Elevator Withdrawal

I think it's fair to say that in the past 7 weeks and three days I haven't been myself. If you've read my last post, you might hazard a guess as to why I might say that. I've been incredibly lax in all things previously important to me, and maybe in the process changing. Let us begin to document the change in Sara, starting with my vocabulary.

Words/phrases that disappeared from Sara's tongue:

-car crash
-collisions
-Nick
-love
-death, dead, die, dying, dead
-Bowdoin (his college)

Songs that I've stopped listening to:

You have to understand here that Nick loved music, any music, all music. You know those cell phones where you hold it up if you want to know what song the radio is playing and they overcharge you for the title of a song that once you buy you may listen to three times? Well, we could be walking along a street and no matter what language the song was in, from what genre or time period, Nick knew the name, the artist and the next line. So he made me three mixes over the course of our almost two years. None of those mixes had the titles to any of the songs. So I don't know them. But I know that when I'm driving and one of them comes on the radio, I have to pull over, because I start crying. The worst part is, I have no warning, because I don't know the titles of the songs, and some don't even have words.

Things I love doing less:

-listening to music
-completely committing myself
-swimming
-being alone
-being with people
-being the center of attention

Things I've started doing:

-crying
-writing in a journal more than once in a blue moon
-holing myself up in my room
-taking really long showers
-eating ice cream whenever I'm bored
-sleeping sporadically
-staying up so I don't have to turn out the lights
-not doing homework
-giving my friends weird, late-night phone calls

What people don't notice:

-I'm not the same

Amy talked about how some girls wrote about the great tragedy in their lives. I’m quickly learning that the only reason that I didn’t was because it hadn’t happened yet. Well, now it has.

Nick was the perfect boy for me. Go ahead, scoff if you’ve never met us, seen us together. We were that sickly sweet couple that never fought. For 20 months, that’s pretty good. I loved him with every ounce of who I was. I thought about him everyday, almost nearing obsession. He was the one person that knew me inside and out. Better than anyone. He was my confidant, my friend, my lover all rolled up into one. He knew all my secrets. I never kept anything from him. He didn’t keep stuff from me. We could laugh about anything. He was my sure-fire happy pill. No matter what mood I was in, what had me down, he could make me feel better. He would pet me, tell me he loved me, and suddenly the day would get better. Even seeing him for five minutes could make my day. He told me I was the love of his life. I told him the same thing. People were jealous of us. We seemed like the only happy couple to be found. Nothing between us ever went wrong, so wrong that seeing each other wouldn’t make it better. For what else do you go into a relationship for than to feel better? If you don’t feel better, what’s the point? He was my motivation to keep going.

After we’d been dating a couple of months, I made him promise me that he would never get seriously injured or die while I was dating him. Because I knew that no man could ever live up to the idyllic relationship that I had with him. It’s the one promise he ever broke to me. And he never broke his promises. So half of me keeps thinking he’s ok. But he isn’t. Nick was in a horrible car crash this morning. The other two boys that were in the car will be ok eventually. Nick was driving, and his side took the worse hit. His parents called me and I went to the hospital at 1 this morning. Numbly, I sat with his family for two hours, the doctors making period check-ins. Everyone kept telling everyone else that he was a strong boy, that he’d be fine. I stopped believing them. I just kept hoping that if I went to sleep, I wouldn’t wake up there, in that hospital waiting room, with him in critical condition, his mother crying, everyone trying to comfort her, she trying to comfort everyone else. Frantic phone calls. My hands were shaking, hell, they still are. I got up and asked the person at the desk for a piece of paper. I started writing: I need to—No. you need to wake up. Need to be ok. I need you Nick. Please. You promised. I don’t want to see you, I’m so afraid. You’re supposed to be the strong one. You’re supposed to be the smart one Nick. Don’t you know how much I need you? Please Nick, most days, you’re all that’s keeping me together, keeping me going. I need you Nick. ***, I’m going to start sobbing.

This is just a dream, right? If I just keep writing, maybe it is.

Finally, they moved us to another room, or started to. His doctor caught us while we were in transit. It didn’t sound good. He’d broken his pelvis in a few places, his lungs were both collapsed, and he had a brain injury. That it didn’t look good but they were trying with everything they had. The rest of the group walked to the second room, but I, for the first time that night, started crying. I don’t cry easily. Hell, I can count the number of times I’ve cried in high school up until today on one hand. My dad, thank goodness he was there, held me. He knew I was beyond comforting, he just held me. Suddenly, we saw a bed coming towards us, surrounded by hospital staff. I knew it was him. Somehow I knew. I couldn’t look. My father held me to him. He said this morning that he’d always thought of Nick as so grown up, but lying on the bed, he looked very young. That was when I decided I had to go home. I couldn’t just wait around the hospital. I went and said goodbye to his family and left. I got a call at 5:30 this morning saying that there was nothing the doctors could do. That Nick was gone.

Finally, a breather for us poor souls that you know, work their butts off at school. *sigh* My head hurts from writing college apps. I finished one, and my parents looked at the other one and said, this is crap, scrap it and re-write it. Sitting here now, looking out my window at the squirrels running up and down the tree branches outside my house. They always seem so intent on leaping from branch to branch. I wish I could be as free as that.

Tomorrow. We're going up to my aunt's llama farm in upstate New York. It's not really a llama farm per say, but she does have five llamas. They smell bad and spit. And that part of my family has this whole essential oils thing going. They believe that putting essence of mint in your tea will cure all sore throats, and that a lavender oil can heal all wounds, no matter what. The oils are smelly. I got some for my birthday a few years ago. They stayed in my room for a week or so until my sister came in and dumped one of them. I had to airate my room. Kind of horrible actually. *sigh* I love my extended family, but this love of theirs, well, it makes me want to run away. Wish me luck tomorrow.

What else can I say about my family and Thanksgiving. Well. If I ever get a second piercing or a tattoo, I can't come home for Thanksgiving. Besides that, I can't marry a Republican, unless I spend the rest of my life trying to convert him to our side. ;) And my mother's a really good cook, so now way I'd miss that.

As a senior in high school, I firmly believe that all emotional crap should wait until second semester, when the college apps are done. Ah yes, that long awaited senior slump that accompanies the sense of, 'Wow, I'm so done with high school.' Unfortunately, in my ring of friends, this could not be further from the reality. We seem to have, as a group, been attracted to older men, mostly boys in their freshman and sophomore years of college. Anyway, because of Thanksgiving break, many of these former lovers are coming back to town. O.o.

Before I go any farther, I have to say that my boyfriend is a freshman in college too. But we've been dating for a little over a year and a half, and we're both still really happy. We're the only ones in my group who have happily continued on from high school. Even though he lives a little far away, we talk all the time, and everyone complains that our relationship is what they want.

Ok, away from how perfect my relationship is, that was just to put it into perspective for you, and let you know why I almost never complain about it. So, back to my friends. When we were sophomores, one of my friends started dating a senior. They dated through his senior year, and freshman year, but broke it off at the end of last year. He went to school as far away as you could get and still be in the continental US. And, he turned into a pot head, slacking off. This year, he dropped out of college, and yep, you guessed it, came home this weekend. The entire group, including my friend, knows it would be a bad idea, a messy idea, for them to get back together, and that it certainly would not end well. But he wants her back. *sigh*

Then one of my best friends' boyfriends is also coming back. My friend (a boy) is meeting up with him today actually, and I don't know how that's going to go over. They met this summer, and haven't seen each other since the boyfriend left for college in September. I think that because they never knew each other that well in the first place, it's been hard for both of them to keep going. They run out of things to say to each other. *another big sigh*

Then, well, ok, the next one is kind of a complicated one. So... maybe I won't tell it. But suffice to say it's complicated and leads to a lot of tears.

So, well, yes. I think that we deserve to be able to put it all off for another few months. Hell, I still only have my early application done. I was applying to 8 schools, but some got added, some got taken away. The present grand total? 12. And two of them aren't even on the common app. *tear* (To every girl that is not yet a senior, make friends with the common app. And don't become a senior).

And its not even like I can sit back and enjoy being a senior, cause I have three AP classes that I need to keep doing work for and then kill my self studying for come April. Please excuse me while I go bang my head against a wall.

Mm. Exciting, a blog. I have to say, before I wrote 'Life Goes Up A Wall' for the book, I was strictly a poet. (Well, except for that one time...) So if you want to read my poems, click here. If I did it right (which I probably didn't) you'll be able to go there from my profile?

Anyway. I wrote a piece of creative nonfiction (a.k.a. a memoir). Here's a snippet. It's called Life Underwater.

I woke up, and stretched, itching the scratchy pjs, my mom picked out for me last night and rolled over, wishing I were still asleep. I started smiling, remembering what I’d been dreaming of. I threw off the covers and rushed upstairs to tell my mom before I forgot. I found her in the kitchen. She sat me down at the table, with an island of steaming oatmeal in milk. I heaped sugar on it, and told her that about my dream. “What did you dream about, Sara?” Still sleepy, I smiled at her, my feet swinging above the floor. “I want to start swimming.” “Why? Don’t you like ballet?” “In my dream, I was swimming and a man was drownding. I saved him, and he fell in love with me and we got married.” She laughed at me. “Were you watching the Little Mermaid last night?” “No.” I frowned. “I want to swim.”

~jump~

Outside pools can be deadly, especially for backstrokers like me. Without lines on the ceiling above me to keep me swimming straight, I end up swimming in zigzags. Besides, outdoor pools are ruined by the sun, which hurts my eyes if I don’t squint. Thank goodness for tinted goggles. So I was avoiding the sun, lying on my back on the bottom of the pool. I stared up from under three feet of water, up at the shimmery world above me. Trails of bubbles meandered skyward. Suddenly a shadow blocked out the sun. I cursed to myself. I was almost out of air, but I dove farther down to avoid being run over by my father, who was swimming laps above me. He hadn’t noticed me on the floor of the pool and swam right overhead. When he’d passed, I furiously kicked to the surface. I rose out of the pool with a dramatic hair flip, which kind of failed because of the goggles. I shivered in the cool air and slowly sank back into my underwater haven.

When my sophomore World History teacher found out I was on the swim team, he laughed.
“How does all your hair fit under the swim cap?”
I frowned at him. “It just does.”
He laughed.