Work Text:
Every night I go to sleep. When I sleep, I dream of being in a pool of darkness. All I see is darkness. I honestly hate my life. I never knew my real parents. The only parents I do know are my foster parents. I have no siblings, and my foster parents hate me. They have 3 kids. I don't know much about them because I'm useless, or at least I think that I am. I don’t have a healthy mindset for the most part. The only thing that gives me the smallest sliver of joy is when I listen to music. At school, I get bullied sometimes, but I don’t honestly care. I just want to run away. One day, as I was in my classroom, the teacher came in with a kid I had never seen before. The teacher looked very happy and introduced the kid. The new kid became popular immediately. People swarmed him at lunch, asking him questions. I just sat in the corner of the lunchroom, and I just started daydreaming about a better life. It’s something I often do. Then I realized the new kid was looking at me for some reason. I just kept staring off into space with the thought in the back of my head of why that kid was staring at me. Most of the time in school, I'm a quiet kid. Almost no one has heard me speak. The most I’ve ever spoken in school is in music where I sang a song for my teacher. At home, I pretty much never speak. I don't think they even know what my voice sounds like. I mostly just do chores around the house like I’m a servant. The only free time I have is usually right after school when, for an hour, no one is home. During that time, I either read or practiced my singing. One day when I got home from school I decided to start cleaning early and I sang as I was cleaning so I could practice singing. Then my foster parents' oldest daughter came home way earlier than expected. I was still singing and mopping. I didn’t hear the door open, and the oldest sibling just started to watch me. Then I realized they were watching me. I stopped immediately. You have a nice voice. She said I just nodded and kept mopping. That afternoon, I was outside picking weeds, and then I got called inside by my foster mom. She asked me to sing. I denied the request because I knew she would try and use me for money. I Went back to picking up weeds. But the rest of that week, my foster mom tried to get me to sing in a lot of ways. When I didn’t crack, she left me alone. The next week during that hour when they weren't home I just read books under a shady tree. Once I turned 15, I was overjoyed because I could finally get a job. I looked over a few job listings and found one that I liked and didn’t require talking. Monday, I showed up to the job, and I did some good work. One day, I was working at the cash register because the person who was supposed to run it was sick. Then, the new kid at my school came up to the register and started to order. He didn't recognize me at first, but halfway through his order, he recognized me. “Are you that quiet girl that everyone talks about?” I said nothing. “At least tell me when you get off work” “7 pm “I said. Why did I even tell him what I thought? At 7 p.m., I got off of work and was about to go home when I heard a sound behind me. Then I remembered I had told the new kid when I got off. "Just wondering, do you want to hang out?" he asked. I turned around, checked my phone, and said "sure got nothing better to do," I said. "Where are we going?" I asked. "Random restaurant that I found," he replied. When we went to the restaurant, I realized he had taken me to a McDonald's. "Really, this is where you hang out?" I asked jokingly. "Yep, I don't know anywhere else," he said, laughing."Okay," I said, also laughing. We went inside and ordered vanilla ice cream cones. But of course their ice cream machine was broken. They said they still had 2 oreo mc flurries left, which was fine with us. As we were eating, we talked for a bit. He complimented my voice like all people do, and it was a fun time. For a while, I actually felt good, like when I'm singing. I didn't really know why, but I liked it. Before I left I asked him if we were friends. Yes, we are, he said. It gave me a feeling of joy, which quickly faded the moment I got home. I opened the door, and my foster mom started to yell at me. I honestly didn't care. I just tuned her out. Eventually, she stopped yelling and told me to go to bed. So I opened the backyard door and headed to the shed. It's basically my "room." I opened the shed door, flopped down on my bed, and went to sleep. Also, my bed is just a mattress on the ground. In the morning, I open the shed door and go out the door. I climb the fence with my backpack and head to school. Since my foster parents don't want to see me in the morning, I usually just hop the Chain fence in our backyard yard and then walk to school. As I was walking, I heard footsteps behind me. I turned around to see nothing. So I turned back around and kept walking. A few minutes later, I heard more footsteps. I turned around, and again, no one was there. Whoever was doing that was really annoying me. Then I finally made it to the school. I had a normal day until the new kid showed up and started to talk to me at lunch. I told him in a whisper, " Look, I don't like talking in really public places. Just meet me after work, okay?" I told him. He nodded and acted like he had no clue who I was. After school, I went home, climbed the fence, put my stuff away in the shed, and went to work. After work, I was about to exit the restaurant when the new kid came up from behind me again. "God dude,"I said, "you could just wait at the entrance." "Yeah, but it wouldn't be that funny." I playfully punched him in the arm and told him, "It's my turn to choose where we go." I decided to take him to Publix because he took me to McDonald's the other night. We walked around Publix and got free cookies because we did a very convincing act of being 10. We also looked at random things we found like fish eyes. We laughed about the most random things. Once the night was over, we parted ways. Again, my foster mom yelled at me for being late, but I didn't care. On the 3rd night of goofing off and doing random things. I got off of work, and the new kid was sitting outside the entrance and didn’t creep up on me. He told me he had been waiting since 6:00 pm. You didn't have to wait that long, I said. We walked to our location which was Sam's club. We showed our membership cards and got in. For a little we walked around sampling anything that we could. There were even these weird candy rocks. Then we went to the food court. I ordered a hot dog combo while he ordered a pizza combo and we both grabbed our drinks and just chilled. Before I left for the night I asked him for his name and he said it was jim. Before he could ask my name I left. Of course my foster mom scolded me for being late but I didn't care. This feeling I felt was joy. I enjoyed hanging out with jim. In the morning the next day I headed to school like normal but I never saw jim, not even at lunch. When school was over I headed to work. After work I waited for at least an hour for jim to show up. When he didn't show I decided to text him and see if he was alright. A minute later I got a notification. It was a missing person report and it was for jim. Emotions hit me like a truck. It was a mix of fear, sadness, anger, and confusion. I went back to being the silent socially awkward kid but it was worse now and I wouldn't talk to anyone. Once I turned 16 I just had pure depression. No one at school asked me if anything was wrong and same with at home. My depression was getting worse every day and no one could help me. At the age of 18 years old I had graduated and was getting ready to move out. Once I packed out all of my things I left the house and started the trip to college. Since I didn't have a car, the college I was attending sent a bus to pick up students. The only way I had paid for college was stealing one of the checks from the mail that the foster care place sent. I took a short trip to the bus stop and sat on the bench. As I am waiting I see another person walking over to the bus stop. I had a quick glance over at the person then continued staring at the ground and waiting for the bus. Eventually, the person came to the bus stop and sat down. It was pretty much a very long awkward silence. The person sitting next to me eventually broke the silence. Their voice was deep and I could tell it was a dude. He said "who are you?" I just ignored him and he kept asking me questions. When the bus came up to the station I stood up and went inside. The bus was almost completely empty except for the bus driver and me. I sat near the back and fell asleep. I dreamed of that ever looming darkness surrounding me. I didn’t remember the rest of the dream but when I woke up I was scared. I looked around at my surroundings and realized I was still on the bus. I checked my phone's GPS and we were almost at the college. I had come a month early to set up my room. Once the bus got to the college I got off the bus and went into it. I headed to the front desk and showed her my papers and she told me to go to the third dorm. So as I headed to my room I checked the school website and once I logged in I saw it said I had a dorm with a roommate. I was irritated but as long as they left me alone
I was going to be fine. A month after my first arrival classes started and I got my class schedule. I majored in entrepreneurship and minored in musical arts and a couple other classes. The first semester of school I was an emotional wreck not in public but mostly alone in my dorm. My roommate was just plain rude to be honest but didn't come to the dorm. I did have a small friend group but I rarely ever saw them and mostly just made up excuses not to hangout. One day I was tired of all my problems and decided to try therapy. On the first day of therapy I just answered some general questions and then questions about my personal life. I tried to be as open as I could. It worked for a little while. I felt better and not ashamed of myself. But then I still felt the darkness and depression creeping back up. I stopped seeing my therapist and felt a wave of depression coming over me. I didn't know why but every time I tried to escape it just pulled me back in like a rough storm. Even if I escaped it was only for a little while because after a couple of weeks I went back into depression. At this point I didn't talk with any of my friends and was bottling all of my sadness until the afternoon where I would go to my bed and cry myself to sleep. One weekend I got a text. Normally I would not even look at texts because it's usually just my friends trying to get me to do stuff. This time however I decided to see if it even was my friends. It was a text from an unknown number asking to meet up. I told them they had the wrong number but they said they knew me from a long time ago. I was bored so I decided to meet with him. He told me to meet up with him at 7:00 pm at McDonald's. Once the clock turned to 6:50 I started heading there. I got there and waited until 6:55 so I was waiting for 5 minutes. Once it struck 7:10 I was about to go back to the dorms when someone came up behind me and scares me. I turned around not knowing who was behind and I kicked them in the stomach. I looked at the person and apologized for what I did. They told me it's fine and they showed me their phone. I showed him my phone so we knew we were talking to the right person. Being a shy, quiet person I didn't talk that much. We went inside the restaurant and both ordered oreo mc flurries. We chatted for a little then I asked him for his name. He laughed and replied jim. I had a quick thought and we just continued talking. Then at about 10:00 pm, we started to leave. Do you remember me? I told him no and we both went our separate ways. I got back to my dorm and laid down, and then it hit me. That was my old friend jim. I was confused, to say the least, but wanted to find out more. I texted him and asked what happened and he said he couldn’t tell me. But I was just glad to have him back. One day I was just walking to my dorm in the rain and saw someone crying. They tried to cover up the fact they were crying but I could still tell. They sat down on a nearby bench and I went over to them and just hugged them. They seemed to need one right about now. They told me their life story. It was sad and kinda like mine. After they were done they asked me my name. I told them it and then I asked her. She said her name was Kathrine or Kathy for short. She left shortly after that and i went to my dorm