Building blocks were scattered across the floor in the layout of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Painstaking hours had gone into that house, making sure every corner was exactly as planned. But really, how long did she intend to keep it, anyway? With that little terror running about the household? She had learned long ago that complaining about a situation was the LAST thing she would want to do, especially one caused by her 5 year old younger brother. The last time he had ruined her house, she ran straight to mother to plea for a bit of comfort from the horrors of wreckage strewn about the floor in the form of wooden blocks. All she received was another scolding about how nothing would ever be his fault because he’s younger, and shouldn’t little girls be playing with dolls, anyway? Whatever. She would do as she was told and pick up the pieces one by one. Pieces that resembled her poor little heart as she finally realized that no compassion would ever come her way from the two dictator rulers of this home.
Many of her days were spent at her bedroom window. Her blank eyes would stare at the same scene every day. Except, that wasn’t what she was seeing. She wasn’t seeing row after row of cloned houses kept prisoner in the land of suburbia. She saw her fantasy. She saw people with wings, flying from their captors. She saw the end of the world. She saw the beginning of the universe. She saw her future and she saw the distant past. She saw deaths and she saw life, she saw lovers and she saw heartbreak. She saw everything, but she wasn’t looking. She was seeing. Her mind worked with the understanding better than most adults. In fact, I don’t believe an adult can possess her knowledge. Her knowledge is the sort that can only come with childhood years spent pondering the whys the whens and the hows, and having the willpower to seek them out.
It was the twenty first of November and pouring rain. She had a plan for this day. She never knew exactly why she chose twenty one as her special number, it just sounded right. This was the day, she decided, that she would make them care. Years had passed as they tended to do, and she was no longer a little girl.
Now there was more than her mind that set her apart from the tyrannical rulers, often called by others her parents. Some considered it a disease. Some considered it a choice. Some considered it a perversion. They were all wrong. For there was nothing wrong with her, only in the minds of the cold-hearted. This was not a choice, for she was born this way. This was not a perversion, for her heart was full of love. Of course the parentals may never know. She had time and time again contemplated this, wondering if and when they would ever discover her.
Her parents had an odd way of dealing with conflict. She would almost prefer to be screamed at, slapped, and then it go away. But of course, their majesties had it set in their cruel hearts to be the intellectuals, the problem solvers of their pretentious estate. Every single time, they would sit her down and talk talk talk without end, making her fingers twirl around each other in uneasy orbits and her stomach churn with anxiety. Of course they would go on and on, but if she tried to get a small fledgling of an opinion to take flight and somehow get them to reason, they shut down. They were emotionless, letting religion “guide” them through life. So instead of acknowledging her thoughts, they would machine gun it down with prophecies and commandments, examples and worries. She in fact did NOT care that they were, as they would often say, “worried about her”.
This was the time though, was unique. She was an eighteen year old wallflower, brimming with possibilities, knowledge, and hope. Their majesties were still the same. Ever since she was thirteen, she had an exact plan of what to do if they ever evicted her from their kingdom. It ran through her mind forwards and backwards as everything unfolded.
Back when she was thirteen, they tore her life apart for a few weeks. Her music was her strength and her inspiration, the one thing she trusted and could rely upon. But of course, king’s orders, she must abhor this worldly, satanic corruption and instead stay away from the edge, shrink back to conformity.
But this was the day she would fly away like the winged people of her childhood fantasies. This was the day when her mind and body would be forever marked as different, accepted by all but the narrow-minded. This was the day when their majesties really lost all hope in her. She had been waiting for this all along. This was the day they found out, and she didn’t have to hide it anymore. This was the day when they finally did take physical action.. By throwing her out, of course. But as she breathed in that crisp November air stinging her skin, she smiled. She waited on the concrete with a bag on her back for the car that led to her new life. That was the car that would take her to not a house, but a home.
Sometimes a goodbye is a dream come true. She was no longer caged. She was the queen of her own life. No longer would she be Princess of Suburbia.