I Shouldn't Exist...

"I read it in the newspaper a couple of days ago. Some guys is developing a bomb big enough to destroy the entire United States. He said he'd be done a few months after you turn sixteen, and then he's going to set it off."

At the tender age of eight, this was said to me by an older kid in the lunch room. I was facing the stage, and as he spoke I stared at the stop light we had on the stage. It had been brought in to help us keep quiet. At the time it was at Yellow, which meant we had to lower our voices. I couldn't have spoken even if I wanted to. I had just found out I had no future. I was going to die at the age of sixteen.

I lived my life until I was sixteen as if I was going to die. I never thought I would be able to vote, drink, gamble (not that I cared about that), even drive. By the time I got older I realized that there was no way at all this was true, but I felt in my heart that something was going to happen to me anyway.

I lived my entire sixteenth year in fear. I honestly prepared my room everyday so that I knew what it looked like before I died. I dropped into a very deep depression. The day I turned seventeen held no joy for me. In fact it was thrown by my best friend who promptly told me after the party I was a drag to be with, and that we shouldn't be friends anymore.

The first three years of driving felt odd to me, as if I wasn't ever meant to do it. In fact I didn't even bother getting my license until I was seventeen. By everytime I went somewhere on my own, I never found a good parking spot. I would park far away, and as soon as I was out of my car everyone in the first few spots would pull out. I didn't really live life anymore because it wasn't worth living if I was going to die anyday now.

The depression got deeper, and I quickly got to the point where I didn't have any friends. I liked a boy who refused to like me back, that didn't help at all. When we went to a swim meet together and he told me that was going to the junior prom with someone else (who was also on the swim team) Everything came crashing down. It was the straw that broke the camel's back.

I got to thinking about the lack of friends that I had, the seperation I felt from the world around me, the fact that a boy simply wouldn't like me back, the fact that everything had gone wrong in my life. Then it dawned on me through the tears of my torment...I was supposed to be dead. God must have passed over me by accident. I had fallen through the cracks on the Angel of Death's list. I knew what I had to do.

I opened the door to the Embassy Suites hotel room we were all staying in that night, and I took off for the stairs. I tore the door open with all my might and walked up the stairs as quickly as I could in my berginstocks. I watched as every floor I went up a sign called to me saying "roof axcess."

I had reached the top. The door was electric, the stairs sort of ended into it. I punched the big red button that opened the roof. My mind was already reeling with someone finding my body. I could see the mess I would make all of the pavement. "Who will have to clean it up?" I wondered. Would my crush finally see then that I was worthy? That it was his fault and he should have just gone out with me?

The electrical engine whirred as it started to open. Then stop. I got a little irritated, as I would when the garage door keep getting caught on something and going back. I punched the round button again, sure that this time it would open.

It did not. It was locked.

I screamed louder than I have ever screamed in my life. I had gotten past over, it wasn't even like I was killing myself, I just wanted to correct the mistake that God had made. I'm not supposed to be here! I started kicking the door, then pounding into it with my knuckles. Within minutes they had become bloody. I pounded on that door until I had no strength left in me. It was seven flights of steps down, back to the hotel room. The hotel room that held all the other team mates was open, and I had to walk right past it.

I couldn't do it. It was shameful to have such a failure. I would wait until everyone was asleep...but they were playing truth or dare, and I'm sure they planned to stay up all night. I had failed. I should be dead, instead I'm still here, and I still have to deal with what is going on....that I had become so depressed I had pushed everyone away. No one would be my friend because I was a downer to be with. I pushed that to the back of my mind and started down the stairs to my walk of shame. Not that anyone would know what I did.

It would be a year before I pulled myself up out of the depression that had started that day in the lunchroom when I was eight. And they say words are just words.

To this day I still wonder if something was supposed to happen...everytime I go somewhere and get the worst parking spot in the place, when they lose my reservations, etc. Was my life truely meant to be happening now? Either way, I'm living it now, and I'm not going to let anyone take it away from me.

Great Reno Balloon Races

Every year in September were the Great Reno Balloon Races. You woke up so early in the morning it felt like you just feel asleep. It was pitch black outside your window, you couldn't even see the tree that brushed the pane of glass when it was a windy night.

Rubbing the sleep from your eyes, you stumble out of bed and cover your eyes as you turn on your lamp. You still wince from the brightness as the light floods the room and out into the hall. The kitchen light is already on where Mom is downstairs making hot chocolate and putting it into the old '70s blue thermos.

You reach for the warm clothes that mom made you set out before you went to bed. In actuality you haven't sleep more than 3 or 4 hours because you were so excited about the balloon Races. You have woken up this early to go to Dawn Patrol. The actual Races aren't until later in the day, but the whole event is over by 10AM.

After packing the car with the hot chocolate and blankets you set off. You pull the car off the freeway, any other time of year a very illegal offense, but police allow it these three days. Much like Mardi Gras and women with their tops off, it's an arrestable offense if done one day before or after.

After waiting for what seems like forever, you see down at the park the balloons start to fill up with air. There are always four brightly decorated balloons for dawn patrol. The fabric used to make these balloons make the whole balloon light up against the sky, with the sun illuminating the background. When you were little your Dad made a lot of money taking pictures of the balloon races, especially Dawn Patrol. Finally they are up in the air, and the effect is breathtaking. Up against the mountains the balloons are so close and yet so far away. They co-ordinate so that they light up at the same time. Your heart races as you watch these giants light up in the sky.

As they land you feel a sense of loss, for you will not see the spectacle for another year. But the chocolate is warming your body and you drift off to sleep, as does your family in the car.

The best kind of way to wake up is a little late, after the balloons have taken off. You'll never know another scene as great as waking up and being surrounded by these wonderful machines. Machines even sounds like the wrong word. Creatures seem more appropriate.

Your eyes slowly open and you catch your breath as you see them all around you. You get out of the car even though you know it will be freezing, and look at the wonderment that are these balloons. The biggest deal is that in the later years they don't just come in regular balloon form. There is the Energizer Bunny, a Panda, an Eagle's Head, a bottle of champane. Your whole family has a favorite. You search the sky for yours with wonderment.

First Memories

There are things you remember because people tell you about them all the time. I know my first word was Light, but only because my parents have told me. These stories will be about my memories, and the memories of my parents, because they are part of who I am.


My first memory was pre-school. I called it preschool, but it was really a daycare where they taught you one thing a day and you did what you want the rest of the time. I am the same person I was then.

His name was Troy. I don't remember how, but we were together. We were in love. We pulled our cots together for naps, which I refused to take. When they split us up and he stayed at the park while I went back to Momma Louisa's. I remember looking out the window as the van pulled away from the park. Tears streamed down my face and my heart sunk deeper and deeper the farther away I got.

Once he went off with a bunch of other girls for coloring time. I was in a rage of jealousy, and I was determined to tell him off. Then he came up to me, with the rest of the girls trailing behind. He held up a picture he drew and colored for me, with the girl's help. I felt my heart swoon. I knew I loved him with all my heart.

A few weeks later we had all gone across the street and got balloons for someone's birthday. Everyone decided they would let go of their balloons at the same time. I didn't want to let mine go, I wanted to keep it and show it to my Mom when I got picked up. They all peer-pressured me into doing it, but I was the last to let go. I looked above my head and watched all the balloons go in a bunch, and felt a sense of loss bigger than I had ever felt before.

I spent the day in the office, and refused to go into the daycare. They had a parrot in the office I watched all day, enraptured. This continued all week until my Mom asked if I didn't want to go there anymore. The answer was yes.