While the Sun Sleeps

In your life everywhere you look you see someone with a different life story, different home life, or family issues. You always seem to notice the small details that happen around you, like how that one quiet girl in your fourth-period algebra class has missed 3 days in a row. You notice the loud popular guy keeping to himself and not talking at lunch. You’ve noticed how your English teacher always gets interrupted and the look on his face destroys you. You can see the joy on his face when he teaches and the students interrupt him, they always ruin the teachers every single year. You’ve noticed your friend's parents are always fighting and her dad leaves, and she tells you she doesn't care but you see the sadness on her face wishing her dad could just be normal. You notice little details about everyone, when in reality no one notices the details about you. They don't notice you've stopped wearing make-up every day, it started with less foundation, then no concealer, then just mascara. But now you don't even touch your make-up. You wake up, go to your closet, and pick whatever you see first. Then you go over to your dresser, open your sweats drawer, and grab a pair without even looking to see if it matches. 

The thought of looking in the mirror and seeing how you looked, how messy your hair was, how horrible your outfit looked just made you sick. You were disappointed with yourself, but you knew this was coming, you could tell by the end of the first semester of freshman year. Your life was about to go downhill. Your grades were just barely acceptable to your parents. The new classes you got in the second semester might have started it all, with no friends in more than half of them, school just about became a jail, whereas before it was a safe place away from home. The people in your classes always had an opinion of you, no matter if you said a word they all singled you out and made comment after comment. Even when you felt your best someone had to make that little comment and just ruin your whole day, It doesn't matter how small that comment was, it always got to you. Until it got too much where you didn't care and you never could make them happy. Even after you had your mom buy you what was trending so you could fit in, something was always wrong with you. Whether it was your hair was too frizzy or your shoes were too dirty you never were perfect.

You would never tell your parents that something was wrong with you, they would ask you to explain, then yell and make it seem like you were blaming them. When in reality you didn't know whose fault it was, it was mostly yours for letting everything get into your head. You know you shouldn't but you can't help it. You are a teenager and in this lifetime nothing's gonna change. Everyone lets it get to them, it just matters on how well you manage it and control what you care about and if it will bother you. You wish someone told you that, but now you're stuck in your situation with no way to get out or make it better. If you told your friends, they would pretend to care and understand when they don't. They will go and tell everyone how much of a freak you are, even though you have been there for everything. Always gave them advice, listened when you shouldn't talk, and never judged them for what they were thinking and feeling. You always wished you found better friends, but then you realized you were better off by yourself, with no one to have to force meaningless conversations with and an ongoing fear that everything could go up in flames at any minute.

By the time winter ended, you hoped it was just the seasonal depression that was making an appearance and that it wasn't a year-long thing. You hoped and hopped, but as the flowers started to bloom and the grass became green again, you still felt numb, with no feeling of happiness left in you. By mid-April, you realized it had not just been seasonal depression. This feeling stuck with you through May, your birthday month, you were turning 15 not an important birthday you thought. You had no one to celebrate it with like all the years before. All the things you got were nothing that you mentioned to your mom that you wanted, they were all random things that would just collect dust in your room. You were happy she tried. May turned into June, you hoped summer would cheer you up, with no school, and 3 whole months of alone time. But nothing could help, you slept till two every day, then stayed in your bed reading or writing, those were the only things that made you feel a tiny bit of emotion. Writing gave you an escape from your lonely and sad world. You never let anyone read anything that you wrote, it was your own personal diary, that gave you the freedom to say whatever you wanted to, without anyone having an opinion about it.

Summer quickly ended, and your mom tried to get you to cheer up with new clothes, and the thought of the new sports season but nothing ever helped. She then gave up and left you alone knowing nothing was gonna change. The thought of sports starting made you sick. Your team the year before ruined your self-esteem to the point where you wanted to quit. But you knew your dad would never allow that. As football games started and the talk of homecoming came up, you had never felt so alone. You’ve never really been the type to be into the football games but you’ve only ever gone to fit in. But that year you had no one so it didn’t matter if you went to any, no one would notice if you were missing anyway. Your mom was excited about homecoming this year, hoping you would find someone to take you. But she soon realized there was no one who wanted her. You didn't even end up going to the dance, you told your mom you were sick and were upset about how you couldn't go, but you couldn't care about the short dresses and pictures, you just wanted to sleep all day.

Winter arrives and it's the same cycle as last year. Grades slipping, eating lunch alone, being the outsider on your team, and wanting to leave every time you're out of your house. Even though you wish you were always home, it is not much better than school. It still feels like a prison, with your parents telling you “You're selfish for always being in your room and never helping out” when you try to help and you somehow mess something up and get yelled at. Your parents then act like nothing happened when they see you next, as if they're not slowly draining whatever is left in their daughter. Winter sports end but then there's the off-season and the spring sports. You don't know which one is the worst. Which one is more draining. As soon as you arrive home, your parents find something wrong with you. You have too much attitude, your grades are horrible, what I wore that day. Always something. You never could make anyone happy. Spring turned into summer and the numbness still remained, worse than the year before.

September came quicker than anyone thought. You were now a junior. College now comes up in every conversation with your parents. They were worried about how much time you spent writing instead of preparing. You didn't care what college you went to, as long as it was as far away from your parents so you wouldn't have to live at home. Your house was still hell no matter the time or the day, school wasn't any better. You found your happy place at this park near your house, almost every day after school you went and sat under the biggest tree. When winter hit you were stuck and locked up in your bedroom till the temperatures got up to forty degrees perfect weather. You would stay out writing till the sun almost goes to sleep under us. You like to think you're like the sun, during the day you feel that little bit of sunshine that gets you through the day. But when the lights go out you just sit there looking forward to the next day.

As the year went by you met someone. Someone who lightened up your whole world. They brought you joy back, brought that spark back inside of you, it all hit you so fast that you didn't know what was happening before you knew it you were two months away from graduation. In the span of 4 months, you fell in love, gave love, then had love taken from you. Your whole life fell apart again, you stopped eating and stopped going to school. No one knew what was happening, no one knew how much they meant to you. The night of graduation as everyone is walking across the stage, you're walking another way, towards darkness. Towards your tree but instead of the sunshine and joy you normally feel here all you feel is empty. You text them that you love them and will never forget them. You never got to finish the story you were writing, and no one will ever read what you wrote.

That's the last time anyone heard from you. You wrote all of this to tell everyone all the signs they missed. Pointed out all times they could have saved you but by the next time someone saw you, they found you by your true home, the only place you felt free, hanging by your tree, with no life left inside of you.