| Annelle A writing piece by Vicki Somers "How strange it is to have a story running through your veins, yet possess such great inabilty to communicate it to an unsuspecting world." Annelle lay prostrate on her bed, her book open before her. For at least an hour she tried to alleviate the stresses of her day through writing, but the words always seemed to lose their way somewhere between her thoughts and the paper. She rolled onto her back and peered out the window. Outside it was dark and foreboding; the wind played tag on the infant leaves, and the moon occassionally drew back the curtain of clouds to check on the world below. Annelle had a deep longing to be outside, to feel the dew beneath her feet and let the wind caress her porcelain cheeks. She wanted to hear the night song and simply feel as if she were a part of something greater than her small town life. Beside her the dog let out a low, yawning sort of moan, beckoning the girl to give up her musings and try to salvage what would be left of a night's sleep. She simply rubbed the dog's ears and shook her head with a smile. The dog stared up disapprovingly before returning to her favorite spot to sleep. "You sleep enough for the both of us." The cool glass of the window left a behind a feeling of security when she rested her forehead against it. Lately life had been cruel to her. As if it wasn't hard enough to live in a home she felt foreign to, she was beginning to feel the familiar ripple of depression just under the surface of her skin. It made her wish for death, a desire that often only multiplied her feelings of guilty desperation. To be so weak as to want death- it was such a ridiculous paradox to her being. False happiness wouldn't make those feelings go away, and she would sink deeper and deeper. The lapses marked the beginning of the end of a most vicious cycle. With a sigh she wiped the tears from her eyes, any show of pained emotions was enough to remind her with a stinging clarity of her humanity. To compensate she pretended to be some wildly exotic creature that the world didn't often see- the entire reason she had thrown herself into art in the first place. It was a mark of passionate eccentricity, a way to be different yet still find solace with a body of peers. Annelle knew that she was strong, but she hated living half her existance inwardly. She wished to be forthright with people, but at what cost would total honesty bring? The last thing she wanted was to feel isolated, so she continued playing out a part that was only half true to who she really was. ~ 3 April 2001 (revised 13 October 2002) |