Status: Complete
Don't Be Me
The only chapter you need to know me
I was never admitted to one of those facilities they put crazy people in, but I always felt as though my soul was trapped in one. Hell, I'd never even seen one of those places.
I just knew.
When you're born crazy, they don't outright say your crazy. They let you, or your parent, or your teacher, figure it out. I figure mostly because they make more money that way, requesting visits one after the other to 'be sure'.
They're sure.
I figured out I was crazy on a Saturday afternoon mid March of my 14th year.
Nothing particularly happened to me. Nothing ever does just happen, it's just many things that occur and eventually one very large one or one very small one become the Jenga piece that tips the tower.
Those days I felt the most awful. Like everything and everyone hated me even activities and actions, including the ones I existed upon like music and art.
They all hated me.
However, I wouldn't say life hates me. Saying life hates me would be a lie. Although everything my life was, did.
I played flute and trumpet. I also sculpted. These activities may seem extremely minuscule to most, because they're everything that a 14 year old girl should partake in. They make them seem well rounded and busy, like young women have been forced to seem as for centuries.
These pastimes did not just pass my time, they consumed it. And as I said before, they hated me.
Absolutely could not stand that they were mine and I owned them.
That Saturday, the one that sketched out the remainder of my life, my mom told me I needed to try and be more social.
"Karim, sweetie. You know how much everyone at the boutique loves you.. But maybe, just maybe, you could try going to one of those places that other teens hang out. Like the movies or the mall." She said as I folded a blue frilly blouse and put it on a shelf.
This statement, as sweet as it was, was the small thing.
I was a teen, so why wasn't I somewhere else? I was a teen, so why wasn't I anywhere but where I always tried to be?
My mom ran a boutique aimed at old women. Everything was floral pattern and smelled as you would think it would. It smelled old.
It takes all of 2 seconds to realize those things about yourself. Those horrible, horrible things.
Maybe part of why I was hated was because of my train of thought. I wasn't 14 mentally. That also may be why the ladies who shopped at the boutique enjoyed my company.
I used to always say "I'm sick of the mentality that in life there are winners and losers in this so called "real world", as if any sort of higher power in the universe would give anyone that nice of treatment."
I used to think I had everything figured out, and that I was a beautiful minded creature.
Me saying used to is in reference to Pre-Saturday Realization.
I was stupid to assume that I was never hated. I always was, and after that Saturday I doubted it no more. Any idea I had that I was loved or cared for outside my immediate family fled.
I understand that to some, immediate family is all the love they need. But when you're insane, you need more.
You need more than you will ever get.
Even in your final days, as I did realize, you need more than what is provided for you. A kiss on the forehead from your mom after you finally kicked the bucket is not enough. You wish that she would've grabbed you and cried and never let go of your pale corpse. After all, that's what I wanted.
In my life I needed more than I got. Even friends, the ones who I thought didn't hate me, pre-Saturday, weren't enough. I now see how little they truly were. I miss the friends I never had, and reminisce the vaguely nostalgic memories that never were.
My mom probably got it, as much as I hate to say.
Her suggesting I go to the movies or mall was just her way of trying to save me, because she knew my insanity was there and pretty present.
I killed myself 8 months after the Saturday. November 28th.
It was cold. I remember it well.
I wore a blue sweater to school and my English teacher told me it made me look like Molly Ringwald. I looked nothing like Molly Ringwald, nor did I enjoy her acting.
"Thanks." I said anyways.
After the Molly encounter, I went to the band room and picked up my flute. I played my audition piece for the private school I didn't have the money to go to.
I got in with this slow, melodic Mozart piece. The school gave me a 20% scholarship. What a joke.
My flute made me sick. As I played I thought about how I could throw up right now, and nobody would notice. Jessini Yang was across the room, playing violin. She was much more talented than I.
My trumpet made me feel worse. I was last chair. Atleast the flute was slightly more accepting of me and gave me a chance. A chance that, had I been wealthier, could've possibly kept me alive.
I stood up, walked to the bathroom down the hall, stood in front of the mirror, and ripped out a big piece of my red hair. I let it drift out of my fingers, like I did my social life a few years ago.
I'd say that died when I was 6, and noticed how everyone was either someone who played with trucks or someone who played with dolls. I liked art.
Clay always did something for me. I wouldn't say it made me feel happier, but it did keep my solid and feeling in one piece.
I didn't get in to the private school art program at all. Of course flute was always the gentler of the actions that couldn't stand me.
My scalp started to bleed. It continued to bleed as I remembered Judie Wallen.
Judie was 5 when I was 6. She was one who played with dolls. She always wore her hair in these high ponytails that made her look a lot younger than 5. They took her back to 3.
She'd give me dirty looks as I made air-dry clay bugs.
Judie went to my middle school, too. She no longer played with dolls then. She was in to boys and makeup. She still had the blonde ponytails, though.
I walked to math, with a bloody scalp, wishing I had, just once, pulled one of the ponytails. That would've made them try and save me a lot younger.
They didn't start to try until the week I did it. First mom, then the guidance councilor.
November 25th Mrs.Byrde signed me up for weekly counciling, after I was caught writing on the walls of the storage room.
I used to sneak in to the storage rooms and hope someone would read the walls one day, and know what it felt like to have my crazy.
Of course, Byrde's talks with me fixed nothing in the 3 days they were in my life. I guess she was too late.
I hung myself after school that day.
I walked home and wished it was colder, just so it would be worse on everyone around me. They already hated me, so why not go all the way and force them in to the most unpleasant out door funeral they'd ever go to.
Of course, mom wouldn't wait until the coldest time in December to have the funeral. It took her until the following Sunday to have it.
It was 59° during most of it.
I knew it had to be that day, though. It was the right time. That next Monday would've been when I would start the private school music program, had I lived in a world where good things happened.
I couldn't force myself any longer. It took me 14 years to find that I couldn't live as a well rounded girl with any aspirations or things to look forward to.
I just wasn't programmed that way.
If I could say anything about myself, it would be that my soul started in a mental ward, my mind started on a beach somewhere far from my home town, and my body started from where my mom had me, the only thing that happened in my life as everyone else's did.
If I could say anything to anyone who's reading this it would be to not be me. Of course, that can't happen, but they'd understand if they new me.
I just knew.
When you're born crazy, they don't outright say your crazy. They let you, or your parent, or your teacher, figure it out. I figure mostly because they make more money that way, requesting visits one after the other to 'be sure'.
They're sure.
I figured out I was crazy on a Saturday afternoon mid March of my 14th year.
Nothing particularly happened to me. Nothing ever does just happen, it's just many things that occur and eventually one very large one or one very small one become the Jenga piece that tips the tower.
Those days I felt the most awful. Like everything and everyone hated me even activities and actions, including the ones I existed upon like music and art.
They all hated me.
However, I wouldn't say life hates me. Saying life hates me would be a lie. Although everything my life was, did.
I played flute and trumpet. I also sculpted. These activities may seem extremely minuscule to most, because they're everything that a 14 year old girl should partake in. They make them seem well rounded and busy, like young women have been forced to seem as for centuries.
These pastimes did not just pass my time, they consumed it. And as I said before, they hated me.
Absolutely could not stand that they were mine and I owned them.
That Saturday, the one that sketched out the remainder of my life, my mom told me I needed to try and be more social.
"Karim, sweetie. You know how much everyone at the boutique loves you.. But maybe, just maybe, you could try going to one of those places that other teens hang out. Like the movies or the mall." She said as I folded a blue frilly blouse and put it on a shelf.
This statement, as sweet as it was, was the small thing.
I was a teen, so why wasn't I somewhere else? I was a teen, so why wasn't I anywhere but where I always tried to be?
My mom ran a boutique aimed at old women. Everything was floral pattern and smelled as you would think it would. It smelled old.
It takes all of 2 seconds to realize those things about yourself. Those horrible, horrible things.
Maybe part of why I was hated was because of my train of thought. I wasn't 14 mentally. That also may be why the ladies who shopped at the boutique enjoyed my company.
I used to always say "I'm sick of the mentality that in life there are winners and losers in this so called "real world", as if any sort of higher power in the universe would give anyone that nice of treatment."
I used to think I had everything figured out, and that I was a beautiful minded creature.
Me saying used to is in reference to Pre-Saturday Realization.
I was stupid to assume that I was never hated. I always was, and after that Saturday I doubted it no more. Any idea I had that I was loved or cared for outside my immediate family fled.
I understand that to some, immediate family is all the love they need. But when you're insane, you need more.
You need more than you will ever get.
Even in your final days, as I did realize, you need more than what is provided for you. A kiss on the forehead from your mom after you finally kicked the bucket is not enough. You wish that she would've grabbed you and cried and never let go of your pale corpse. After all, that's what I wanted.
In my life I needed more than I got. Even friends, the ones who I thought didn't hate me, pre-Saturday, weren't enough. I now see how little they truly were. I miss the friends I never had, and reminisce the vaguely nostalgic memories that never were.
My mom probably got it, as much as I hate to say.
Her suggesting I go to the movies or mall was just her way of trying to save me, because she knew my insanity was there and pretty present.
I killed myself 8 months after the Saturday. November 28th.
It was cold. I remember it well.
I wore a blue sweater to school and my English teacher told me it made me look like Molly Ringwald. I looked nothing like Molly Ringwald, nor did I enjoy her acting.
"Thanks." I said anyways.
After the Molly encounter, I went to the band room and picked up my flute. I played my audition piece for the private school I didn't have the money to go to.
I got in with this slow, melodic Mozart piece. The school gave me a 20% scholarship. What a joke.
My flute made me sick. As I played I thought about how I could throw up right now, and nobody would notice. Jessini Yang was across the room, playing violin. She was much more talented than I.
My trumpet made me feel worse. I was last chair. Atleast the flute was slightly more accepting of me and gave me a chance. A chance that, had I been wealthier, could've possibly kept me alive.
I stood up, walked to the bathroom down the hall, stood in front of the mirror, and ripped out a big piece of my red hair. I let it drift out of my fingers, like I did my social life a few years ago.
I'd say that died when I was 6, and noticed how everyone was either someone who played with trucks or someone who played with dolls. I liked art.
Clay always did something for me. I wouldn't say it made me feel happier, but it did keep my solid and feeling in one piece.
I didn't get in to the private school art program at all. Of course flute was always the gentler of the actions that couldn't stand me.
My scalp started to bleed. It continued to bleed as I remembered Judie Wallen.
Judie was 5 when I was 6. She was one who played with dolls. She always wore her hair in these high ponytails that made her look a lot younger than 5. They took her back to 3.
She'd give me dirty looks as I made air-dry clay bugs.
Judie went to my middle school, too. She no longer played with dolls then. She was in to boys and makeup. She still had the blonde ponytails, though.
I walked to math, with a bloody scalp, wishing I had, just once, pulled one of the ponytails. That would've made them try and save me a lot younger.
They didn't start to try until the week I did it. First mom, then the guidance councilor.
November 25th Mrs.Byrde signed me up for weekly counciling, after I was caught writing on the walls of the storage room.
I used to sneak in to the storage rooms and hope someone would read the walls one day, and know what it felt like to have my crazy.
Of course, Byrde's talks with me fixed nothing in the 3 days they were in my life. I guess she was too late.
I hung myself after school that day.
I walked home and wished it was colder, just so it would be worse on everyone around me. They already hated me, so why not go all the way and force them in to the most unpleasant out door funeral they'd ever go to.
Of course, mom wouldn't wait until the coldest time in December to have the funeral. It took her until the following Sunday to have it.
It was 59° during most of it.
I knew it had to be that day, though. It was the right time. That next Monday would've been when I would start the private school music program, had I lived in a world where good things happened.
I couldn't force myself any longer. It took me 14 years to find that I couldn't live as a well rounded girl with any aspirations or things to look forward to.
I just wasn't programmed that way.
If I could say anything about myself, it would be that my soul started in a mental ward, my mind started on a beach somewhere far from my home town, and my body started from where my mom had me, the only thing that happened in my life as everyone else's did.
If I could say anything to anyone who's reading this it would be to not be me. Of course, that can't happen, but they'd understand if they new me.