Lavender Andreas
February, 2017
She was unreachable. She made herself unreachable.
Through the fog and mist, she heard her phone buzz on the table.
She ignored it even as the detachment she’d surrounded herself with felt more and more claustrophobic.
She’d spent so much time watching everything drift away, she’d blinded herself to isolation.
Her real friends, who she assumed were responsible for her phone’s incessant buzzing, were worried.
She spent very little time online, and even less on outfits and makeup – her typical methods of self expression.
She slept more, lingering in the confines of her comforter for longer periods of time, even as the dark pigment of her sagging eyes worsened.
And, of course, there was the pain.
Her back and neck ached, legs and arms begging for a stretch, the muscles in hands constantly numb.
She’d become obsessive, sketching and drawing and painting – working her fingers raw, projecting her world at every waking moment.
Much like her art, her problems extend beyond her reach.
The petty arguments between her parents and her increased in frequency. She lashed out at the little things that always annoyed her but never said anything about. They’d sigh aggressively, tiredly, making dismissive comments about her outbursts and attitude. They’d tell her to get her grades up, even though she hadn’t let any of them slip under 86%, and eventually left her alone.
She didn’t understand.
Not only was she still succeeding, but surpassing both academic and extracurricular expectations. She had classmates who’d failed, dropped out, stolen from their parents, and/or became addicts. She even had a classmate who’d been sentenced to three years in prison for illegal possession of a firearm.
It wasn’t like she was a bad kid.
Arguments with her brother, however, were worse.
Siblings know how to hurt one another, twisting words against one another. They verbally battled for the upper hand, pointing out one another’s dismissiveness, hypocrisy, cruelty, flaws.
Siblings also know each other’s secrets.
After all, it was her brother who’d opened the door on that perfect spring day.
“No,” she muttered harshly, squeezing her eyes shut. In her mind, she flew – through the darkness of the cave, past the falls of fantastic fish, past the bay of the no-longer beached whale. She flew up, up, up.
Physically level with the rest of the world, she landed atop one of many peaks in the valley of mountainous columns, above it all.
Maybe a little bit too far above.
“Maybe,” she thought, vaguely aware of the sound of her own voice. “I’m so high up, I didn’t realize that I’ve begun to fall.”
