Regrets

*Author's note: This piece is entirely fictional.  I don't really think it's my best work but it could be worse sooo…

My life is a circle of regrets.  I always look back at what I should have done.  Things that got looked over in the moment.  People always tell me that everyone makes mistakes.  What I've done is not a mistake.  It's not a "misguided action."  It's not a misunderstanding.

My life has been changed by choices.  Choices where I did the wrong thing.  Choices that  I made.  Things that I wanted to do.  That I thought were my best option.  I did the wrong thing for the wrong reasons.  I can't change my decisions.  I can only regret my choices.

My life is a web of lies.  Lies to the rest of the world.  The same lies I tell myself.  I tell myself that I did nothing wrong.  That it was his fault.  That I had nothing to do with it.  But I did.  Maybe not directly.  Maybe more directly than I even realize.  But I have no choice.  My choices force me to lie. 

My life is shadowed in fear.  The fear that consumes me; eats me alive.  I am afraid. 

I am afraid that I will forget about my mask.  The perfect face that hides the scars underneath.  I am afraid that I will forget to be perfect.  Because if I forget, even for one second, the world will see who I really am.  They will see the scars that lie under the perfect outside.  I am afraid of the lies that control my life. 

I regret what I did.  But I chose to do it.  I lie to the world.  I am afraid that they will see.  Because I am not what they think.  I am the opposite.  I am a monster.  I am undeserving.  Of life.  Of love.  Of hope.  I live a life of lies and regrets.  My choices have made me afraid.  Now, I truly have nothing.  I deserve to die. 

16 year old boy

Wow.  She's so cute.  Seriously.  She's like... wow.  I can't help staring at her.  Then Jen grabs my arm.  I mean she's pretty hot,but I'm really starting to hate cheerleaders.  The whole peppy thing is SO annoying.  I'm done with her.  I only dated her in the first place 'cause my friend liked her sister.  I still feel kinda bad though.  But I can't get her out of my head.  She is just so... yeah.  I think Jen's starting to notice.  She keeps glaring at me.  I think I've gone to get a refill like three times in 20 minutes.  I can't help it.  My friends keep telling me that I'm an idiot for wanting to dump Jen, but I'm just not that in to her.  Shes all like OOHH! Prom!  Look! Shoes!  Like OMG!  Ashley told me like the most like AMAZINGLY funny story!  So, back to prom! How do you feel about like the color pink!  I always feel like screaming in her face, just so she would SHUT UP for like one ******** second!  But, Brooke... She's kinda perfect.  Not my usual type... not blonde or the cheerleader type, but in a good way.  I always stare at her across the counter.  I can never even order right.  In the theater, Jen claws in to my hand, but I get up anyway.  I'm not gonna settle for this... Jen's just not enough.  My thoughts drift back to Brooke.  The way her eyes kinda sparkle. How she lights up the room just by being there.  Jen only lights up a room when she walks into a party after a football game in her cheer leading uniform carrying a 24-pack of beer. Brooke's just more... real.  She doesn't have to wear a mini skirt to get noticed.  I don't know why, but I see more in her than what she looks like.  She's sweet, and nice.  She doesn't even care what other people think about her.  Not that she needs to.  She's still really pretty.  I go over to the concessions counter.  Her shift is over though.  Whatever.  I'll just come back some other day... I walk back to the theater.  I look for Jen.  I see her a few rows away from where we were sitting.  Making out with my friend, Blake.  At first, I'm kinda thinking what the heck!  But then I'm just like great, I'm leaving.  I grab my jacket and walk to my car.  Jen can get a ride home with Blake for all I care.  I'm done.  I'll talk to Brooke tomorrow.

The Wrong Relationship

Somebody that I Used to Know

*Authors note: a few words have been altered/ignored to make this song PG rated.

Imagine this.  You're upset about something that happened.  You're sitting on your bedroom floor, on your favorite purple bean bag chair.  You're listening to the radio.  You're flipping thorough stations like your life depends on it.  You pass lots of artists:  Adele, Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, Gotye, Katy Perry; then you stop.  You slowly flip back to the Gotye cover of "Somebody that I used to Know".  Why?  The music, the message, the lyrics; the song seems it has a meaning, a story. What is this story really saying?  What does this song mean?  What makes it so magnetic?  In my eyes it narrates a relationship pattern that seems to happen to a lot of people. 

The first verse starts with the line "Now and then I think of when we were together."  This seems like the narrator is happily looking back at a relationship, but then comes the next few lines.  "Like when you said you felt so happy you could die.  Told myself that you were right for me.  But felt so lonely in your company."  The line "Like when you said you felt so happy you could die" shows that the girl in the relationship was content, but there was a start of a shadow.  A doubt.  This doubt started eating away at the relationship.  Then it says "told myself that you were right for me.  But felt so lonely in your company."  The narrator is trying to convince himself that he is happy, even after there isn't anything left.  He doesn't feel like he is still part of the relationship.  This would seem to mean that the girl did something wrong.  She wasn't really there.  Neither of them were really happy, but they still held on.  They tried to hold a boat together even after the pieces were breaking off.  This is explained in the next line.  "But that was love and it's an ache I still remember."  This means that he thought that they were in love, but love doesn't leave you aching, or resentful towards love.  They were both pretending to have something that didn't exist, like how you can't swim in the air. No matter how hard you try, you still need water. 

The second verse is kind of a bridge.  The first verse is narrating what happened and the chorus talks about their feelings.  The second half of the verse is somewhere in between.  The first line says "You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness."  This means that he doesn't even think that the girl  wanted to be happy, but it also literally meant that she can mentally get addicted to being unhappy and always wanting more.  The next line further says "Like resignation to the end, always the end."  This illustrates that she was gone up until it was actually over.  This could be interpreted two different ways. She could have been purposely ignorant, or she could have been afraid of the relationship.  She may have been too afraid that she would end up hurt to actually try.  The verse ends with "So when we found that we could not make sense;  Well you said that we would still be friends;.  But I'll admit that I was glad it was over."  This just says that he was happy when it was finally over because he hated the pressure and the instability of the relationship.  This paragraph walks the fine line of emotions and narration wit lots of double meanings.  

The chorus is mostly talking about how the guy felt.  I don't mean this in a bad way, but he seems to have the regular guyish reaction.  He doesn't seem to care, but then he talks about how much it hurt him.  He really seems to have conflicting emotions in this paragraph.  First he says " But you didn't have to cut me off.  Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing"  This seems like he was mad that she was so distant and that she didn't care about the relationship .  Then in the next line "And I don't even need your love" he sounds like he doesn't care what happened and that it didn't really matter to him.  He contradicts that in the next line by saying "But you treat me like a stranger and I feel so rough."  This shows that he actually cares and is upset by how she treated him.  Then, he goes back to mad by saying "And you didn't have to stoop so low, Have your friends collect your records and then change your number."  That means that she left glimpses of her past behind but was still unreachable.  She left others to pick up the left over pieces once she was gone, but she never came back to the people.  After this second string of anger the guy goes back to trying to look tough while convincing himself to get over it.  He conveys this message by saying "I guess that I don't need that though."  He said "I guess" like he wasn't totally sure, but he still is trying to protect himself "I don't need that though."  He finishes his chorus by saying "Now you're just somebody that I used to know."  Basically, you're gone now.  I used to know you, but it's over.  Throughout this verse the guy is a mess of emotions and conflicting thoughts. 

Right now, the girl seems at fault, right?  Let's see her point of view.  She starts off by saying "Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over"  He seems to be lying about something. Rest of analysis of this line is cut out to keep essay PG.  Next, she says "Part of me believing it was always something that I'd done."  This seems like the guy always blamed her for things, and made her feel inferior by making it her fault.  Then she explains why she left with the line "But I don't wanna live that way" I won't keep letting you do this.  "Reading into every word you say" She's saying that he never told her the whole truth and that she had to read through all the holes in his stories.  "You said that you could let it go" He said that he could forget his past and move on (which by his chorus, he doesn't seem too good at).  "And I wouldn't catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know" He said he could move on, but he couldn't.  It was too hard for him to look past himself and what he wanted.  This is called Narcissism.  It means that they can't see others needs above their own.  He couldn't get past his needs, and it cost him the girl.  Now it seems like the girl got out of a bad situation while she still could.

So, now that you know the whole story, these are my final thoughts.  Both people did things wrong.  Nobody's perfect.  The girl was playing with his emotions.  Like in that one Brittany Spears song.  She just got lost in love and didn't realize what was happening.  On the other hand, the guy was lying and couldn't get past himself.  Both people did things wrong.  They tried to make things work, but with a girl with the awareness of Brittany Spears and a guy with the self worth of Narcissus, things just couldn't work.   This general scenario happens with lots of couples.  Both people did things wrong, but for whatever reason they only see the other's faults. 

Demons- Poe Prediction Piece.

In the first six paragraphs of Poe's Silence- A Fable,  The main character is visited by a demon.  This demon talks about a place worse than any human has ever visited.  He also states that the only way a human might have visited this place is in a dream. This leads me to believe that the main character is dreaming.  Since Poe is the father of horror stories, I do not believe that he will use the cop-out ending of the narrator waking up.  I predict that this story will be an irony.  So far, a demon has visited the main character, which is not possible in a world that is not dystopian.  The main character is not in control as the demon is obviously overpowering him with fear, especially when the main character is suddenly in the horrible place.  He is no longer in control when he is involuntarily transported to evil places.  I do not predict that this story will turn out well when a demon is in control and the setting is the evilest place on earth. 

There are also lots of clues in the symbolism of the story.  If I am correct in my theory of the narrator being asleep, this story probably takes place at night.  Since this is Poe, I am guessing about midnight.  In some of his other stories he uses midnight as a symbol.  In The Masque of the Red Death, the red death strikes at midnight.  In The Tell-Tale Heart, the narrator enters the old man's room at midnight.  In my opinion, midnight shows the point of no return and that all decisions made by this point are final and irreversible.  This story also shows symbolism in the colors. Red is mentioned as the color of the sun and the rain that "falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood."  The color red is also showed in The Masque of the Red Death as the color of the windows to the black room.  Red seems to symbolize blood and evil presence.  Neither of which are good signs for the future of our main character. 

This particular story reminds me a lot of The Raven.  There is a narrator that seems nice at first.  Then you realize that he/she may have done something wrong to deserve punishment.  Next, you notice the evil figures; the raven and the demon.  There is also color symbolism in both stories.  in The Raven there is the symbol of mystery in the purple velvet curtains.  In Silence- A Fable there is the color symbolism of the saffron yellow river and the red rain and sun.  Since The Raven ended with the narrator losing hope along with his sanity, I expect something similar to happen in the end of Silence- A Fable. 

This is my ending to the story. 

I studied his face; I watched and waited.  I watched and waited for him to answer my plea.  I cried out "Monster- master of evil; take me from this wretched place.  This horrible place that is sick; sick with fear and pain and death."  Despite my desperate cries, he just stood there and watched.  He watched as the red blood pooling at me feet rose higher and higher until the crimson liquid stained my neck.  I begged him to save me; to end my misery.  The misery that bound me to Earth.  No mater what I said; no matter how much of my blood mixed with that of my enemy, he stood in silence to watch me drown.  The blood surged up past my gaping mouth and covered my nose.  I tried to cough, but there was no air left in my collapsing lungs.  Crumbling with horror and guilt, I drifted in and out of consciousness.  In and out of sanity.  The blood entered my eyes and my vision was shaded with red.  Oddly, my ears were unaffected.  i could still hear the horrible screams from the convulsing river.  I had no air, or sight, or smell, but  was still living.  I saw his plan now.  I was to sit here; choking, dying, for all eternity.