Young Writers Society

Mom,
I want you to know this was not your fault…


Frosty leaves crunched under his feet as he waltzed through the freshly fallen snow. Ear-buds in his ears, he hummed a small tune while walking, just to pass the time. He was alone, but that’s what he was used to. He had a slightly hunched back, for he had “terrible posture” as his aunt Vicky would say. After thinking for a bit about her, he chuckled to himself. “Aunt Vicky…” he thought aloud. Shaking the thought out of his head, he kept walking, thinking about nothing in particular. As he got closer to his destination, he started smelling the aroma of freshly made food drifting out of the cracks and crevices of his house. His pace quickened and his stomach growled at the thought of it. A smile drew itself across his face as he imagined what was in store for him when he opened the door. Sighing, he clapped his hands onto his face and pulled down, enjoying the texture of his woolen gloves. He sighed once more, just to see his breath in the cold winter air.

Winter was his favorite season. He loved the cold weather chilling him, but not quite to the bone. He loved the smell of pine cones, and cedar logs burning in the fireplaces of every house on his street. He loved the sights of people and cars hustling and bustling along the roads and sidewalks. He loved the sounds of snowflakes daintily bouncing off of anything they touched. No one else could hear that part, but he knew it was there. Whether it was his mind tricking him into believing that it made noise, or not, it was there. He loved everything there was to winter. But he especially loved the people. Everyone was always bundled up in their scarves and parkas; white smiles and rosy, red cheeks painted upon their faces. No one was unhappy… except for him. Everyone was in love… except for him.

He continued meandering along the trees and the shrubbery, admiring nature. He loved the color that the snow turned the trees. They were green sprinkled with glistening dots of white. Simply put, they were beautiful. The outdoors was amazing and unfathomable to him, so he spent most of his time there. He knew his neighborhood like the back of his hand (as cliché as it sounds). Busy being in awe of the world, he almost didn’t realize that he came to a clearing. His clearing. In there, there was his small house and two others. It was nice only having two neighbors.

He jogged the rest of the way to the house and finally arrived at the back porch steps of his cozy one-story abode. The door welcomed him with a burst of warm air and a recently made dinner waiting for him at the table. He stepped inside, stomped his slightly snow-covered converse on the doormat, and wandered to the kitchen to see who was home.

“Mmhmm… Yes. Yes. Ok, thanks! Ye- Yeah. Ok. You too! Bye,” Said his mom as she hung up the phone. “How was your day sweetie?” she asked.
“It was fine,” Was his three-syllable answer. “Who was that on the phone?”
“Oh, just your grandmother. She’s sick again. We need to pray for her!”

This was how every single one of his evenings went after walking home from a friend’s house. Open the door, meal’s already made, have short conversation with mom, need to pray for someone. Well, at least ever since she started dating a pastor. She was never religious until he came along. Now that he’s here, it’s always: say this, don’t say that, do this, don’t do that, pray for this, walk away from that… it’s a never ending cycle. Before he was here, she would let him do what he wanted, talk to him; give him attention… now, the only time they saw each other was when they ate. Then she’d go off to her room, where he was waiting. At least it gave him time alone.

They both walked over to the table and sat down to the delicious smelling meal. He took his plate and piled mashed potatoes, green beans, broccoli and a salad onto it. He’s a strict vegetarian. His mom plopped a huge juicy steak onto her plate and a baby carrot.

“Gotta’ eat those vegetables, don’t we?” she said with a wink and a smile.

He looked back at her with a blank stare. He knew all of this is a lie, a charade, just a mask to try and pretend that everything was ok. She knew he hated him. He knew it too. They sat at the dinner table in silence for the rest of the meal. The only sounds you could hear were their chewing and the clanking of forks and knives against the ceramic plates. When he finished, he stood up, walked to the dishwasher, and placed his plate and utensils into it. His mom stared at him as he drudged over to the hallway that led to his room.

Soon after that, he heard her chair scratch against the floor as she pushed herself away from the table, her footsteps to the sink and the water from the sink washing her plate. Then her footsteps to her bedroom and laughter from two people. He shuddered all the way down his spine when he heard his deep hearty laugh. He despised him. He hated his voice, he hated his clothes, he hated his face, he hated his life. He hated him for being him.

He slammed his door and walked to the vintage record player waiting for him on his desk. He unsheathed a “Blondie” record from its dusty, cardboard home and dropped it onto the waiting turntable. After setting the needle onto the vinyl, cranking the volume and pressing the “play button”, he walked over to his bed and fell onto the familiar comforter.

“I know a girl from a lonely street,
Cold as ice-cream, but still as sweet,
Dry your eyes Sunday girl…”

These lyrics drowned out the sounds from downstairs, drowned out the sounds of hatred, the sounds of pain, the sounds of life. He could just let it all go; breathe. He didn’t have to worry about what was going to happen next, he just had to worry about if he would like the next song that came on. It was a habit of his to try and not remember the order of songs on his records so that it was always a surprise when a song he liked came on.

He closed his eyes and mouthed the words of the song as they went by. He was always afraid of singing out loud, even in his own company; which was normally all he had. As the song was getting closer to the end, he started drumming his fingers along to the song. He would switch from drumming the rhythm to drumming the beat. He liked variety.

“Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up and wait,
Hurry up,
Please come see what you do to me.”

As the last verses of the song came to an end, his door flew open and an angry mom’s boyfriend was there to greet him. He stormed into the room and over to the spinning record player. He ripped the record off the device and threw it onto the bed.

“You better not listen to this stuff, Josh,” he barked. “It’ll make you even more of a fag!”

He stomped back out of the room, slamming the thin door behind him, and leaving an angry and confused Josh on the bed, holding a probably broken record.

Josh lay there for a few more moments and finally got up and placed the record back into the cardboard and into his secret stash of vinyl. After closing the closet door, he ran his hand through his hair and drew in a deep breath. After closing his eyes for ten seconds, he let out his breath, dropped his hand from his head, and moved on with his night. He was definitely not going to let some old man ruin his time. He brushed himself off and sat down at his desk with his typewriter.

After placing a crisp, fresh sheet of typing paper into the holder, he started typing. He typed whatever came to mind, not caring if it even made sense. He typed his thoughts, his feelings, his whole heart, mind and soul into this paper. Most of it was just obscenities and curse words towards the man that ruined his life, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he let it out, because if he didn’t, he would blow up and say all of those things to his face. He had a name. It was Samuel.

Samuel was a snake with blue eyes and extremely two-faced. He was the sweet, caring father figure to Josh, and the perfect boyfriend to Josh’s mom, but only acted so when she was around. He was a completely different person when he was around Josh and they were alone. He beat him, called him names, threatened him with everything imaginable… but worst of all, he wanted to “pray away the gay”.

That’s the only reason he did all of these things to him. Because Josh was gay. Everything was a sin. “You’re dating a boy? You’re going to hell. Oh, you started a blog? You’re going to hell. You kissed someone? Hell’s where you’re going!” This seemed to be everything that came out of his mouth. Josh was practically a walking sin. After he had these little “conversations” with him, he would sit them down and they would have a prayer session that lasted an average of about 10 to 15 minutes. Then he would just walk away, acting like he was the most holy thing that walked the face of this earth, leaving Josh to feel alone in the world. And he did.

Not one day went by that Josh didn’t feel alone. Anytime there was even a small glimmer of happiness in his day, something depressing always seemed to find a way to dwarf it. It seemed that the world didn’t want him to feel happy. Like there was a reason for his depression. So he grew used to it. He couldn’t imagine life without being depressed.

His days were filled with misery and suicidal thoughts. Every day, he would come up with numerous new ways to kill himself. Strangely enough, this made him happy. He was at peace whenever he thought about these things. But none of the world even guessed any of this. At school, he was “that kid that helped everyone else with their problems” or “that kid that was always happy”. If only they knew what he really was feeling.

He always said that he didn’t want to be remembered as the guy who found happiness for others but never for himself, but he was beginning to reconsider that statement. Did he even want to be happy?

He often asked himself this question, always scared of the response. He never really got one. He knew society thought that the key to life was to be happy, but was it really? He never really understood that. It was so much easier to be depressed. So much easier, but no one seemed to agree with this or even attempted to. Lots of people got the impression that depression was when you were constantly sad and you never smiled. They don’t realize that most depressed people smile on a daily basis, laugh on a daily basis, be “happy” on a daily basis, but it’s all a lie. They do it just to please society. They do it so they don’t attract attention to themselves. They do it so they can hide. And that’s exactly what Josh did.

He’d forgotten when he first became depressed. He’d been tired, angry, and sad for as long he could remember and his past seemed so hazy and unrecognizable nowadays. He’d faked his way through life because that was the only thing he knew how to do.

DING!

The typewriter had come to the end so he pushed the tab over to start a new line. By now he was typing furiously, typing every little thing he could think of. Somehow he had gone from typing about Samuel to typing about himself. But it didn’t really matter, this was like his journal, so whatever came out, came out. He was typing so fast, that the keys jammed about every few words, but this didn’t slow him down. Every minute you heard:

DING! SCHWOOSH.
DING! SCHWOOSH.
DING! SCHWOOSH.

Finally he felt that he had written enough. He pulled his last sheet of paper out of the holder, picked up his other four sheets, stacked them together, and placed them into his purple binder labeled “Confessions of a Typewriter”. This was where he kept everything that he typed on his typewriter. Novels, poems, journal entries… all of these things and more were stuffed inside the small, cardboard folder. He was the only one that ever saw the contents of this holder and he planned on keeping it that way for a long time.

After placing the folder in his sock drawer, he wandered around his room, not really knowing what to do next. His room had a slightly yellow, slightly golden shimmer to it. This was mainly because of the only light that he let on at night was a small lamp sitting on his desk, and a burning candle right next to it. That way, people couldn’t tell what was going on in his room at night when his blinds were open, and his room always smelled like cinnamon apples.

After giving up on doing nothing, he walked to his bed, climbed in and pulled the covers up to his chin. The covers were a bit too small, so his feet always stuck out at night, but he liked that. He almost always ended up sleeping with one leg out of the covers so it didn’t matter. Nothing seemed to matter much anymore.