The Carnival

The night of the carnival that everyone had been so anxiously waiting for, for months now, had finally come. The thrilling annual small-town carnival that my friends and family members get so hyped up for. My mother, my father, my two sisters, and their friends all piled in the car, ready to go, getting crazy-excited to ride the salt and pepper shaker and the swings. Only, there was one thing.

I, of course, didn't have any friends to go with because after I got bullied at the beginning of the year, I became a depressed and psychotic weirdo. My sisters were preoccupied, and my parents were going to fight the whole time, so I will be stuck by myself and instantaneously, I wanted to leave. Isn't that such a sad and peculiar thing? Something i have been waiting for for so long, and I would be sitting there by myself for a majority of the time. After I came to think about the night, I slowly started asking myself why I was so excited. I say this but, really, I should give my parents a chance to keep their shit together and make me happy, so I waited…

When we walked into the carnival gates; I heard the distinct music that was supposed to make any mentally sane person happy and ecstatic, but to me, it was all eerie and depressing. I feel this way about most things though. My cereal tastes like cardboard and I can't even distinguish the milk, my friends are nonexistent at this point, my school papers resemble a sad paragraph that a fifth-grader wrote in ten minutes, and I’m an insane, paranoid, insomniac. Everything in my life completely flipped upside down at the beginning of this year.

I walked over to the salt and pepper shaker with my parents with a cigarette hanging from my mouth, and so far, the night was pretty tolerable. I got some cheese fries and a funnel cake, I got to see the clown, and we played a couple games; one being the annoying fireman game that my father and I are convinced is fixed every time. As soon as we got to the ride, I suddenly felt sick to my stomach and I stepped back and looked at it and soon realized there was something wrong and that I shouldn’t ride it, which was odd considering that it had been my favorite ride every year before this one. I rode it anyway.

I stepped off the ride to witness my father walking away, and my mother lying on the ground with a bloody chin, a busted lip, and she was holding her stomach. I just stood there and stared while she cried, and every other person there frantically rushed to save her and take care of her. But to me, it was nothing. I was used to it. I just stood there disappointed, abandoned, cut out from life completely like I stepped out of my own body for a moment and went somewhere else, or like my heart was just going to cave in.

The next morning, I woke up in the hospital beside my mother, and I was scared because she was still sleeping and I had nobody there with me. I have never felt so alone in my life. My dad had just disappeared? So I left. You would think seeing a fourteen-year-old girl walking through the hallways of a hospital by herself, crying, would be alarming but nobody seemed to care, or even notice. So I just kept going and there I was. Walking away; leaving. Forever. I had a plan to never come back because I was done with everything and I was ready to start fresh.

As I was walking down the highway, a message popped up across my phone, and it was my mother. Then, it started to hit me. She must be so worried considering no one else was there, and suddenly my mindset changed completely; I turned around and walked back to the hospital. When I got there, my mom hugged me and apologized, although she has absolutely nothing to be sorry for. My dad was as asshole for just leaving her there like that—for doing something so horrible and not even apologizing. Regarding the fact that I was completely fuming, I asked my mom where my father was.

“Honey, do not freak out, but he’s going to be in jail… For a while.” I didn’t know what to think or say. I was happy because I was angry with him and he deserved to be locked up but that just adds another problem to my fucked-up life. I was completely and utterly done—I meant it.

I came home to my two little sisters who were ridiculously confused about what was going on, but I didn't say anything. I just continued up the stairs to my room and put my headphones in. School should be fun tomorrow! I thought this to myself with a great tone of sarcasm.

The perpetual dark thoughts I had about life were going on in my mind all day at school. I just don’t understand how a person so happy, so enthusiastic, so highly spirited, could just fall apart in such a small amount of time. I mean, honestly, it is not fair. And that brings me to think; is this heavenly creature really a thing? Is God real? Because why would he bring this pain to me for absolutely no reason? I am going to change, going to be a new person—not for the better, but for the worse. I will start to rebel even more than I already have. Fuck it.

I couldn’t take all of the questions coming from many of my peers. It made my thoughts deeper and darker, and the questions kept coming.