writes in a corner, lost in her own little universe, writing about things she couldn’t say. Sometimes she laughs over the trivial things with her best friend, as if they were the only people in the world. Sometimes, she walks alone at night, marveling at the stars, how far and beautiful they were. She was somebody’s somebody. She was a dreamer. But I didn’t know her at all. She was ever changing, however afraid she was of change. She was ordinary, and wouldn’t even be remembered at all. However, once, in this lifetime, almost as impossible as it will ever be, she lived.”

“Thank you, Isabelle. I just hope you won’t think of yourself as somebody’s somebody. Just, somebody.”

I gave a tight smile and went back to my seat.

The day went on as it should, with the boring lectures and the endless thoughts of not knowing why am I still here. After classes, I went to the music room, the only place I go when I get sad. It was a narrow space at the end of the building adorned with cobwebs and dust. A large piano was sitting at the center, worn and a little rusty, but it worked. 

I sat down and felt the keys with my fingers. I let them brush the keys with feelings and precision, playing a song my mom had always played when I was little.

I closed my eyes, feeling every key as if they carry the tune of my life. In my mind was a rewind of what had happened before, when I was still happy, when the world still hadn't lost all its innocence. I let my fingers dance to the music as I remember my best friend's laughter. Tears threatened to fall but I bit it off. I had never felt so alone. I finished the song slowly, trying to hold on to whatever I could hold on to, not wanting it to stop. But eventually, the song ends. 

Someone clapped. My eyes shot open. "That was-" he paused as I turned towards him. He was standing by the doorframe, observing me like a mouse on a maze. He was tall. His hair was a mop of charcoal, like his eyes. He was lean and almost a little sickly, but he stood proudly, sincerely fascinated with what he had just heard. 

"Stay with me, I can't find the word," 

"Dramatic?" I said. 

"Fascinating. I never heard it that way before." 

I shrugged and stood, meaning to get out as quickly as I could but he caught my arm. 

"Here," he gave me a flyer.  "Join our band. Your music deserves to be heard." He smiled. But before I could speak, he ran. 

I took a look at the flyer. "The Stoics." I crumpled the paper and shoved it in my bag. I have no intention of joining anyway. I can't be attached again. I can't lose what I do not have and so it is much better if I won't ever have people in my life anymore. 

I walked instead of taking the bus. I thought about the boy in the music room, how life seemed to be so easy for him. I knew him. His name was Theodore. The kid who always got in trouble. The kid who ran naked across the halls when the school didn't pay attention to the girl who was sexually harassed. I remembered how he told everyone that if it was that easy to get away with it, might as well be naked. He protested against the school rules, shouting democracy over and over until the guards got tired of chasing him. He fought bullies who were far bigger than him, believing that justice should always win. But he was always the one who got reprimanded. I remember because every time he was being chastised, he would always scream, "Worth it!" 

Once, he came to school covered in mud, in protest to the school's allegedly stealing of the indigenous territories to build more classrooms. He even ran the forty two-mile marathon in support of the children with disabilities. He was extreme. 

Everyone calls him a weirdo. The way he stands up for things was extremely remarkable. He does not intend to be silent, let alone ordinary. He makes sure that he is heard and seen, no matter what the consequences may be. I was his antithesis. I hated to be seen. I never wanted to be heard. I liked my own little world of silence. 

Sometimes, I hope I was a little bit like him too. Not scared of the world. Free. But every time I look at myself in the mirror, I feel like I have always been held captive by myself, like a monster silenced by my own fear.