Category : Books-Fiction

Sub Category : Romance

Through all her struggles she always managed to keep on. Life, cruel and rough, was determined to break her down to the barest of bares, but yet, through some inexplicable power she remained upright in an upside down world. There was a demand of life, and as often as it is ignored, we are all readily familiar. It’s the moral that the world has no give and is take-greedy. There is no benefits, no living, only surviving and effects. 

She was a beam in other’s life, all her admires never sparring her frown a glance. It’s a startling awakening, to know that one so bright and joyful is so desperately lost in the dark. It was a heartbreaking realization. Or, it would have been, had anyone noticed, spared, or known. 

Charlotte was such a normal name, such a normal girl. She was the average teenage, and that was truly saddening. Average. No matter her efforts or her qualities she was average. There was nothing worse in the world than the brightness she gave others and yet saved none for herself. There is something to said about the most brilliant smile with the most devastated eyes, crying for anyone to notice. 

She’d heard the rumors, heard the jokes. Depression was like a plaque, to be avoided and whispered about. She’d learned of the consequences suicide had on others in her health class, and what she took from it was far from what anybody could have anticipated. Where they said ‘it affects more than the victim’, she heard ‘suffer in silence, this is bigger than you’. 

Charlotte learned relatively young to fake that sweet smile and that happiness in her eyes. She was a quick learner and picked up the cues from those around her. She’d heard the girls in the locker room snicker at the beautiful girl, the beautiful victim of her own mind. Self-harm, they chuckled. “What is it, fun?” 

To think so many found the pain of one so accustomed to pain, she was appalled at the world she lived and took part in. She knew the girl was stronger than her. The burning in her eyes had always remained lit, even when she faced those snickers and laughs. A beautiful victim of her own mind, yes, but also a surviving victim of the atrocious world. 

Where Charlotte once found beauty and comfort she saw dull colors and antagonism. In the arms of her family she sought answers, only to find them nonexistent. Life was a pale comparison to dreams, and dream she did. They were vivid, incredible, irresistible. But she resisted. She blocked out the beauty, well aware of the impossibility of those dreams becoming reality. 

Charlotte knew no one noticed, and she took solitude in that simple, dispiriting fact. This was one thing she knew she’d never withstand. She was ridiculously shocked by the antagonistic tortures of the ‘real’ world and decided there was no need for her to be a part of it. For five years she heard ‘suffer in silence’, and suffer she did. There was no glimmer in the stars, no simplicity in the simple, no amazement in the amazing. 

But he, he noticed. There was a piece missing of her lively puzzle. There was a gape in her eyes. There was a loss in her smile. 

    And once he saw that desperation in her eyes, that ingenuity in her dazzling smile, he could look away, couldn’t help but notice it more and more. 

    He’d never dealt with the lack of life in one still living, but Charlotte...she was the white and black, both the mix of all colors and the lack of any color. Dylan saw her. And that was more than to be said for most people in her life. 

    It was never easy, was never meant to be. There was resistance and pleading, affection and irritation, desperation and relent. It was meant to be the struggle to trump all others. And that it did. Months of nothing was suddenly moments of something. And that was something neither of them were prepared for. 

    Dylan’s electricity recharged Charlotte. His voice replayed that of the instructor, ‘suffer in silence’ was now ‘you’re not alone’. He was thankful it’d never gotten to the point of self destruction but he almost wished it had, at least then someone would have noticed earlier. 

    Slowly, so, so slowly, the intensity of colors returned to her life, the smells of daisies and tiger lilies now vivid and real and reachable, all her dreams were once again reality. But now, now her dreams included something else, someone else, and Dylan was determined to show her that there was still some beauty in the world.