So, I completely forgot that I'm supposed to blog today. I am apart of the Dark YA Blogfest during the month of November and this Wednesday we are to write a 500 word flash fiction piece inspired by this picture below. Although it's a little less than 500 words, here's my piece. Hope you enjoy.
Bodies of teenage girls my age scurried around, chaotically chatting
with squeals of over-excitement and fake laughter.
Maybe the giggles were real, I couldn’t tell.
But then again, how could I differentiate between fake and
genuine sentiments when they refused to allow me into their circle, their
cliques? When they made it a point to keep me at arm’s length and allow me no
closer?
It’s not like it was my first time coming to youth group. I
wasn’t the new girl. Although if I had been, they’d have introduced themselves,
asked a few impersonal questions to fulfill their duty of being welcoming and
then found the first opportunity to abandon me and join their friends.
No, I was worse. I was the girl who attended youth group
regularly and didn’t fit in. The girl who refused to pretend to be perfect and
instead was viewed as some sort of sinner, as though living and breathing,
being a human, didn’t make me a sinner, but saying I was, did.
I had tried to reach out in the past, tried to make friends
here, but for some reason I repelled my peers in this setting. And after a
while, when rejection is inevitable, trying becomes foolish.
I scanned the room, noticing the trendy clothes and similarly
worn hair styles; none matching my own. As a dark-haired girl made her way to
the snack table, my gaze shifted to the large, picture window and stared
outside at the barren trees as they swayed in the winter wind.
Suddenly, I realized my reality: I was all alone in a crowd,
pushed to exist on the outside. And while on the outside, no matter how fiercely
the frigid wind wiped at my hair and tore at my thin, white dress of vulnerability, no one would
notice. No one would care.
A single tear streamed down my cheek. I wiped it away,
covering my eyes to shield myself from further ridicule. I wanted to run away
and never come back.
But while the palms of my hands hid the world from my view,
a brilliant light radiated through the spaces between my fingers. I blinked at
the intense brightness and rubbed my eyes as they worked to adjust to the illumination.
The wind ceased and the light ignited, cutting itself through the clouds and
warming my body from the inside out. I couldn’t help but turn my chin upward,
accepting the warmth willingly and thankfully.
The light filled me, comforting me with a true reality; the
only one that mattered. Though my surroundings appeared to be cold, I was not.
Though I appeared to be alone among a crowd, I was not. And though it seemed I
should conform to what others wanted of me, I did not. I had an audience of one.
The only One that mattered and He loved me just the way I was.
OH MY GOODNESS!!!! This is awesome Rachel! How many times growing up did I feel just like this. So lost and alone and outside. I never fit in and after a while, I didn't want to. The reality of Christ's love got me through an awkward childhood and then an awkward high school career. I bet tons of people feel just like you describe here. Which means, we're really not alone after all. :)
ReplyDeleteSo true! I was supposed to write a dark flash fiction, but when I sat and stared at that picture, all I could think about was not actually being alone physically, but feeling like you were in that place.
ReplyDeleteI think you've touch a nerve here. Not many have survived their youth without feeling like an outsider. At some point or another, we've all felt alone.
ReplyDeleteWow! You have such a beautiful writing style, Rachel! I've certainly felt that way in high school and college and different churches...God has certainly been with me through it, and it's given me more time to write!
ReplyDelete