I am a girl of sixteen from a small town named Winston. My only dream is to fall in love. I go to school sometimes, mostly because my parents ask me to. I live with them, so I need to listen to them. I have no siblings, partly maybe the reason why I desperately insist on falling in love. My parents tell me I’m very young to understand love, but I love my cat Juggles, so I guess I’ll manage to understand, loving another human. My neighbor Pasha tells me I’m a very loveable person, but Pasha must be seventy years old, otherwise I would consider loving him. I like him already, I also told him that, but he just ruffled my hair.
My parents married thirty years back, my mom tells me they ran away from home. I also hear from her it was the worst mistake of her life and I should learn from it. I do sometimes think my parents drifted apart with time, especially when my dad is drunk and he’s beating up my mom. ‘Were they really in love when they ran away?’ when I ask my grammy this, she says they were blind and young. My mother was sixteen and pregnant with me. My grammy was against this union, so my parents preferred running away. Although my mother always tried keeping in touch with grammy, in spite of all the animosity.
Most of the days my parents don’t even look at each other, they try to be nice to each other if I’m around, they really do. I guess they stuck together for so long because of me. I don’t enjoy this thought much, but I’ve learned to live with it. This has not become an impediment in my search for love. I do believe there’s someone out there to fall haplessly in love with me.
As I walk the lonely streets of Winston, I look at the verdant lands, hoping to get lost in them. Not having to go back home, roll on the greens and just close my eyes. Close my eyes till the moonlight shines on me and the breeze gently caresses my body; the music of passion starts playing in my head and there is no one to enjoy all of this but myself. How I wish I could shut myself amidst these greens!
I don’t mind skipping my age to when I’m thirty-two. May be then my life would be different. Maybe then if I’m walking the streets of Winston, I’m walking with someone else, someone who holds me when I walk. He would roll with me on these greens, kiss me when we roll on each other; caress my body with his gentle fingers and breathe against my cheek. Like sunlight he would touch my soul and me.
It’s almost past midnight, by the time I wrap up these thoughts. These thoughts are what I hold onto, they inspire my search for love.
I reach home. Back to the world where I don’t belong; it’s suppertime, but I lost my appetite to those thoughts. I go to my room without seeing my parents, I wave Pasha goodnight from my window. As I lie on my bed, I shut my senses. I turn back to my thoughts, as Juggles snuggles by me. Yet again I’m lost at the smiles of my endeared.
journal1990 