"My favorite part"... hurt the most

Some people may argue that words are useless. Some may argue that they are only needed in conversation. Some people may conjure up the audacity to call what I do a waste of time. But what they don’t realize is that without my writing, I have no reason to exist. If my thoughts don’t escape in some way, I fear that nothing else would be allowed into my brain. It would be like an accident in rush hour traffic – everything would cease to function properly.
Recently, my mom decided to do some cleaning- this is usually my job, but she decided to do it herself, for once. She was emptying our hall closet due to the flooding of the guest bathroom sink- it spilled into the hallway and she had to prevent molding. Games, sheets, blankets, forgotten art projects, memorabilia and various other stale, forsaken things spilled forth onto the bed of my little sister. Like my mom always seems to do, she walked away from her cleaning project and started something else. I, out of curiosity, wanted to see what the hall closet had hidden since the last time I entered in what seemed to be the fourth grade- when I was nine years old.
Lying on the first wire shelf was a hunter green Five-Star notebook labeled Jessica’s Writing Journal, Fourth Grade- Mrs. Love. I faintly remembered it. I remembered the fourth grade- it was the year of the terrorist attacks, 9-11. They were the reason that Mrs. Love had asked us to keep the journals- it was similar to the holocaust and Anne Frank, only I’m not a Jew and I wasn’t afraid for my life. Of course, you couldn’t expect a fourth grader, especially me, to focus on just one thing for the entirety of a school year.
I grabbed up the journal and made a break for my bedroom. Up the stairs, around the corner, close the door, turn off the radio and there I was. In my hands I held many forgotten memories. I opened the book to the first page to find my family described in poorly executed cursive. I went on to tell of my friends from home, my new baby cousin, weekend trips and other useless times. I was only writing for the check plus at the top of the paper.
I remember in the third grade I had the chicken pox. They came late and they hit hard. Well, after the illness had run its course, the sores didn’t go away. In fact, they worsened. Horrified by my grotesque skin, my mom rushed me to the dermatologist. After hacking off one of my earlobes and poking me with a few scalpels, he gave me the thrilling diagnosis of psoriasis- delicious.
One day, Mrs. Love asked us to write about one thing we would change about ourselves. As an overweight, skin diseased, second youngest, tallest, weird girl, one would think I’d have a lot to change. But to my surprise, all I wanted was to be older- that and for the popular girls to not make fun of me anymore. As I read about this pained child I have lost touch with over the years- I have completely blocked out my childhood after the first grade- I slowly remembered what it was like, what she was going through.
The very next page is my interpretation of September 11th. I saw it as a wakeup call for our country. I spoke, with poorly worded grammar I might add, about how panicked my household was. My mom bought a lot of bottled water and hid flashlights in the bathrooms. My dad bought a lot of ammunition for his guns. Then I talked about the churches response to the attack. The doors for the first time in my entire life stayed open all day, all night, all week. It strikes me as odd that this is what I noticed about the time. I noticed the irregularity, but not the tragedy.
Later on, after I flipped through some stories with sad endings, I found another entry regarding the war. “We are at war now and we are flying and bombing, but now we have ground war. I think about it a lot. I’m scared we might lose, but I pray to God that we might make it through.” These are the words of a nine year old stranger. “Wars are not good, I wish peace would come to the world.”
The very last page was the only one that made me cry. It made me remember why I forgot elementary school. I performed an analysis on the entire class and the entire year. I reported on each individual in my class- not all were nice reports. About half way through, I remembered the teasing. I remembered the popular girls telling that one boy that I had a crush on him. I remembered that one girl making fun of my size and the clothes that I wore. I remembered the first year with one of my best friends. I remembered all my other friends leaving. “My favorite part was how I had more than one friend. In fact I had six friends. Six! Can you believe it?” If you hadn’t guessed, this is the particular line that caused me to cry.
Just as quickly as I was sucked into the world of this pathetic fourth grader, I was evicted. I knew too much about the future and all the good I could one day have. If she had known about all the good, she would have never overcome the bad. She wouldn’t have needed to. But she did- I did. I made it through all the negative comments and rejections. I learned a lot from all those bad experiences. And I’m proud to be who I am today.
Took you long enough!
-Jessica Diane Hunt
Age 16+ and so so much older.