Smart Girl

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No, she isn't waiting it out. Not any more.

She spent fifteen years waiting it out, to the point that she watched her mind shatter and stared at the pieces in horrified awe. In her sixteenth year, there was no more of this deliberate waiting.

Walls crumbled, ceilings spiderwebbed, and the floors and foundations disappeared into a fine dust.

There was no waiting. No sitting idly as the world passed her by. No more existing only as a detail instead of a driving force in the story.

God, there were troubles, but they were not spent in stillness.

She gritted her teeth and refused to let the monsters which gnashed and growled come near her. Her tears and efforts were all toward kicking out the foul-breathed beings in her life and mind and heart.

As Anxiety moved out, room was made for smiles and kindness. She let friends hold her close to them in hopes that their warmth could help burn the relics her roommate had left behind.

She stood at the precipice of sanity, stared out at what would happen if she let go just like she had wished to do for so long, wondered how much it would hurt if she stepped off the ledge.

She waited for some sign that letting the black being at the back of her mind overtake her was the wrong decision. Her patience wore thin for some time, threatening to shatter under the stress of friendships and schoolwork and family and everything.

But then.

With those two words, you can see the sun peeking over the horizon of a dark night which has lasted years; you can hear the return of sound after the era of bleak silence; you can feel the warmth spread across your cheek.

But then, she opened her eyes and was greeted with daybreak in the dark eyes of a new person. His smiles seemed few and far between, but his jokes were aplenty and advice straightforward and honest.

Others rallied around her, too. Their sympathy came in the form of hugs and comedy and class periods spent quietly laughing and procrastinating on the next assignment. They told each other stories and rumors and exchanged their frowning lips for crinkled eyes and dimpled cheeks.

She told her mind to stop running from everything because there was nothing to run from. She just wanted to stroll in the sunlight she had been waiting for since sunset oh so long ago.

And as she strolled, he took her hand and led her with a twinkle in his eye and a smirk on his lips. He locked his fingers with hers and assured her with actions rather than words that he would not let her go.

Some days, the skies were radiant and blue and spotted with clouds pulled straight from a Pixar movie. They would wander through the woods on the school grounds and cross the river and feel the winter sun on their skin, no cares left in the world.

Periods of rain became more beautiful when the hiding sun illuminated the world, she realized. The sky of pale gray that hangs overhead often bodes for what become the best days of her life thus far.

The afternoons when she sat in waiting with him after club meetings were most often like this. Their fingers interlocked and she curled into him – sometimes him into her – as they were idle in this snapshot of a moment. Time paused for them.

It has been a year. A year since she decided to write a diary about her pain and aches and failures.

The failures made way for daily victories. For daily smiles. No more of this bullshit sadness.

The dawn was breaking. She would not let herself miss it, because she knew that there is no day but today.

And what could she do with her numbered days except accept the light, embrace her friends, and maybe even fall in love for the first time?

One year. That's all it took.

And tomorrow, she will find herself in her lover's arms, knowing that one year has made all the difference in the world.

Somewhere in America, she's laying back and knowing that she contains multitudes more than just "smart girl." She knows that because he's led her to see it in herself.

And that, she thinks, is pretty remarkable.