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a space for youth writing on mental health & identity
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a space for youth writing on mental health & identity
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![]() Oh, early mornings of twenty-ten, what must she have looked like to you? Outside every day at five-thirty AM, she’d stand on the concrete slab bridging the creek that cut through their driveway and wait alone in the dark for the bus to arrive. She’d always watch the sky, fascinated, as the moon
sunk down and the sun crept up. They would hover next to each other for just a few minutes each morning before an array of messy pink-orange strokes would sweep in, hiding the end of the transition. Illuminated by equal parts sun and moonlight, she’d stand with her messy hair and often mismatched clothes. She must have looked like one of the creatures from her imagination, the ones she would talk to when she got lonely: about the sky, her outfits, the books she was reading, and other little things that changed each day. They were always there to listen. She was too tall, if only barely, to be an animal; and she didn’t look like a bear, you would give her that. She would never grow tall enough to be mistaken for an adult -- and what would any sane person be doing, standing in their driveway at that hour? A child was the only reasonable answer, but what kind of parent would make their kid take the bus if they had to be up, dressed, and outside in a host of conditions at five-thirty in the morning? She was never meant to be alone, to look more like a wraith that crawled out from under the bridge than the child she was. Yet it was certainly what many thought when they saw her. To be fair, her parents did the best they could. From your view, twenty-ten, you thought you were great. You were so adult, doing it all on your own; bothering no one you knew had more important priorities. Dad needed his sleep, and you wouldn’t get your phone to contact Mom at the hospital until your birthday that year; when even you had finally begun to realize that doing it all on your own wasn’t the best idea. Comments are closed.
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September 2023
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