Jovie & Bash

Fifteen || Anonymous

|Chapter Fifteen|

June 1st, 2012

I graduate today in less than three hours, but I have a confession: I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.

I’ve been accepted to three different colleges, none of which I even plan to attend. I was supposed to have it all figured out by now—but maybe that’s the flaw in this whole system. There’s never not a flaw.

I haven’t told Mom or Dad I’m leaving—not for college, not for anything. I’m just leaving. I am deserting L.A. and the suffocating pillow of whatever major I don’t want.

 How can I possibly go to school for something when I have no passions? Or is that what we’ve come to as a society? Passionless, hopeless, robots fit for uniforms of the highest paying salary? That’s why I have to leave.

I can’t breathe here in L.A. Everything is moving too fast. I see hundreds of people pass me on the streets but their faces are blurs. Their identities are nothingness. I cannot tell who is alive and who is barely holding on.

I’m barely holding on.

I’m getting lost in the crowd.

I can’t stomach the idea of continuing this way. I’m not heard here. I’m not even seen. I’m writing pointless journals, trying to lose myself in someone else’s story, and forgetting who I am. Do I know? Did I ever know?

I need some time to surface, to rediscover everything I didn’t know about myself. I’ll get out of town, find a quiet nook in the middle of nowhere, work a job I can barely survive on, walk everywhere, say what I feel, and just live for once in my life.

I’m tired of being nothing. I want to be something somewhere. I want to be something to someone.

Perhaps I’m unrealistic.

Perhaps this world really is about Pomp and Circumstance—and if so, how utterly awful. Be what they want or be a failure to all. Well, I refuse to stand by and witness what they have to say about me. I won’t fall victim to conformity.

I’m going to be happy one day.

First step: graduation. T-minus two and a half hours.

Isn’t it completely absurd how we don’t believe our life begins until then? A flower only blooms when under stress.

Signed,

Bash Daley

Luis jumped out of my lap with the sound of a knock at my bedroom door. I slapped Bash’s journal shut and pushed it under my pillow.

“Come in.”

 Since Bash got home a few weeks earlier, I hadn’t been reading much else but his old journals. Maybe it was a silly sentiment that I’d decided to borrow them, but I really do think my curiosity and overall fondness made me hungry for them. Bash didn’t really like it—insisted that they were for other’s eyes after he was gone. But, with a timid reminder, I brought back the timeless argument that we would eventually go our separate ways and he conceded. But, since he had insisted that they were for nobody else’s eyes, I made a point of hiding them. Especially when an entry made my heart race.

My mother came in with the open door and held out a letter. “I think it’s an acceptance letter.”

I kicked off my sheets and flattened my bedhead as I sat up, eagerly reaching for her. “Where’s it from?” My voice bordered on excited and nervous, and I watched the gentle smile find my mother’s lips.