Wake Up

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Kaida Knox

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I can’t remember what I did last. I can’t remember what my name is. I watch the world revolve the sun and the moon revolve around the world. People have something that revolves around them. But why doesn’t something revolve around me? I remember that when I was little, I always cared about everyone else more than myself, putting their needs before mine. But then their “needs” became greater and more irrelevant, but I still tended to them. Soon, I had no time to tend to my own, and, like a chain reaction, I realized I didn’t have any particular “needs”. But don’t normal people have needs? If I don’t then I can’t be a person. If I’m not a person, how can something revolve around me?

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I remember seeing tears plop onto the hot cement coming from the direction of my face, but I don’t remember letting them fall. I don’t remember feeling them tumble down my cheeks, and I certainly don’t remember the sensation I get in my eyelids when I normally cry. I look around for someone else near me who the tears that I still see falling onto the sidewalk might belong to. There is no one within a five-foot radius of me, and I look back down at the sidewalk. They are arriving onto the sidewalk faster than before. I touch my cheeks with both hands and feel nothing but air. I try to make tears of my own, but my eyes have become nub.

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I look around me in a self-conscious way but my vision goes blurry, almost like I’m going blind. I sit down right there in the middle of the pile of washed-up tears and closed my eyes. is this what it would be like to run away or get lost in a big city? People pass by me, as if I’m not here, muttering things to their friends and giggling. I think I even hear some guy laughing.

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Suddenly someone jumped on me, causing me to lay flat down on my back I didn’t feel an impact, but I opened my eyes to see my little sister on top of me shaking my shoulders, as she does every morning to wake me up. I tried to speak, but it was as if my vocal chords had been ripped out of my throat and thrown into the nearest trash bin. A woman who looked vaguely like my mother pulled my sister back into the crowd, leaving me alone to ponder my thoughts.

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I screamed helplessly, again with no sound. I tried to stand up, but my legs had fallen under the same spell of numbness the rest of my body had already fallen victim to. I banged my head against the pavement, longing to feel the heated cement melt under my thick skull, but I felt nothing but constant dizziness.

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I turned my head to the side and saw two black cats, unmoving, facing me, staring at me, across the street under a French café table. Bright green eyes caught my blue ones in a cold glare. I sighed and looked up at the big blue sky. Today it was abnormally big and abnormally blue. The word ‘innocent’ stuck me for some odd reason. I could feel my body heat up with the cats’ glares. I could do nothing but watch as my restored vision became blurred yet again.

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A sensation filled my body as I closed my eyes, trying to get a grip on the reality I have come to know. I felt my body being lifted up from whatever was holding me before. I could feel bloodless eyes examining my should-be-dead wish-I-was body. I could feel the ice in their glares and I could feel their hapless smiles shine down on me, but I never opened my eyes. I’m sick of doing what others want.

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I want to do what I want for once. I wanted to be a writer. No, no, kill that. I want to be a writer. Better yet, I am a writer. I am an artist. I am…who am I? I mentioned before I don’t remember my name…but then why did I recognize my sister?

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I want to make my own decisions. I want to be my own person, not my mother’s and definitely not my father’s. the first decision I will make will be to…to what? I don’t know if I can do this…

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I…I…I want…

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I want to wake up.