Isaac

There was a boy that lived across from me.

Before

I could tell he wasn't like the others. He laughed with them and involved himself in hobbies which were fit for boys with more stamina than he had. He drank more than he wanted too and he got into trouble because he was associated in activities which he thought were the socially correct 'cool' things to do. I caught him reading on the bus home, it wasn't porn or a comic and it didn't provide any information containing football or surfing. Brown pages with fine print and a musty spine. He read real literature and the furrow in his brow showed that he was interested in what this book contained. 
At school he would throw paper aeroplanes to the front of the class and swing on the back legs of his chair, but on weekends I saw him laying under big maple trees and writing in a hidden notebook that he kept private.

He wanted to be like the others and he had most people fooled. He had a chiselled jaw line and rolled cigarettes between his index finger and his thumb. He laughed when the others would taunt boys in the younger grades and he would throw his lunch rubbish on the floor because it would of wrecked his image of trying to fit in.

I saw him play with his younger brother near a lake where i lived and tackled his brother to the ground only to dust the dirt of his knees. He thought no one was watching but i saw him pick up litter from the gutter when he was walking home and i noticed when he would take his recycling out in the morning.

During

I was listening to the stones when we first made eye contact. I was sitting under a gazebo near the lake where we lived. I liked being alone, but i also liked to think i was invisible. I forgot that all the times i was watching him, that at any moment, he could of seen me as well. I wasn't what anyone wanted, let alone fit for someone of his calibre. I was boring. I didn't have big boobs, and i wasn't overly intelligent. My outfits weren't trendy and my hobbies didn't receive any recognition in the schools newsletter. I kept to myself most of the time, but i also allowed myself the pleasure of recognising beauty when it was around.

He was beautiful. I enjoyed admiring his unique qualities, the ones which weren't high fived in locker rooms.
He saw me at the lake and i saw him. He didn't smile and i didn't wave but we just stared. I don't know if he knew me or even knew what he was looking at. But that minute we met eyes before it started to rain, felt like it went for hours. I looked away as it it started to drizzle and i grabbed my bag and made a run for it.
He turned around to grab his brother from the sand around the lake and we turned our back on each other.

It was warm rain. The sun was behind the clouds and the bitumen sizzled under my feet as the rain cooled it down. I tugged at my headphones and stashed my ipod into my bag. As i jogged up the stairs to my house i turned around to see if he had made it back to his house before it began to pour. 
Again, our eyes met.

This time it was different. It wasn't by coincidence but maybe it was fate. He smiled and with his hair dripping down his face he began to walk out into the middle of the road. I hesitated, was he coming towards me? I didn't move just incase he was going somewhere else and was cautious of embarrassing myself. He stood halfway. I looked down at him, our eyes hadn't left each other yet and I began to walk towards him. Why? I don't know. The rain was now cold and my shirt became transparent. What was i thinking? 
This was so weird. Why was I so nervous. I had been watching him for years as we grew up living across from each other, but as soon as it came to actually meeting him, butterflies flew around my ribcage.

"Pretty wet huh?"
It wasn't the best first line i ever imagined him saying but it was better than nothing at all.
"Yeah, i guess so".
I sounded so rude. I didn't laugh but i felt my mouth thin out into a sheer smile.
"Charlie, right"?
He knew my name, that was a start. 
"Yeah, and you're Isaac".
Again, blunt tones and harsh sentences only came from in between my teeth.
"It's great to finally meet you, unfortunately i never pictured it being in this sort of circumstance but there is never a right place or right time for anything these days".
It had never occurred to me why we had never met before. We lived literally ten metres away from each other and we have gone to the same school for nearly three years now. 
"Yeah, you too".
I was so short with him. It wasn't intentional, but talking wasn't my best trait.
"Well charlie, before we drown out here, I just wanted to say hey, so i better go back inside. You're more than welcome to join me if you'd like"?
What? 
"Ah, okay"?
I questioned his invitation, but accepted it at the same time.

We spent the afternoon together talking awkwardly whilst our hair dried out. His parents weren't home which made it easier to get to know him without it being too intense. His brother danced upstairs, whilst we talked about high school and whispered little secrets about ourselves.

After

His house was always a shadow to me now and his brother never danced around the lake. In fact I barely saw his little brother outdoors anymore. When the recycling truck came by in the mornings, it picked up piles of old books from the side of the road instead of the usual bottles in yellow bins. I stared at the back of bus seats and thought about what life would of been like if Isaac was still around.

The gazebo seemed haunting and the middle of the road where we first met, sent shivers down my spine. The boys from school were never upset about his absence, however i never saw anymore paper planes fly pass my head in class. 

Isaac was someone who i can only consider myself lucky to encounter. He was a beauty that was taken too soon. The boys at school weren't sorry nor afraid that it could happen to them. Isaac wanted to be liked and admired for everything he wasn't and he let that get the best of him.
We weren't friends for long, but i loved him for longer than i can remember. I adored him for who he truly was and that was never going to be enough to save him.

We spent nights around the lake tasting each others lips and drinking stale wine. He read lines from books that he loved but always made me promise that no one would ever find out. I hated that about him. He always kept the best things about him hidden, and one of those things was me. He loved me like he loved his collection of old novels. I knew that much, but i was collecting dust on most days while he was out pretending like he didn't care about life, love and stupid things like fine literature.

I don't like to think he was ashamed of me, i like to think i was a prized possession of his, just like one of his novels. He didn't like sharing intimate pieces of him with others and maybe thats what made me fall in love with him.

High school and parties and being popular was something that Isaac made a priority in life. He wanted to get through high school with ease and he couldn't see it being 'easy' if he was a nerd or a wallflower. 
He wanted to be known for being 'careless' and a 'wild child'. He wanted to be the person that he thought everyone else wanted to be. I wanted him to live. But that was too much to ask for.

I was never selfish and always loved him in the hours where we were invisible. I was always going to be on his shelf, but i always imagined a world where he would pick me up, dust me off and read me over again and again until the sun went down.

I was hoping for that day to come when we both graduated school. His eyes rolled into the back of his head two weeks before graduation. It was the final party before we commenced exam week. It was the pinnacle of all parties and it was the perfect moment for Isaac to show everyone what he was made of.

I knew he was too weak and I knew that it would only end badly. But there was something about being up on his shelf that prevented me from saving him. I loved him too much and he would of resented me for destroying his image that he had built for the past twelve years. 

I will resent myself now for the rest of my years, for thinking that a life without Isaac was worth risking.

The sun sets and the sun will continue to rise, but whenever I walk out my front door, tears inevitably will build in my throat and life ceases to be beautiful. The lake is cold and as i write this, i will only ever think of myself as this book whose pages will stiffen and its spine will flake.  

I was his book, and we created a novel which would never be read.

Black

The following content is of fiction. What has been written is for pure entertainment and literacy purposes only. 

It was too late.
I had broken too many vows and enjoyed my dark abyss too much to consider turning back on it.
My words were lies which leaked from broken lips and my promises were empty.
However, i never thought i'd find myself facing a ceiling on cold tiles.

Drugs weren't my thing.
The thought of escaping into an abyss of something entirely unknown scared the hell out of me.
Although escaping, was the only thing i ever wanted to do.
I tried hiding in dark corners, i tried fading into the crowd and i tried to sink into floorboards of many empty rooms.

I was happy, at one point in my life.
I thought that life was infinite and i forgot that even the strongest of people became weak.
I couldn't see that even the finest piece of glass could be broken by a few stones.

I had aspirations, dreams which i wanted to be reality.
I wasn't realistic, but who is at 16.
I knew where i wanted to go in life, but i didn't realise the control i had, or the power i was given.

I was ignorant.
I found beauty in alcohol and pills.
Cigarettes were mediocre and i wasn't satisfied with just having one drink.
My friends did things i never thought i would catch myself doing.
But when life deals you a ace, you have to play the right hand.

I was given a life, a beauty which i never saw.
I was given many opportunities to say no, but the strength of the unknown was too enticing to turn my back on.

I wanted to know what it felt like to be infinite.
To see a world where the sun is always warm and the days were endless.
I wanted to experience pure ecstasy and i bit off more than i could chew.

I was found choking.
My eyes were open but I was no longer seeing.
I felt my heart racing, but it was 5 times faster than it should of been.
I immediately knew what it was like to feel cosmic.

I enjoyed sunrises.
Where you are finally sober and everything that you once felt comes rushing back.
You become human, and even though i enjoyed the emptiness, it was feeling everything that once hurt me and everything that once made me laugh which made me love being alive.

I lived for sunsets.
Watching another day roll over, and you enter the darkness.
Anything and everything is possible and the only thing looking down on you are a million tiny stars.
I no longer needed to hide, the streets were empty and I was able to embrace a secret solitude.

I was always at house parties with people i hated.
I sat in the darkest corners and watched people live their lives like i should have done.
I became what i drank and i let those shitty little pills dictate my actions.

My words weren't fluent and my eyes were blank.
Although i was there in flesh, my mind was a thousand miles away and thats how i liked it.
I never thought i would be who i am now, but now that i am here, i can't picture being anyone else.

The idea of living life normally, or enduring each day without being on some kind of high didn't satisfy me.
I didn't want to live in a world without it being limitless.
I didn't want to be live in a world without ecstasy.

The tiles were cold.
It was the only thing i could feel.
I stopped doing it with friends, because i realised i could get the same kick doing it on my own.

It was everything i wanted.
Being alone, and letting my mind wonder to another place.
In a few short minutes, i was going from being an averagely functioning human to becoming immortal.
Well i thought so.

I never thought of overdosing.
I never saw myself ending my life.
I wasn't suicidal, but i wasn't against the idea.

I believe in fate and time.
I knew that when my time came, it would be because it was meant to happen.
Many people talk about me like i wanted this.
They say i was 'troubled' and that i became friends with people in the wrong 'crowd'.

People have labels for everything for these days so i let them say what ever they want.
I knew i wasn't troubled or tortured or depressed.
All i wanted was to become something other than what i was, and unfortunately, if you love something too much, it can kill you.

I think back to the times where i would live each day with caution.
Follow societies rules and abide by the law.
Conform to life's little guidelines and endure a life which wasn't infinite.
It wasn't for me, and it was only a matter of time until i realised that.

I was young, i agree.
Maybe i should of studied harder, or loved longer and maybe i would of been happy.
But i wasn't.
I was happiest when i let a pill slide down my throat or let it pierce my nose as i inhaled.
Whatever it was, i wanted it.

I became desperate.
I needed to escape all the time.
Doing it on the weekends wasn't enough anymore, how was i meant to live my life 2 days out of 7?

I guess i regret not saying goodbye.
But it isn't my fault really...
I didn't know that my ending was going to be so soon,
and I didn't realise that death was inevitable.

But as the light dimmed out, and the tap stopped running, i saw their eyes.
They pumped my chest and tapped at my neck, life was measured in heart beats and i no longer had one.
The tiles weren't cold anymore, and my existence perished.

One too many they would say.
And my mother could have cried for weeks but it was never going to bring me home.
The shattered mirror and the ripped shower curtain was my last mark on this earth,
and as the sirens blared from the front of my house, it realised that this was it.

Life comes to you on a silver platter.
Maybe a road map if you are lucky.
I didn't want to follow the paths and i certainly didn't take any directions.

My life was entirely my own, and fuck, did i love every bit of it.
The nights where i danced on roof tops and drank from the moon.
Hours that felt like years and days that passed by when i blinked.

This was it.
I couldn't move, but i didn't fight the struggle either.
In a moment of complete ecstasy and pure infinity, i was living.
I felt my blood surge through my veins and my heart fought against the chaos of my mind.


I smiled.
Giving into what i loved, i let it kill me.
I was forever infinite and there was nothing that i wanted more.
This was it, finally an eternal escape.
It was black. 

Inevitable

It is something that I do not fear.

It is something that we face everyday.

Sometimes sooner rather than later.

But we are the lucky ones.

Maybe it was brought on by watching an iconic film and reading an incredible novel "the fault in our stars".
Maybe it has always been looming in the back of my head that today may be my last.
I don't like to think this way, as its a thickening storm which follows you. But some people say to live today like its your last, like we are all a ticking time bomb, like we are all in the same queue.
Some people get pulled out before others, some people make it to the end and some people never even enter the queue to begin with.

It doesn't frighten me, it saddens me. Not what i will miss out on, or who i will become. It saddens me to think of the people who i will leave behind.
Some of us never stop running.
We forget to realise that jobs are money, that money is paper and that paper inevitably does wear away in the end.
We forget to realise that today ends, just as soon as tomorrow begins and that people like ourselves disappear just as quickly as seconds pass by.

Its a dark thought, which is meant to have a light ending. Some peoples endings are natural, some are coincidental and some people...are just at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Fate is undeniable. And i believe that our existence is by fate. Our lives aren't measured by what we do or where we have been or what we have accomplished. It's how we create ourselves in other people, how ourselves are made up of little pieces of everyone we surround ourselves by. Who we are, is based entirely on who we meet, and what parts of them we carry with us to the end.

It doesn't scare me anymore. The idea that the end is soon, or distant doesn't worry me. Sure, its disappointing and some what mysterious, but at this point in my life, i am completely content.

I believe that it's important. To remind the people you are around, what mark they have left on you. Whether it be hate or love, some part of someone else has created you, inspired you to wake up again and continue to stumble in the queue.

I am lucky i guess. I consider many of us 'lucky'. Not that we have made it this far or that we are healthier than some.

I consider myself lucky because if today was to end, i would be entirely satisfied with who i have loved and who i love. I wouldn't look up out of the ground and see lots of money, multiple belongings and a career. I would see my family, people who make sunsets a beautiful way to end today and people who make sunrises unforgettable. I would see wilted roses, whose beauty still lasts long after the rose has died. I would see people who i have loved and will continue to love, and i would see people (i hope) who have loved me. Whether they would be crying or laughing, at some point in my short eighteen years of existence my life would have been changed by them and at some point in their lives, i would have impacted theirs.

Death, is inevitable. And like hazel lancaster mentions "There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever."

Death is inevitable, and unfortunately it is also unforeseen. We don't know when. We don't know how.
But at the end of the day we have all prepared for it. We have to learn to love the 'now' and accept that now, is probably going to be as good as it gets. That the people we love now, are the people who we will love forever and that just as the stars will always be in the sky, sometimes we won't see them when it is cloudy. Just like we won't see death until it is too late.

So, i apologise if this post is dark or saddening or it's not something you felt like reading.
But it's truth and honesty which i believe that, although sometimes you don't want to read something, it is worth being read.

Thanks again followers,
ill be in touch x

#YesAllWomen

I understand that recently after the devastating murders of women by Elliot Rodger, the commonly known hashtag (#) has been used to represent a woman's voice. Women have unveiled their true emotions about what its like to be a woman in todays society and why #YesAllWomen is becoming the latest social symbol to represent who women are, and what we stand for. 

#YesAllWomen 

Because If my skirt is above my knee, i'm considered a target for sexual predators.
Because if I am walking by myself, rape is the only thing I can think about.
Because if I hug a man, it makes it okay for him to grab my ass.
Because if I talk to that man in the street, I'm putting myself in a dangerous position.
Because I have to deal with men looking me up and down, and accept that this is today's society.
Because I have a nice 'figure', it makes it okay for men to comment on it.
Because I can't leave my house without some sort of device that could protect me from potential harm of a man.

Because I was nice to him, he thought that was an invitation to push me to the ground.
Because I smiled back, he got the idea that I was okay with him touching me.
Because if I flinch at his hand, I must be a prude.
Because he earns more money than me, it makes it okay for him to treat me like an item, not a person.
Because we are not seen as equal, although society says different.
Because no matter how loud I scream, it'll always be too late.
Because I drank too much that night, it was my fault I couldn't say no.
Because I yelled at him, it was okay for him to hit me.
Because if i have not contacted my parents by 2 am, they automatically assume that something bad has happened to me.

Because we are taught to kick a guy in the balls before we are taught to tie our shoes.
Because we are told to say no to that guy in the car, before we are taught how to drive.
Because as soon as we leave our doors, we are a walking target.
Because when we want to look good, we are told not too feel good about ourselves too.
Because looking behind my shoulder has become a natural thing to do when walking home.
Because I'm not allowed to walk with an ipod in at night.
Because no matter how many classes or lessons i take for self defence, i will never be able to fight the memories of him.

Because although you think you know someone, you can never trust anyone but yourself.
Because although you think you are safe, and society is gender neutral, women will always suffer.
Because as long as you have boobs and a vagina, you will never be truly safe.
Because as long as rape exists, you will always be a potential victim.
Because women, will always be taught how to fight, before they are taught to love.

Because women will always face victimisation. Whether its sexually, mentally or physically, at some point in our lives, we will face it.
Because yes, all women will endure the hardship of being female, but we are strong.
Because Yes, all women will stick together, and rise above it.

And we are no longer afraid.

#YesAllWomen, are allowed to be proud, strong and fearless. Just like we should be.