-1Driftwood: Song’s Blade…

After that defining moment when I learned of Trista’s passing, I found that despite the fact that the tears tore at my throat to break out, they only did so when I’d told our other dear friend, one whom we both had cared for and loved immensely, the eldest of us all. Jeanne and I have wandered apart recently, events spurred on by education and jobs that we had no control over pulling us from our once close days. But, despite all that she ever was to me, and all she still is, in the hours that I’ve wasted away with tears and anguish, no one has come to comfort me more than the sylphs and zephyrs, the winds soothing wounds that only scar over with time.

Wind and wave, the song they weave together, that is what draws me back from a half-imagined world to chilling reality, despite my refusals otherwise. However, that very tune is one of my few talents, and music commands as much of my soul as writing does. I’m no musician, save for voice, nor am I a composer or lyricist. But, that doesn’t bother me in the least. So long as I may sing, I may live. Trista’s death drew me into choir again, allowing me to lose myself in the words, the notes, the joy and the sorrows of another time period.

Choir faded away to art and writing, painting and Silaver consuming my time by the end of my high school days. Imagination running wild most days, I ended my tenure at U.S.D. 305 with a haughty assurance that no one could quite shake. A summer of working and wandering about, preparing haphazardly for college while not learning a thing has proven to this very day how much of a child I still was, despite all the fancy and complicated words I spun into story and poem. I was a fool…still am, in my opinion, but then again, who in their right mind isn’t? Ah, but that first year of college…a few of you met up with two sets of my poems, those which were based on several strange and wonderfully weird dreams that I had.

However, the second semester has gifted me with little in the way of production in just about everything; haven’t much going for me, do I? Ah, well. The scars of memories that I’d rather were buried forever rose up again in the form of a sense of utter failure, to myself, my family, and my teachers, in part because of my painful recession in the area of drawing. I was so angry at my teacher, but mostly at myself for not being able to do what she asked of me, despite the inquiries being at a level that I’d not yet reached. I was so ready at the end of the first semester…why did I seem to only get worse?

And so I blessed choir and all their antics, still a lone wolf at heart but at last able to throw myself headlong into something I enjoyed immensely…and be good at it. That’s probably the worse part of being who I am; I despise myself so much sometimes simply because I’m not good enough to be recognizable at certain things. Despite that self-loathing and the depression that follows it’s heels, I think perhaps that I’ve managed to learn more about myself and my heart’s desires more in the past few months than in the last twelve years. I still do stupid things, and I still look at myself in the mirror and wish I was a little bit skinnier or a little bit prettier, but at last, I think I’m beginning to like who I am…for who I am.

KD