Living in Non-Existence

Ch. 1 Breathing In

It was during my time in solitude on that barren stretch of land that I realized what I wanted. When I found that I could do so many things with what I already had; hell, I could throw myself off this cliff and if I survived, well, my life would already be changed.

That's what I wanted, right? A change from the same mundane routine of fancy dresses and cocktail parties at night only to waitress in the morning.

The mountain fresh air would help me, that was my temporary mantra. The huge green lavish trees would show me the secret to standing tall and braving the ferocious biting wind, nipping at my nose. The clear blue sky would help me untangle the mess of emotion inside my mind. But most of all, I thought, this tiny cabin would help me find that although I live in a big world, I am important.

For the past few months I had experienced true heartbreak. I had pronounced that though I am privileged enough to do what I want with my high school and later on, college years, my life would always lead back to this.

Meaningless dinners with snotty upperclass men and their idea robbing companies and their wives. These people would turn around and stab their friends in the back but they would blindly donate money to charities they had never heard of to make it seem like they were good people.

I would attend the same cotillions and coming out parties, meeting with those same people, my people. Everyone like my mother and father; those people that believed they had perfected upperclass living.

That is the reason I was a waitress. Nothing was more an act of rebellion than shattering my facade of being a dainty little girl.

My parents believed that raising a daughter meant I would be happy, looking at the world from the sidelines, behind the shoulder of a man. That I would be alright seeing something I was so close to attaining but never truly doing anything significant. They thought that raising a well-educated subservient daughter was the only example they needed to prove they had succeeded as parents.

They were wrong, the wind whispered to me.

Every little eloquent speech pattern was the result of years of tutors and staying home instead of being with my friends. But who needed to make friends when they already came with the territory? Worst of all, who needed a life when it was handed to you? No hard decisions, none at all, to be exact. So this is why I came to the cabin.

My green eyes looked out onto the endless expanse of trees. In the future, hundreds of years from now, those trees would either still be here or remnants of them would remain.

They would be the only true immortals.

My heart jumped at the thought. Not immortality in itself but the idea that something of me could remain here forever.

A ribbon would blown away too easily or be taken or it could simply dance into the infinite sky, a piece of clothing would be too generic and a piece of paper eventually wears away into dust, like the rest of the world will; as dust we enter and as dust we end.

Maybe I was depressed about the seemingly obvious lack of control in my life. That is what my heart and mind was yearning for, control. I did not need to continuously dream of standing at the edge of a building with a stick poking me to move forward; to launch myself into an endless abyss of blank faces and taunting voices.

Honestly, I did not know at this point, whether the jump was a sure sign of concerning depression or if it was a metaphor for the choices I could make that would engulf my being. I decided it would be the latter because, frankly, the former was too scary to try to understand.

My hands hugged my sweater close to my shivering body. The wind really was picking up. I made my way inside to sit by the warmth of the antique fireplace.

This situation, I am sure, was unlike those of teenagers my age. There was no phone next to me and no connection to internet anywhere around me. I wanted to prove to myself that everyone in my life needed me more than I needed them.

No, I did not do it because I wanted to prove that I was popular or that my family actually loved me. I know that in their own way, they did. No, I did this because with everything, I felt as trapped as a mime in his box. The thought of freedom was impossible as long as I believed the box to be real and inescapable.

However, when the knowledge hit that I was in charge and friendships were temporary distractions from the endless cruelties that dictate our lives, I was easily unattached.

Maybe before I had been so preoccupied with, slightly, how I was perceived that I was unable to see my way out, even for a little while.
But now, with the crackling fire and the howling wind, my mind escaped reality and drifted like silk into my dreams of another day.