The Tales of a Ticking Time Bomb

    Here I find myself again. Laying in the middle of my bedroom floor and staring up at a darkened light fixture. My life couldn’t be more perfect and more terrible, all at the same time. One of the best people I ever knew, dead for thirteen years now. My father loves me too much to tell me he doesn’t believe in me. And the man I love, an atheist.

    I know what you’re probably thinking; I'm seventeen; what could I possibly know about love. As you'll soon find out, I know much more about love than you could ever dream of knowing. And as far as the atheist part, well, I'm a Christian, and none too likely to missionary date.

    I come here to cry, to think. About what my life's become, what it was, and what I hope it's going to be. My thoughts come in the form of tears. Dredged up memories rising to the surface. I can still see his smiling face; it tells me that I can do whatever I want to do, can be whoever I want to be. I believe it's only him that's kept me on the straight-and-narrow. But that face was gone a long time ago, they tell me. I'm crazy for thinking I remember anything he ever said, being only four and all. But after all he may have been the first adult, besides my parents, to attempt to get to know me, with his own kids being fully grown. I loved him as any child would have. Children love everything good around them. For children, everything's rainbows and toys and candy and magic until you grow up and smell the smog. Boy, is that a smack in the face, and one I was on the receiving end of way too early in life. A car turns from a magical carriage into just a mode of transportation. A horse changes from a beautiful loving creature into a poop-making food-eater. The average daily routine transfers from sleep-eat-play-eat-play-eat-sleep into sleep-eat-school-eat-work-eat-sleep, or, in some cases, sleep-work-eat-work-sleep. Except me. Why didn't that happen? - I'll never know. But what I do know is that the polar opposite seemed to occur. Every single day of my life was and is spent on sucking every speck of love and joy into my soul in a weary attempt to fill a bottomless pit. To this day I look at every blade of grass as a piece of life, each drop of dew on a spider's web as a beautiful creation. Maybe it's because it is that was, or maybe it's because I need it to be. Either way, again, I'll never know.

    My life is filled with people who see the same. People who see the beauty in perfect handwriting, a freshly vacuumed carpet, and a cloudless sunrise. They're what keep me alive. I see each one as an investment. I help keep up their morale, and they help keep up mine. Their beauty in their character gives  me another reason to look for hope within a world that seems otherwise utterly hopeless.

    My family is a part of my hopelessness. The extended one anyways. each cousin out of 36 slowly going off the rails at one time or another. Aunts that fail to realize that the crap they're receiving is merely a return to sender, and the uncles tend to be the ones delivering it to the post office. One grandmother whose lack of presence is duelly felt and another whose overabundance of presence is slowly murdering my mother. The constant input of drama can only be held in for so long. Most of the time I feel like I'm the only one who'd never done anything drastically wrong. Sure, I've gotten some C's before and I've sworn all of five times in my life, but it's not like I've slept around, or done drugs, or shaved my head or anything. So why do i feel the burden of it? Or is it the reverse? Is the burden to be perfect? The burden that, if I do screw up, they'll all silently mock me and say, "See, you're no different from the rest of us"? Like I'm just another leaf on the tree in autumn - it'll fall in due time. Or will I be a leaf that lasts through the winter and holds a beautiful living secret which is released in due time? Either way, I'm just waiting for my due time. Will I screw up? Or will I end up a beautiful individual?

    Don't mistake my word "beautiful" to mean aesthetically pleasing. Each person has their own beautiful, and those who depend too much on the aesthetic meaning care too much about the way other think about them, care so much that they fail to realize that most of them weren't looking in the first place.

    My beautiful is based upon what I think I've become. Am I the person who truly cares about the needs of other? Do I spread love to those who only spread hate? Am I as intelligent as I wish to be? Am I on the right road to get to the place I want to be going? I examine my own life. And all while laying on the freshly vacuumed bedroom carpet.

    And when I don't think about my knowledge levels, I am quickly reminded. With a father who's a trivia nut, you're never too far away in the conversation from a famous quote or a historical reference. It never ends at that, as you would think. Attached soon after is always a "... and who wrote that?" or a "...and where is that located?" It was fun when I was little, when the questions made me feel smart and special. It always felt good to be the one third grader to know that St.Basil's Cathedral was located in Russia or the only fifth grader to even recognize the name of Winston Churchill, let alone give you what time period he lived in. But the questions changed. Soon, the questions became harder and harder, and the information wasn't sticking like it used to. When you have to know so much for school, it becomes hard to retain the location of the famous black holes (of Calcutta) or that Langston Hughes wrote the poem that "A Raisin in the Sun" was based on. i could name the parts of the cell or tell you how to calculate an angle in a triangle, but those were never the kinds of questions that were asked.

    Long story short, my social life severed my intelligence. My whole elementary school career was at a public school. I was always one of the smartest kids in the class. Despite my knowledge, the other kids hated me. Due to inconsequential medical anomalies, I was never a high performer in gym, resulting in being chosen last for every game. The few real friends I had were guys: the ones who enjoyed my intelligence and often had an ample supply of it themselves. The few females I chose to associate with often weren't really my friends. They were always calling each other fat and commenting on each other's lack of style, and most of the time I think I only hung around them to avoid looking like a lesbian. But guys were simpler. Nobody cared if you wore makeup or owned expensive shoes, and most of the ones who has those things were living off the government dime anyways. They would torture me whether I was with them or not, so I depended on my intelligence to make me happy. My test scores seemed to be phenomenal, at least to those who saw them and knew what they meant, "Top 3% in the state!" my mother would always say. And it kept me special. I was somebody who was good at something. And then I got older.

    When it came to seventh grade, my parents decided to send me to a private school. I soon learned that the kids at my old school mostly took turns for the worse when they became knowledgeable about baby making and not about contraceptives.

    I wavered in between my feelings for switching schools. It was the only school I'd ever known, and, consequently, the only school I'd ever hated. Some of the teachers hated me because I was clean and privileged, and most of the students hated me because they thought I was the opposite. But to me, it seemed like the few teachers who liked me and the few students I'd made friends with might be worth staying for. Even so, I didn't have much of a choice, and it was obviously in my best interest to remain a virgin and un-beat up and to go to a school with a similar value set to my own. And that's when I watched it slowly die.

    My knowledge I mean. My intelligence stayed the same, as that obviously cannot be changed much. At my new school, I was thrown into a jungle of love and acceptance and 4.0 GPA's. What a beautiful world to be thrown into! Or so one would think. At least, it set the time bomb on pause for a time. The urge to plan revenge in the depths of my mind was delayed a while. At the time though, my mind was still innocent, and the obviously-never-going-to-occur revenge consisted of fanciful ideas of rockets landing on people's houses or setting up buckets of disgusting blends of food on the top of their bedroom doors. Oh yes, just watching that combination of nastiness slowly drip through their hair and down across their face in my mind was enough. My mother always told me I would come through the door with an ugly, contemplative look on my face, and I can only imagine that's what I was thinking of. At this new school, at least so far I hadn't a reason to wish burning rockets upon anybody's houses. Actually the exact opposite. my parents told me time after time that this new school was an opportunity to be whomever I wanted to be. A chance to tear apart the image that my old "friends" had given me to be. Then, I looked at it as a fun challenge to make myself as much like the other girls as possible to become popular, because that's what I thought I wanted. Now, I look at is as a way I tried to make myself conform into something I wasn't, because, the truth is, the person they used to make fun of wasn't the person they had made me to be; it was who I was. They made fun of me for I was, and yet I never strayed from it. It didn't take a long time for me to realize that a crowded lunch table talking about Zac Efron was not what I wanted. As a result, I found those who liked me for being the person who the others made fun of. The people who liked my bright orange shoes. The people who laughed with me instead of at me. The people who made me feel like the special person I thought I was. With more friends came more time absorbed by phone calls (yes, at the time, calls), email, and mall visits. My social life had somehow blossomed from a backyard garden into an all-out farm nearly overnight. I know you're still wondering where and when the bad part's going to come in. Calm down; we'll get there soon enough. Each time I decided to take a phone call or a mall trip was progressively less and less time spent on learning, reading, and spoon-feeding myself information. Most people call themselves emotional eaters. Well, I'd call myself an emotional learner. When I had problems that I'd rather avoid, I'd learn. I'd read a book or watch some form of educational television. The input of knowledge into my brain seemed to increase the output of the bad thoughts, the unkind words, and the "plans" for revenge. Soon, it seemed as though I didn't need it. With my new found friends to make me feel important and special, why did I need knowledge? What did excess knowledge have to offer me?  Later, I would find, it would nearly cost me my sanity.

    Not only did my own input of knowledge slow, but an increase in knowledge and intelligence in those around me occured. It didn’t take long for me to feel as though my knowledge peaked at age eight, and I’d be lying if I said I ever stopped feeling that way. With a private school came two main kinds of students: those who were geniuses and those with absurd amounts of money. There were even those who seemed to be extra blessed by God and somehow ended up with both. I found myself more towards the middle of the intelligent side. My family was never by any means poor, but compared to those with C.E.O.s for parents and living in a half-million dollar houses, we also weren’t by any means towards the top of that totem pole. Surprisingly enough, I found that has never bothered me.

    I was however bothered by that select group: those with money and intelligence. I found myself in classes with kids the same age as me effortlessly gliding through their courses with a 4.0 grade point average or higher, while I found my own grade point average appear like the late twenties stock market, and just as disappointing.

    And this ends with me here, staring at pure nothing, thinking over my life.

    When I look even deeper, I see that my father plays a major part in the anxiety I find within myself. My friend who died when I was four? A police officer. My dad? You guessed it. The average four-year-old shouldn’t have to worry about her father dying. This seemingly rational, and likely realistically rational fear drove me closer to my father. Lucky for me, we either liked all the same things or my brain told me we did. Either way we did everything together. Every grocery trip, I followed. Every sidewalk shoveling, I watched happily out the window. Every business trip, I cried where no one could see. I cried where no one could see a lot more often than I probably should have and, if I’m being honest, I still do. I got good at finding places where nobody could hear me. There, I would sob my eyes out, asking God to bring my father home from work alive and in one piece. The intensity of my crying also enabled the growth of another skill: changing the color of my skin faster than any human should be able to. Now, not only could I hide my noise, but also my physical evidence. If ever caught, I could come up with excuses like “I was thinking,” or “I was just cleaning.” I could never let my family see my emotional wounds. My main goal in life was never letting them down. The emotional connection was so strong that I cried when they cried and I was happy when they were happy. If I ever let them see me cry, it would only make my own crying worse and stop my father from doing what I knew he knew was best for the family. Because if it wasn’t the best, then he wouldn’t be doing it, right? All i knew was that when my friend died, I saw a part of my father leave with him. What that part was, I could never find out, and might not tell you if I knew. But I did know I couldn’t do that to them.

    And that’s what my love did to me. My anxiety about the safety of my father turned into an anxiety disorder that would encompass each aspect of my life. Of course, nothing major enough to be diagnosed, probably due to the fear of disappointing my family being stronger than the fear of getting out of bed. I’ve never been able to sing on a stage with a group of less than twenty people if the audience is bigger than twenty people. I can barely give a presentation in front of a classroom filled with people I all know well. I almost passed out when attempting to give a short speech in front of the senior class and their parents, so much so that I didn’t even try to get all the way to center stage. I can’t go a day without thinking of how I might have disappointed my parents. And at this point, I can’t even call a person on the phone who isn’t a close friend without my mother being there for support. In order to try to ask the guy i then didn’t know I loved to homecoming, I had to sneak to his car and leave a note by his door, hoping he’d notice and also hoping he wouldn’t. In realizing he had, in fact, received my invitation, I almost passed out in merely talking to him in a conversation over two words. And I’ve never been able to fix any of it.

    Now, I’m faced with college decisions. I know where I want to go, what I want to do, and where I want to work. My only remaining decision it to decide to go. I’ve told my parents that I don’t want to be a senior. My mother’s convinces I don’t want to lose touch with my friends, and my father probably, on the inside, just thinks I’m being a baby. Not a single person has seen the real truth behind it. My greatest fear is absence in his last moments. The fear that my father will die and I will be far enough away that I never get to say, “I love you more than you could ever imagine.” At home, I’d reach him to later than anybody else. If it happened then, it couldn’t be helped. If my decision to go to college comes in exchange for my father’s final moments, then I’d rather stay home.

    Little pieces of me die when I disappoint my parents, often being so much as to void any need for a punishment. I would never forgive myself if my last disappointment was being too late. That would surely kill the last piece. The ticking time bomb would explode and nothing would be left but a mess.

    My father is a sweet man; do not misunderstand my words. He cares for me as much as any father could. He’s the kind of dad who gives up the last piece of pizza to his kids, even if he’s still hungry and he knows the kid won’t eat it all. He’s the kind of dad that will take time off work just to spend time at home. Nothing he ever did overlapped a performance or a presentation, as much as it could be helped.

    But now I know him too well. Well enough to know when he’s disappointed without saying a word. Enough to know when he’s throwing me a pity laugh or a “we’ll talk about it later,” never planning to revisit the subject. He tries his best to be supportive, but I know when it’s fake. I can always tell when he thinks I can’t do something. When he doesn’t believe I can make the grade or complete the task. And he doesn’t have a clue what it adds to my anxiety. It’s why I loved my friend. Whether he meant what he said of my abilities or not, I’ll never know. But then again, I will.