by Uriridaikoghene Onovakpuri

This piece originally ran in Read This!, a literary magazine written and edited by high school students from San Lorenzo High School, ranging in age from 14 to 18 years old. This issue of Read This! was designed at 826 Valencia with the help of our tutors and volunteers.

Loss of sanity, of mind of thought or just loss of self. Those eyes with thorns piercing me. They wonder every time why do I look like that?
I’ll tell you the truth; I’ll be honest with you. At night when I lay down to go to sleep, I think and dream about my funeral. Who will be there and who won’t? When Depression and Failure finally take me to that point where I can’t take it anymore. The point when I close my thorny eyes and just let the pain stop. In the front row I see two people, no one else. It’s just empty. MY parents don’t show because I am after all the child who failed them, the one who wasn’t strong enough. The person who took the easy way out. Who didn’t have the guts to live? But Guts is what it took to end it; to say enough. Make the sadness stop, I don’t want to be like this anymore. No! It’s not going to change. I lost. How did I lose? Never had a chance in the first place. I was born defective, the defectiveness, plus the pressure led to loss. I stopped inviting the clichés into my world, my mind, myself. No more tomorrow is going to be a brighter day, “Come on get happy” or the glass is half full. I smashed them, forbid them from entering. You stand there looking down at my eyes wondering, why? How? Why didn’t I share these thoughts, tell you how I felt, what was going on? Because I was being strong for you. For us. Better one than two, but now I realize that dream is the lie and what I thought was reality is no longer before me. It is just me, straight down, trying to find a way to say goodbye. Sorry, or at least goodnight.