The exaggerated life of a teen

The summer before the storm

Welcome to my family. Where secrets and lies have been our passion since the Middle Ages.

We weren't born smart, we all tried really hard to hide that and did our best to get good grades.

We were born athletic. We excelled in sports for a number of years and most of us stopped after college but not all.

We were born with white blonde hair that later would turn to a dark chocolate brown or midnight black.

Our eyes usually changed colour every few years too, which we never dwelled on.

We were always tall, I mean 6.5” for all the boys, the girls usually were 5.10”.

We were beautiful and mysterious creatures, a sense of godliness lay around us like a cloud of darkening mist.

People had often told me they had felt drawn to me, like they needed to know me. I had asked my older brother about this and he had told me that it was a family thing. I never asked again.

We were social and liked.We ignored major problems like fights and we all lived in a happy bliss. No one divorced and everyone had more than one child.

We had one tradition that stayed the same. We can give up marriage and children at sixteen years old and become the next leader of our family. It was always an option and I decided to take it when I was seven years old. I didn't regret it until I was fifteen years old. When I started to think I was completely different to my family.

I wasn't social or liked. I was when I was younger but then my little band of loyal followers turned on me and bullied me for five years. I had later become distant from people I had once cared about .Only two things lay constant in my life. I later developed claustrophobia from the girls that had bullied me, they use to corral me in corners. I became shy and scared of people I had once trusted. My family didn't know until I got a call when I was ten from my bullies and my mother answered. I became withdrawn from my world of perfection that I was so use to. When I was around twelve I started to become meaner. I was still distant but now a side of carelessness had come out of me. It was not a family trait, so I was made hide it when I was thirteen and in a new school. Where no one knew my name, my past or my upcoming future.

The year I turned fifteen, apart from characteristics that I hadn't noticed that nobody from my family had, I stated to notice my difference in appearances. True to my fathers genes my eyes changed colour every six years, and I had white blonde hair when I was a baby but now I had a mid dull mess of brown hair. It took three years to grow down past my back, but I cut it during the summer before I turned fifteen. It now lies just passed my shoulders and I plan to keep it that way.I wasn't as tall as the rest of my family but I do hope soon I will grow. I wasn’t good at sport. I didn’t get a good grades, I struggled in all my classes ,teachers often told my parents that I have a potential if I worked harder. I have tried many times and failed.

After the bullying I have lost my social skills. In secondary school I had a close group of six friends, at the start I had only three. I had lost a friend in my second year and was devastated when she had traded me up for a newer blonder version. A year later she was back being my friend and the other girl had no one after that. I had inhabited a new passion for executing devious plans of pure manipulation. I wasn't popular which led people of my year to think nothing much of me. They didn't see how big a threat I could be. I had sources in every year that allowed me to be the centre of the social food chain in our school without being noticed. It gave me a certain deal of power over everyone.

Like I said before two things in my life had stayed constant. My family and my closest friend.

We had met when we were maybe four years old. I told him everything and he told me everything. Things got complicated as we got older. He began to develop feelings for me, and I didn't. Through my entire life I had him by my side. I depended on him and he depended on me. He always had my back and agreed with me on everything. We never fought until I was fourteen or so. But everything changed the summer Before I turned fifteen. We had had a fight about his girlfriend ,the girl I got traded in for. I hated her and I guess I expected him to do the same as he had done for years, but he didn't and we didn't talk for months which was true hell. Then she went to the Gaeltacht and cheated on him, which to this very day he doesn't know. After she broke up with him our bond grew strong again. We spent the summer together by the river Liffey talking about anything and everything. Nights together we'd spend hopping along the bale of silage in the field behind his house and watch the sun until it went down. We were happy again and nothing was getting in the way. We were falling for each other. And I couldn’t help it. Then summer ended, and the storm began, the spiral of downfalls that led to my demise.

Everything took a turn for the worst. After the summer had ended I started studying for my junior cert( state exam). My friend was six months older and in the the year above me.

A week into the start of the school year one weekend I was with my friend and another two of our friends. We spent a Saturday night messing, watching movies, talking and doing nothing. Then we spent the rest of the night playing hide and seek in the dark. I was the Only girl.

Our summer of friendship was almost over, everything was about to change in one night. Instead of playing the game we lay on the bed fooling around. His soft hands on my legs, looking into my eyes, me cuddling into his chest. The next day I felt quite rational, I was going to tell him how I felt about him, we had been friends for so long I hoped it wouldn't change us too much. I spent that Sunday studying. I was begged to go outside but I refuse stupidly ,and it was my biggest mistake.my life may have been very different if I had just put down the book and went outside. But I didn't and it's my own fault. There was no point in blaming anybody else , believe me I tried to there was no one I could blame but myself. I tried to blame him and then I tried to blame her but it became like trying to carry water with a sieve. I was to blame. I try to be rational, I thought I was being rational but I wasn't, I wanted to think it through over and over again, but the more I thought about it, the more I hesitated and the more I hesitated the more I began to doubted I needed to have faith because faith is the banishment of doubt. The next day when I went into school and this so-called better version of me had announced through rumours that she was back together with my best friend. My heart felt like someone has shot at it, tore through the my very own flesh and and ripped it out of my body and left me there lying on the cold ground heartless and broken. I felt that way for a long time. I didn't even tell my closest girlfriends until three months later and my friend and I can to this day, not look each other in the eye.