Just a Thought-

         Everyone is perpetually feeling pain, with varied intensity.  It just takes a single thought to let it devour you.  Everyone also has the perpetual potential to feel happiness as a greater and stronger supplement.  It just takes a single thought to let it devour you.  Be wary, though, because one does not come without the other.  Pain and happiness are the best of soul mates.

August 2nd, 2015

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"Perceived Truths"
~A Short Story~

                                              
           They called him weird, but in a bad way.  They called him brilliant, but in a sarcastic way.  They called him trash, but in an honest way.  They called him worthless, but in a thoughtless way.  They hated him and he didn’t know why.
           I’ll let him remain nameless, only to be referred to as “the boy” for his own sake.
           He was the type of teenager who would take words from others that shouldn’t be said to any human being who has ever breathed life.  Staying silent, he would let his broken cringe speak for itself and his watery eyes beg for salvation.  Not only did he shake with fear all the time, but he walked as though the strength his bones once had to hold him up no longer existed, giving others a perfectly vulnerable target.
           A perfectly vulnerable target, he was, and many arrows took their shot at him, hitting the bullseye every time.  He wore the same sweatshirt every day, a gray one which had now become his best friend from being worn ever since he can remember.  It used to be blue.  Gross, you may declare?  Perhaps, but his parents didn’t care about him enough to supply him with anything else.  The other kids didn’t know that, though.  The other kids didn’t care.
           They would spit on him, knock him down in the hallways, yell terrifying threats at him, shove him in his locker which had once resulted in him being all alone in that confined cell for an entire weekend, and much, much more.
           He justified to himself that part of the reason he couldn’t fight back was his vision.  He was slowly becoming blind, slowly falling into the depths of nothingness.  Pretty soon, he would only see blackness, but right then he saw everything in a thick blur.  The other kids didn’t know that, though.  The other kids didn’t care.
           They would look at him like he was the only reason they were having a bad day, bad week, or even a bad year.  He was their scapegoat, even though they had never put the effort into knowing him.  How could they know who he really was?  How could they not even care?  Why couldn’t they look deeper than the mere surface and see a fellow struggler?
           All of these things, he wondered, doomed to no answer.
           I would tell you what they said to him, but such horrifying statements and curses should never be uttered again.  You would not want to know what they yelled at him every single day, for it might change the very way you think.  It would take the most positive human being’s perspective by the throat and twist it until only the negative and the hopeless remained.
           Just trust me, kind soul, ignorance is better here.
           He tried everything he could think of to escape everyone around him.  The boy tried to stay as transparent as possible because more people would like to stare through a glass window than at a blank wall.  Unfortunately, all of his efforts were futile.
           Then, one day, as he was weakly walking to school, he saw a pair of glasses on the ground.  With his shaggy brown hair almost covering in his crystal green eyes, he almost missed it.
           Alas, the deep black frames stood out among the lifelessly white snow on the sidewalk enough to be seen with his blurry vision.  He picked them up and examined them, wishing to himself that a simple pair of glasses could solve all of his problems.  Knowing the ridiculousness in that wish, he threw them aside and kept walking.
           Later that day, he saw them again.  They were hanging in his locker, dangling by a string that was attached.  Feeling as though the universe was only highlighting his misery in the fact that nothing can truly fix the life he was living, he ripped them from the hook and sadly laid them in the lost and found box in the school’s office.
           And, yet again, they showed up.  He was lying in bed that night and, suddenly, they appeared right next to him on his stiff pillow.  Denying the twisted reality that they really had been there once again, he fell asleep and awoke with them gone.
           Well, not gone.  He woke up the next day, got into the rusty shower, and found them propped on his head.  This time, he jumped back in disbelief.
           “How…how could this be happening?” he asked himself out loud.
           “I…I don’t deserve something like this,” he convinced himself.
           “They said…they said I’m worthless,” he reminded himself.
           Then, mustering up the single ounce of strength left in him after being beaten down countless times, he shakily put on the glasses.
           “What?”
           He still couldn’t see.  Everything was a blur, just as before, and his misery reigned on.
           Well, it did until school that day.
           He arrived with low hopes, as he always did because of how low everyone told him he was, but something strange was happened.
           Everyone was being nice to him.
           They weren’t being that creepy sort of nice, just a subtle kind; the kind where they walk past you in the halls and don’t look twice because they are dealing with their own insecurities as well.  He couldn’t believe it.  He had to walk up and say hi to someone, just to make sure he hadn’t disappeared from human existence altogether.
           “Hello?” he pushed out.
           “Oh, hi,” greeted a girl who was passing by.  She smiled and walked away, looking as though she was rushing somewhere.
           He cried out in happiness!  Finally, he could be a nobody who was somebody among all the others!  Finally, he could live and not be afraid that life was worse than death!  Finally, he could feel worth once again.
           Now, this may all seem like a quick change worthy of caution because a mere five minutes of bliss cannot determine a lifetime of it, but the boy didn’t care.   For once, he could not be afraid of being alive.   It was a nice feeling to him.
           Not used to happy endings, he reached for his glasses and thanked them.  He vigorously shook them and vowed never to leave them behind again because, for some strange reason, they change the way others see him.
           I suppose there could be a few lessons in this.
           Perhaps all it takes is a little perspective to see the truth.

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