Plopped alone on my single bed,I stare at the length of my arms covered by a generous scarlet sprinkling of measles,as if staring at them long enough would make them vanish.I squeeze my eyes shut and pray that they do,but it's not happening.Yet again,I realise the magnitude of how little a fuck,people,especially adults give about each other.I have no where to sleep for the night,and in an empty hostel room,it's just my despair,my rubella covered arms and the awareness of my adulthood sharing space and a comfortable silence between us.
I'm alone with my thoughts again and the sound of them haunts me like a late Sunday afternoon when everyone is asleep and the corridor reeks of quiet.I realise I have caved in to rejection,caved in to the belief that my writing is not good enough for the couple of college societies that I thought I could have been a part of,that as much as I dislike going home,it is symbolic of a screwed up sense of comfort.I've stopped looking for a physical sense of home,altogether because no matter how wonderful the people,how positive the atmosphere..there is bound to be a deep seated emptiness that cannot be forgotten.Like a dark room with soft music,when it's raining incessantly outdoors-a feeling so immensely beautiful,it has a sense of tragedy looming about it.I've come to realise,college isn't half the dream it's promised to be and just like school,there will be lecturers who will produce a physical reaction of fear in most of the class with mere words.Life almost never turns out as planned,planning is futile,it just happens-for better or for worse.It's quite a struggle for me to just stop and try to participate,before it fleets away in the blink of an eyelid,leave alone trying to control anything.
Maybe my words and dreams are tainted in the very hue my arms are-rubella red,bold.Maybe they aren't for most people to understand and maybe,this is just a mere consolation I'm trying to get by each day on.It is good enough to make it with the lack of any encouragement,making a mark might be difficult for me,but I just might be a phoenix,reborn from ashes and I just might be Sisyphus,rolling a stone up a hill,that I know will come crashing down the slope,anyway.There is much grace in being either of them,I suppose.The most essential fact that keeps me afloat on rocky seas,however,is that I still write.I write for myself,I write when I'm rejected and feel inferior,I write when I discover I might be an average,first generation literature student,I write for my loneliness and I write for my joy.I write because I've survived and I try,each day to make a little more sense of my survival.I write for my childhood self and the broken home I grew up in,the stories that need to be told.Despite not having read cannons like my classmates have or being on editorial boards and having published lengths of my writing,I write.
Because that's the point,isn't it? Making the best of what you've got.Like Scout Finch understood of what Atticus said to her about the best kinda folks being ones who make the best of what they get.
