Post by Dreamer on May 30, 2007 0:54:30 GMT -5
Hey, y'all! Okay, so this is something I thought up the other day and quickly typed out... I'm not sure how good it is and I figure it needs some editing but I'd love to know what y'all think and any suggestions!! Thank you!!
Rated TEEN for violent suggestions and mention of rape.
Karen was always the type of girl you looked at and thought, “Boy, she’s got it all worked out... everything goes for her! Man, I wish I could be just a little bit more like her!” I looked up to her, as well as many other girls in my class and the neighborhood where we both lived. She had one brother, a younger brother, and a single mother who’s husband, her father, had died at the young age of 32 leaving behind a struggling 28 year old wife, 13 year old daughter and 3 year old son. 4 years later she seemed to have moved on almost completely though she did get upset some if he was mentioned too much... Still, she seemed to have everything together. But over the course of my 19 years I’ve learned that you cannot and must not judge people, for good or bad, by how they appear on the outside. You see, Karen didn’t have anything together... she didn’t have it worked out and that became clear to me the night I found her laying on the grass of Joey Martin’s back yard, her clothes torn, her eyes blood shot and puffy, her hair a mess and blood running down from her left temple to her neck.
I had just come out the back door of Joey’s house, he was throwing a party since his parents were out of town for the weekend and half of our senior class was there, dancing, laughing, drinking, eating and you name it. I felt uncomfortable when this guy, Seth Landon, started staring at me and looking me up and down. I decided people were just too messed up by this hour, it was 1:12am and the party had begun at about 8:00pm. Seth had been “checking me out” and getting drunker by the minute since about 12:30am. I left at 1:30am and that’s when I found Karen in the back yard, she was partially under some bushes and was barely conscious. I looked at her with shock, she’d either been beaten or got in a fight judging by the bruises on her face, arms and legs! I bent down next to her and took her pulse, she was okay, she seemed extremely weak but not on the verge of death or anything. I let out my breath and brushed some hair out of her eyes asking her what had happened. She just looked up at me, clearly high, and a tear fell from her right eye. She was a heart wrenching scene to look at that night...
Turns out Seth Landon had raped and beaten her. She told me this after I got her out to the driveway and into my car. I was going to take her home and thanked God that I hadn’t just walked to the party like my first plan had been to do. What made me change my mind was this very thing! I was afraid some guy might get a little too messed up and try to get something from me he couldn’t have... So I “borrowed” my mother’s keys and took her car, thankfully she was out of town with Joey’s parents... we were supposed to be “responsible” enough to take care of ourselves for a weekend! And we were responsible enough to take care of ourselves for the weekend but going to the party hadn’t exactly been the greatest idea and Joey’s throwing it was even worse. Beside the point though, I was just glad I had come in a car.
“Karen, you want me to take you home, right?” I asked, once we were down the street a little ways.
“I... I wish I had somewhere to crash...” she had mumbled.
“Um... How ‘bout my place?” I asked, I knew my mom wasn’t there and that as long as I didn’t throw a party she wouldn’t mind that I had had a girl friend over anyway.
“Could I? That’d be great, Tara... thanks...” she said.
“No problem...” we drove silently until I pulled into my driveway when she burst out suddenly, “Tara... Seth he... he raped me tonight....”
I had figured she’d been raped and Seth was just the kind of guy I’d expect to do it so it didn’t come as that much of a shock when she said it. I put an arm around her shoulders and said softly, “Come on in the house and take a shower and get cleaned up then, if you want, we can talk. And, Karen, it’s gonna be okay...” I didn’t know what else to say and she just sniffed, wiped some tears with the back of her hand and followed me into the house.
We talked and, by the next morning, she seemed back to her normal, laughing, smiling self. She asked me not to tell anyone. I promised but it bugged me at the same time... I mean, I knew he did it, I knew she’d gotten drunk/high the night before and I just felt like I should let her mother know... at least about the rape. But she made me promise and I never broke a promise... Now, I wish I had.
It was the last day of school, a month, exactly, since the night I had found Karen, and we were supposed to get out of school but come back next Thursday for our Graduation ceremony. I was excited, I was going to spend the summer with all my friends, I was certain that Les Turner was going to ask me out any second and I was going to college in the fall. It was all planned out perfectly and seemed to fit together like a puzzle. I was even going to college with my best friend! Did it get much better!? No, but it got worse. I was walking with Ginger, my best friend since 3rd grade, when we came across something. A purse... it was in the middle of the sidewalk and we couldn’t see anybody around who might have just dropped it so we looked inside for some ID. It was Karen Bakers’s purse. Karen, the girl who Seth had raped... I gasped and tried to stop from screaming but couldn’t. It quickly turned to a high pitched shriek as I realized it was really true. Ginger saw it too, she turned white and leaned on me. I was too frozen in horror to move or say anything, Ginger squeaked something inaudible as Jerry Martin, Joey’s brother, came running down the street from his house at the sound of my scream.
“What’s going on-” he stopped short and paled.
Police arrived shortly and that was that... Karen Baker had murdered herself on the corner of Lancewood and Sheldon Rd. on May the 23rd, her last day as a senior in high school... the beginning of her adult life... she’d thrown it all away.
Ginger and I found her laying, face down, in the ditch on Sheldon Rd. The ditch was big too, and deep. Not just your average little ditch that runs along the side of the road to catch excess rain water. No, this was a huge, deep, drainage ditch. Karen and “fallen” or “jumped” in, bumped her head, and died overnight. It hadn’t been a quick death and all I could think about for the next week or so was what went through her mind after “falling” in, to the point that she actually passed away.
I had been convinced that she was okay for so long... but she wasn’t... she never had been really... she’d just done an amazing job of covering up the pain she suffered. Her parents found notes in her purse... they were addressed to certain people and there was one for me. Karen and I had been pretty good friends since the raping incident so there was another reason I was shocked she’d kill herself... wouldn’t I have seen some sign of it!? And why not cut her wrist or overdose.. why throw yourself into a pit that might not actually kill you anyway? Maybe that had been just it... maybe she wanted somebody to find her half dead and help her... maybe she was too afraid to just kill herself... Whatever the reason though, she had done it... she was dead.
The note, which I didn’t read for a month after her funeral, was heart breaking... I should have seen her suffering long before... someone should have! But now it was too late...
Dear Tara,
I can’t thank you enough for the friend you’ve been to me, especially recently, but I’ve gotta get out of this place now... I’m so sick of looking in the mirror and thinking that my real self is on the other side...
I've been looking in the mirror for so long,
That I've come to believe my soul's on the other side.
What is on the other side of a mirror though? Is it your soul perhaps? Maybe it is and I’ve been right all along... Maybe all you need to do is take the pieces from the front and arrange them correctly on the back so they make sense... like building a puzzle from the back... But it’d be so hard and they’d probably never fit right anyway.
All the little pieces falling, shatter.
Shards of me,
Too sharp to put back together.
Too small to matter...
But maybe, more likely, it’s not. It’s just a black background and it’s simply ugly and pointless... It just serves as exactly what it is; a back... Pointless. Just like me.
But big enough to cut me into so many little pieces.
If I try to touch her...
And I bleed...
I bleed...
And I breathe,
I wanted to drop the letter right there and run to her grave screaming, “Oh, Karen! You aren’t pointless! You never were pointless!!! What made you think that!?” as if that would bring her back... but I knew it wouldn’t and I couldn’t go back in time to tell her that so I had to live on... I read on.
I breathe no more.
Well, never mind that, I just wanted to thank you for being my friend and for showing me that there are still some people in the world who can be nice... But that’s it... there aren’t enough...
Take a breath and I try to draw from my spirits well.
Yet again you refuse to drink like a stubborn child.
I’m having to do what I’m doing because there just aren’t enough... The rest are all lying, back stabbers who drill it into your head that you’re ill and the only way you’ll ever be well is if you do this and do that... and turn into something you’re not. Something you could never be because you can’t live up to their outlandish standards... But still, they keep pressing you, insisting that things will come into view as soon as you’re well which you can only be if you obey them like a robot. But ‘eh, who cares... I know the truth... What do they care about me for anyway? Oh yeah, that’s right... I don’t think they do... I think they only want me to do what they do and be a robot like them who goes around keeping up with whether or not TomKat is still together and what shoes go good with what dress and what’s hot this summer. Yeah, apparently they don’t care about the actual me inside of this flesh and bone...
Lie to me,
Convince me that I've been sick forever...
And all of this,
Will make sense when I get better.
But I know the difference,
Between myself and my reflection...
I just can't help but to wonder,
Which of us do you love...
So I bleed...
I bleed...
And I breathe,
I breathe no...
Well, I think I’ll leave you with that... Thanks again for being a friend, never change! (He, he... I was going to write this on your year book but...) So long for now!
Your friend,
Karen
Bleed...
I bleed...
And I breathe...
I sat there on the edge of my bed, my cheeks covered with tears and my eyes blurry with unshed ones for the longest time... I couldn’t think straight... I couldn’t think at all, in fact. So I just lay down, clutching that note... breathing silently until I fell asleep...
I breathe...
Now I don’t look up to people like Karen... I don’t look up to anyone in fact... I’m just me and I don’t ever pass somebody by without smiling and telling them they’re special. Ever. And if all my friends want to go read magazines and see if TomKat’s still together I smile and tell them I’ll wait outside where I smile at everyone who passes by and tell them what a wonderful thing the world is and how beautiful and precious life is. Some pass me by without so much as a glance, some smile and nod in rushed, “yeah, yeah... I’m sure I’d agree with whatever you’re saying but I’m far too busy to listen.” Some look at me like I’m crazy, some smile like I’m a lost 5 year old looking for her mother... But some... some actually sit and talk to me. They discuss what I’m saying and most of them have been through something just like me... And those are the ones who become my lifelong, true, close friends.
I breathe...
I still go to Karen’s grave every now and then... just to thank her for everything she showed me without knowing she showed me... And mostly, for teaching me how wonderful life really is. Sometimes it feels like she’s there with me... In fact, just the other day I was standing to leave, after talking to her for a second and putting out fresh flowers, when I could swear I heard her, purely angelic, voice softly singing what she had told me was her favorite song. I sang along just like she always asked me to do when she’d sing it... And for the first time ever, I realized why it was her favorite song. It fit her like a book... a book that no one had ever read.
I breathe no more.
Breathing No More is my original work and is owned by me. Based around the song: Breath No More by Evanescence which I do not own.
Thanks for reading, please be sure and let me know what you think!!! Thank you!
Rated TEEN for violent suggestions and mention of rape.
Breathing No More
Anna Christie
Anna Christie
Karen was always the type of girl you looked at and thought, “Boy, she’s got it all worked out... everything goes for her! Man, I wish I could be just a little bit more like her!” I looked up to her, as well as many other girls in my class and the neighborhood where we both lived. She had one brother, a younger brother, and a single mother who’s husband, her father, had died at the young age of 32 leaving behind a struggling 28 year old wife, 13 year old daughter and 3 year old son. 4 years later she seemed to have moved on almost completely though she did get upset some if he was mentioned too much... Still, she seemed to have everything together. But over the course of my 19 years I’ve learned that you cannot and must not judge people, for good or bad, by how they appear on the outside. You see, Karen didn’t have anything together... she didn’t have it worked out and that became clear to me the night I found her laying on the grass of Joey Martin’s back yard, her clothes torn, her eyes blood shot and puffy, her hair a mess and blood running down from her left temple to her neck.
I had just come out the back door of Joey’s house, he was throwing a party since his parents were out of town for the weekend and half of our senior class was there, dancing, laughing, drinking, eating and you name it. I felt uncomfortable when this guy, Seth Landon, started staring at me and looking me up and down. I decided people were just too messed up by this hour, it was 1:12am and the party had begun at about 8:00pm. Seth had been “checking me out” and getting drunker by the minute since about 12:30am. I left at 1:30am and that’s when I found Karen in the back yard, she was partially under some bushes and was barely conscious. I looked at her with shock, she’d either been beaten or got in a fight judging by the bruises on her face, arms and legs! I bent down next to her and took her pulse, she was okay, she seemed extremely weak but not on the verge of death or anything. I let out my breath and brushed some hair out of her eyes asking her what had happened. She just looked up at me, clearly high, and a tear fell from her right eye. She was a heart wrenching scene to look at that night...
Turns out Seth Landon had raped and beaten her. She told me this after I got her out to the driveway and into my car. I was going to take her home and thanked God that I hadn’t just walked to the party like my first plan had been to do. What made me change my mind was this very thing! I was afraid some guy might get a little too messed up and try to get something from me he couldn’t have... So I “borrowed” my mother’s keys and took her car, thankfully she was out of town with Joey’s parents... we were supposed to be “responsible” enough to take care of ourselves for a weekend! And we were responsible enough to take care of ourselves for the weekend but going to the party hadn’t exactly been the greatest idea and Joey’s throwing it was even worse. Beside the point though, I was just glad I had come in a car.
“Karen, you want me to take you home, right?” I asked, once we were down the street a little ways.
“I... I wish I had somewhere to crash...” she had mumbled.
“Um... How ‘bout my place?” I asked, I knew my mom wasn’t there and that as long as I didn’t throw a party she wouldn’t mind that I had had a girl friend over anyway.
“Could I? That’d be great, Tara... thanks...” she said.
“No problem...” we drove silently until I pulled into my driveway when she burst out suddenly, “Tara... Seth he... he raped me tonight....”
I had figured she’d been raped and Seth was just the kind of guy I’d expect to do it so it didn’t come as that much of a shock when she said it. I put an arm around her shoulders and said softly, “Come on in the house and take a shower and get cleaned up then, if you want, we can talk. And, Karen, it’s gonna be okay...” I didn’t know what else to say and she just sniffed, wiped some tears with the back of her hand and followed me into the house.
We talked and, by the next morning, she seemed back to her normal, laughing, smiling self. She asked me not to tell anyone. I promised but it bugged me at the same time... I mean, I knew he did it, I knew she’d gotten drunk/high the night before and I just felt like I should let her mother know... at least about the rape. But she made me promise and I never broke a promise... Now, I wish I had.
It was the last day of school, a month, exactly, since the night I had found Karen, and we were supposed to get out of school but come back next Thursday for our Graduation ceremony. I was excited, I was going to spend the summer with all my friends, I was certain that Les Turner was going to ask me out any second and I was going to college in the fall. It was all planned out perfectly and seemed to fit together like a puzzle. I was even going to college with my best friend! Did it get much better!? No, but it got worse. I was walking with Ginger, my best friend since 3rd grade, when we came across something. A purse... it was in the middle of the sidewalk and we couldn’t see anybody around who might have just dropped it so we looked inside for some ID. It was Karen Bakers’s purse. Karen, the girl who Seth had raped... I gasped and tried to stop from screaming but couldn’t. It quickly turned to a high pitched shriek as I realized it was really true. Ginger saw it too, she turned white and leaned on me. I was too frozen in horror to move or say anything, Ginger squeaked something inaudible as Jerry Martin, Joey’s brother, came running down the street from his house at the sound of my scream.
“What’s going on-” he stopped short and paled.
Police arrived shortly and that was that... Karen Baker had murdered herself on the corner of Lancewood and Sheldon Rd. on May the 23rd, her last day as a senior in high school... the beginning of her adult life... she’d thrown it all away.
Ginger and I found her laying, face down, in the ditch on Sheldon Rd. The ditch was big too, and deep. Not just your average little ditch that runs along the side of the road to catch excess rain water. No, this was a huge, deep, drainage ditch. Karen and “fallen” or “jumped” in, bumped her head, and died overnight. It hadn’t been a quick death and all I could think about for the next week or so was what went through her mind after “falling” in, to the point that she actually passed away.
I had been convinced that she was okay for so long... but she wasn’t... she never had been really... she’d just done an amazing job of covering up the pain she suffered. Her parents found notes in her purse... they were addressed to certain people and there was one for me. Karen and I had been pretty good friends since the raping incident so there was another reason I was shocked she’d kill herself... wouldn’t I have seen some sign of it!? And why not cut her wrist or overdose.. why throw yourself into a pit that might not actually kill you anyway? Maybe that had been just it... maybe she wanted somebody to find her half dead and help her... maybe she was too afraid to just kill herself... Whatever the reason though, she had done it... she was dead.
The note, which I didn’t read for a month after her funeral, was heart breaking... I should have seen her suffering long before... someone should have! But now it was too late...
Dear Tara,
I can’t thank you enough for the friend you’ve been to me, especially recently, but I’ve gotta get out of this place now... I’m so sick of looking in the mirror and thinking that my real self is on the other side...
I've been looking in the mirror for so long,
That I've come to believe my soul's on the other side.
What is on the other side of a mirror though? Is it your soul perhaps? Maybe it is and I’ve been right all along... Maybe all you need to do is take the pieces from the front and arrange them correctly on the back so they make sense... like building a puzzle from the back... But it’d be so hard and they’d probably never fit right anyway.
All the little pieces falling, shatter.
Shards of me,
Too sharp to put back together.
Too small to matter...
But maybe, more likely, it’s not. It’s just a black background and it’s simply ugly and pointless... It just serves as exactly what it is; a back... Pointless. Just like me.
But big enough to cut me into so many little pieces.
If I try to touch her...
And I bleed...
I bleed...
And I breathe,
I wanted to drop the letter right there and run to her grave screaming, “Oh, Karen! You aren’t pointless! You never were pointless!!! What made you think that!?” as if that would bring her back... but I knew it wouldn’t and I couldn’t go back in time to tell her that so I had to live on... I read on.
I breathe no more.
Well, never mind that, I just wanted to thank you for being my friend and for showing me that there are still some people in the world who can be nice... But that’s it... there aren’t enough...
Take a breath and I try to draw from my spirits well.
Yet again you refuse to drink like a stubborn child.
I’m having to do what I’m doing because there just aren’t enough... The rest are all lying, back stabbers who drill it into your head that you’re ill and the only way you’ll ever be well is if you do this and do that... and turn into something you’re not. Something you could never be because you can’t live up to their outlandish standards... But still, they keep pressing you, insisting that things will come into view as soon as you’re well which you can only be if you obey them like a robot. But ‘eh, who cares... I know the truth... What do they care about me for anyway? Oh yeah, that’s right... I don’t think they do... I think they only want me to do what they do and be a robot like them who goes around keeping up with whether or not TomKat is still together and what shoes go good with what dress and what’s hot this summer. Yeah, apparently they don’t care about the actual me inside of this flesh and bone...
Lie to me,
Convince me that I've been sick forever...
And all of this,
Will make sense when I get better.
But I know the difference,
Between myself and my reflection...
I just can't help but to wonder,
Which of us do you love...
So I bleed...
I bleed...
And I breathe,
I breathe no...
Well, I think I’ll leave you with that... Thanks again for being a friend, never change! (He, he... I was going to write this on your year book but...) So long for now!
Your friend,
Karen
Bleed...
I bleed...
And I breathe...
I sat there on the edge of my bed, my cheeks covered with tears and my eyes blurry with unshed ones for the longest time... I couldn’t think straight... I couldn’t think at all, in fact. So I just lay down, clutching that note... breathing silently until I fell asleep...
I breathe...
Now I don’t look up to people like Karen... I don’t look up to anyone in fact... I’m just me and I don’t ever pass somebody by without smiling and telling them they’re special. Ever. And if all my friends want to go read magazines and see if TomKat’s still together I smile and tell them I’ll wait outside where I smile at everyone who passes by and tell them what a wonderful thing the world is and how beautiful and precious life is. Some pass me by without so much as a glance, some smile and nod in rushed, “yeah, yeah... I’m sure I’d agree with whatever you’re saying but I’m far too busy to listen.” Some look at me like I’m crazy, some smile like I’m a lost 5 year old looking for her mother... But some... some actually sit and talk to me. They discuss what I’m saying and most of them have been through something just like me... And those are the ones who become my lifelong, true, close friends.
I breathe...
I still go to Karen’s grave every now and then... just to thank her for everything she showed me without knowing she showed me... And mostly, for teaching me how wonderful life really is. Sometimes it feels like she’s there with me... In fact, just the other day I was standing to leave, after talking to her for a second and putting out fresh flowers, when I could swear I heard her, purely angelic, voice softly singing what she had told me was her favorite song. I sang along just like she always asked me to do when she’d sing it... And for the first time ever, I realized why it was her favorite song. It fit her like a book... a book that no one had ever read.
I breathe no more.
Breathing No More is my original work and is owned by me. Based around the song: Breath No More by Evanescence which I do not own.
Thanks for reading, please be sure and let me know what you think!!! Thank you!
