The Girl in the Rain

People seem to think I’m something special. I used to think so, too.

She stares at the stark black words against the white glowing computer screen. It’s funny how the words sound like something out of an angst-filled teenage movie or book. It feels raw and red to spell things out so bluntly. Or maybe the soreness she has lived with for years is just now becoming too much to bear.

I can’t blame what’s happened to me or what I’ve become on other people or their actions. Wish I could, but I know better. I can’t say it isn’t my fault more than anyone else’s.

“More than anyone’s,” she murmurs, as is her habit of whispering a constant litany of half-spoken sentences to herself. One of her many signs of psychosis, as effortlessly concealed as a moth on the bark of a tree.

I guess I just never understood why no one ever noticed. Why, if they cared about me as much as they said they did, no one ever realized. I just wanted someone to save me, just once. But I realized I’m not the girl you rush out into the rain after.

Her eyes are red and wet, and sometimes her chest heaves as if with sobs, but there are no tears.

People always told me that I could be something great and no one seems to understand why I’m not. I don’t understand, either. I wish I wasn’t so patient. I have patience enough for the whole world. I waited for everybody, but no one wants to wait for me. Always rush rush rush, if you haven’t done it now you never will. I wish I didn’t resent everyone because I can’t be happy. I wish I could have stopped wishing and just been.

She stops, reads over what she’s written.

“Too much, too much, too much,” she hums to herself, opening the bottle of rum that she’s been pressing between her knees and taking several long swallows. Grimacing at the taste as it burns down her throat, she quickly chases the liquor with a handful of prescription painkillers from a Zip-loc bag lying next to her on the desk. Another quick swallow to coax them down, and she carefully sets the bottle down near her feet.

Wordlessly, she tapped the backspace key until her entire document was erased.

No one waits. I wish I could have.

She leaves her last two sentences on the screen, cursor blinking expectantly, and lays her head down on her desk.

A few hours later, her mother looks in on her before she heads to bed. She sees her daughter fast asleep, finally having finished her homework. With a smile and not even a backwards glance, she heads up to bed.