The Person Behind The Relfection

My shoes

Chapter Two: My shoes

"There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors."-Tennessee William

    There is nothing, if not for the desire to be hated, for the desire for hate is the only one that buries itself deeper than the desire for love. I used to hate the world around me, I used to hate my home, I used to hate my "friends" because they were easy to hate. Then there was my sister, I used to think that I didn't see her enough to hate her. She was in and out of different hospitals, and every time she would come back with a little bit less of the life inside her. But then again, maybe it was better to feel nothing.
    This past summer I realised that to be anything but true. As humans, we feel the need to feel, we feel the need to hurt. I found myself running into a wall. A wall made of glass, I could see other people hurting, I could see other people hating me, and they could see me. Alone, behind my glass wall with nothing to say. That was until one day, someone pushed me hard enough to break the wall, push me hard enough to shatter everything I hid behind. At that moment I knew what my sister had always felt.
    Today is the first anniversary of her death, my birthday. She had been let out of the hospital for visitation, she could do this twice a year. That time was different, she seemed happier, she wanted to go out, she wanted to love us again, finally. But like I said, feeling nothing is much, much, better than feeling everything. What I failed to realise then, was that we only accept the love that we think we deserve. While everyone saw the girl making cake with her little sister and singing with her dad, no one seemed to see the love within herself. Again, you don't just feel something, you feel everything. She had felt love which meant, she had felt hate. And seeing her you would never know, but the hate had to go somewhere. This hate went within herself. She had not shown any emotions like this since mom died when I was 8. Ironic, because it was that night that we found her in our pool, in my mother's dress and my father's weights tied to her ankles with a chain of deflated balloons that said, 'Happy 15th birthday'.
    I walked into her old room, I hadn't gone in there since she died. It was almost completely plain because she wasn't in there much. The walls were painted a light violet. Along the walls there were the small remains of sticky notes. My father couldn't bear to stay in my mother's room after she passed, so he stayed with my sisters. His therapist had told him to write his feelings on a sticky note, or anything he felt was important. When he had finally moved out of Gina's, my sister's, room he had taken the post-its and threw them away. One was there near the wall, it must have fallen and it read, "To be crazy in an insane world is basically sanity." Parts of it were runny from tear drops but it was easy to read. I put that sticky note in my pocket and went into her closet. There was nothing, except for a pair of shoes red in the back, velcro. They weren't allowed to have shoe laces in the hospital for safety reasons. Along the bottom of the shoe was dates, saying stuff like, 'I was here' or 'hi to my future self'
"May you be late for school!" He looked down the hallway, "May?" I looked his way, we made eye contact and I could tell he had felt sorry for me.
"I know dad just, just hold on." I frantically picked up my bag, and I was half way out of her room when he said, "you should wear those shoes." He looked up and read my gaze knowing then that that was a bad thing to say. "You don't have to, I was just thinking, I don't know, that maybe they would look good."
I scanned the room, and realised that regardless of how it made me feel, it would make him feel better. I took off the shoes he had gotten me the night before for my birthday, and put on hers. They were slippery when I walked and I almost fell down the stairs.
Most of the time, my father wasn't home in the mornings. He drove the bus route, Bus #8012 was his bus and he likes it when I wave at him each morning. Today he drove me, way earlier then I needed to be there.  I took my gum out of my pocket, and started chewing it. It was raining that morning so I stood beneath the roof at first, then I moved to the same lamp post I stand at every day, most of the time to see my dad, but sometimes I just like to look at people.
            I walked behind the girls locker room to meet Mathew, he sat in the dark, like he always did. When I approached him a smile formed on his face as it told me that he was alright. Yet I wonder how one could be alright if they want to surround themselves with darkness. Mathew has lived alone for a while now so he was always there when I needed him, i don't know him so well.
A Lot of people are scared of the dark, and I guess you could say that I am. The way I see it, there are two different fears. There are those who are afraid of the unknown that lurks in the darkness, and those who are afraid of the dark because they know they are alone; these types of people feel more comfortable with someone. Yet I wonder, how would that person help if something lurked in the shadows? I think these people don't sleep alone because they want others to suffer with them, or not at all.
As we walked to the edge of the school, where the cement met the field, briefly, our hands touched one another's, slowly he walked faster. He knew what today was, for it was a year ago today that I had first met him, when the ambulances woke him up.
My father was the one who found Gina in the pool. He peered upon my mother's side of the closet to notice something was missing. Naturally he yelled for Gina, but he was not yet worried. He was overwhelmed with fear when he noticed the floor board was cracked near the sliding door, for this wasn't the first time Gina had tried something like this. He ran outside. The light was dim and all that could be seen was the clear pool, but there was a purple color cascading through the water, the sequence attached itself to bits of her hair thrusting her head upward. There he saw her.
    When people die in movies their expression is always blank, but after all this wasn't a movie.  Through the water I could see a frown on her face. When you die the muscles in your face relax leaving only a touch of expression after the feeling leaves the body. He didn't yell, nor did he cry. He just froze to his knees and stood there. It wasn't until the cake was ready. That I called for his help. When there was no answer, I looked out the kitchen window and saw him. At first I didn't see Gina, but when I did my heart stopped. "Public Grief Syndrome" is when someone is traumatized so publicly that they have no time to process emotions for themselves. My feet scraped the pavement. I rolled my ankle and fell into the pool. My mind went blank. I didnt breathe, I didn't feel. My sister was nothing more than a corpse to me.
I swam upward to gasp for air, when I caught a glimpse of my father. He stared off into the distance. I turned the opposite direction to face Gina, when I saw myself in the reflection of the window. I floated and looked myself up and down, yet I didn't recognize the person looking back at me. I sat there for about 30 seconds when, in the reflection I saw Gina's face. That was when it hit me, I was soaked in the last breaths of the person I had loved most.
I climbed towards the edge of the pool, when I got up I splashed my father, yet he still didn't move.
I called the cops and my words were long and my breaths were short. When they arrived, they took my father and my sister, away, away from me. That was when I saw Mathew, he walked out his front door flustered. And even though I was soaked and dazed he brought me into his house. He used to live with his family until they kicked him out when she turned 18, he shared the house with 4 other people, who were barely home. He let me in, the living room was empty. The stairs creaked as we walked up to his room.
The room smelled like women's deodorant and cigarettes. In the corner of the room was a guitar, he had band posters all over the wall, and his mattress on the floor. There wasa a line of monster energy drink cans by his wall, stacked two or three cans high. Stolen street signs were hung up all color coordinated. Weird because that was the only thing in the room that made sense. The walls of his room went up into a triangle on the top. So, he could reach the top. In his closet was a singular blanket covered in ash. The walls were a dark maroon, the paint was chipped by the floorboards.
He sat on the bed, the faint light from the sunrise showed dust floating up to the ceiling. He pulled the blanket up above his head, and didn't say a word until his alarm rang. At that point he nudged me into the bathroom, I showered and put on one of the T-shirts he gave me. The T-shirt read,  "The Front-Bottoms" The words were fading slightly but It was still readable. I walked out and he was gone. I walked to school alone, and went into the locker room to fix my hair, given I looked like a reck. There, is where I saw him sitting in the dark, for the first time. There was an un-said bond between us and he just talked. Mostly about nothing important. But everyday I met him in the locker room.
We walked down the cracked concrete and the grass peaked out of each crevis. As the doors approached we saw Edgar standing at the corner crossing his legs in and out.
"Dude he's literally autistic" Mathew told me softly nudging my shoulder.
"What the hell Mathew you can't just say that." I know he meant it as an insult, but if I really think about it it makes sense. I always see Edgar around looking around and hyperfixating, regardless Mathew shouldn't say that. I took a breath and tapped his shoulder and pointed down the hallway to show him the direction I was going, he continued in a different direction.  Normally Mthew ties my shoe in this corner of the hallway however these shoes had straps.
I walked slowly past the carpet onto the tile,  I wish I could be the type of person to walk past things without noticing them or thinking of them, I cant even walk down the hallway without tracing each step. I noticed Edgar once more as this time he was staring at my sisters shoes. Regardless I knew that if I thought about it too much it would upset me so I kept walking. We spoke for a moment but nothing of importance. He does remind me a bit of my mother that way