~ The Reaping – Part Four ~

After Toliver was suspended for attacking me without provocation, the physical abuse ebbed. Occasionally, I had to fight for myself, but it was rarer. My birthday was coming up. It seemed to me the world around me was beginning to calm down.

It was mid-November. The leaves were falling in a pattern of burnt orange and golds, and crackled underfoot. The days grew breezy, and leaves blew in every direction. We had started wearing light jackets, jeans, and long-sleeved t-shirts to school. The whole world seemed to be taken over by muted colors, softer smells, and balmy breezes instead of hot puffs of air blowing for only a few seconds each hour. It was nice to have my loose hair blow in the breeze and feel the soft air brush over my cheeks. I wore short sleeves and jeans for the most part, and I enjoyed walking to and from school alone. I ate my breakfasts alone nowadays, and ignored snide remarks and the sneered looks that were thrown my way. I didn’t give reactions anymore.

What was the point. It didn’t help me to talk back. My dorm parents were worse than us teenagers half the time with their underhanded remarks and riddled insults. The girls ignored me or whispered to one another about me. The boys kept their hands to themselves for the most part since Toliver’s suspension. Oh, they threatened, but I figured I could handle that better then actually getting hit. So, I dealt.

I learned how to be alone. So often I heard the girls I lived with in the dorms talk about being lonely. At first, I felt the same. I wasn’t used to my own company. I spent majority of my time around others. Even then, I had felt like a lone person in a sea of bodies, but the tide had turned by November. I preferred my solitude to the company of others.

It had only been a matter of understanding my new normal. I felt lonely sometimes. My heart ached, and my stomach always felt empty no matter how often I ate.

In those several minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months of enforced solitude, I became introspective. I’d finally learned how to read, and reading opened a whole new world to me I hadn’t known existed. I read all the time and tried out my new words in sentences.

During that time, I was alone in a way people rarely find themselves. Ostracism is never kind in any of its forms. While most people think of ostracism as being ignored; it’s more insidious than that. I walked amongst people, knowing they saw me and wouldn’t speak to just say, “Hello.” I lived with these people practically day and night and knew they whispered about me. They stared me in the eyes and never said a word. People I once thought of as friend deliberately looked away from me. They physically abused me when they could and never told me why. Those same friends and acquaintances made damn sure I was alone at every turn. It did something to me. My stomach ached all the time. I learned never to cry in public, less, the tears be used against me. I learned to never walk with even those who would give me the time of day for fear they’d be hurt because they deigned to even speak to me or walk beside me. No one deserved the treatment I received, and I wouldn’t subject anyone else to it, so I learned to celebrate my isolation.

Soon, I enjoyed my solitude. I remembered, during that time of introspection, how I’d been surrounded by people all the time and having felt alone in the crowd I’d created for myself. I hadn’t realized in my eagerness to know people, laugh with them, and pull them into my orbit that I was so very alone. I didn’t understand that being something and someone else to please people, be accepted by them, and for them to be friends with me was turning me into someone I wasn’t very proud to be. I didn’t comprehend how fake I was. I HATED the word fake. I remember thinking I’m not fake. I could recall hearing my so-called friends talk about how my way of speaking was wrong for my ethnicity, which was Black. I had never denied being what I was. How did that make me phony? Just because I learned another language to be able to communicate didn’t make me bogus. What was wrong with me?

I didn’t belong anywhere anymore. I felt so lonely when the whole thing began. I felt betrayed, and in some ways I was. Leanna had betrayed me. My best friend was leading the pack of girls whispering behind those hands that hid the sides of faces. My best friend was scattering the lies someone else told. She spread them like newly introduced kudzu vines into a virgin forest. And those vines tore through the tapestry of my life like thorns and destroyed my world as I knew it.

I turned away from activities at our Blind School, but I stayed on the Flagler School for the Deaf cheerleading team, and when I wasn’t with the deaf girls that I got along with rather well, I was in my room with my books. I had little emotional time for much else. I had a broken heart.

I never talked to Leo anymore on the weekends. If he called, I didn’t answer the phone. If Mom asked, I wasn’t home or I had plans. I left him to Lizbeth since she wanted him so much, and he had chosen her, hadn’t he?

I had other things to do. I had other issues outside of caring for a boy and a best friend who hadn’t cared enough for me. I wanted my happy ever after, and I found it in the books I read.

Thank you for joining me for this week’s installment of Cassie’s series. I hope you’re still enjoying the journey she has been thrust into. Were their hard lessons for you to learn during high school or college? Young adults and new adults often have a hard time finding themselves in all that’s going on around them, and they take a lot of missteps. They enjoy their lives, but whenever something starts going wrong, they wonder why. Did you ever wonder why? What was your why and resolution? I’m looking forward to revealing Cassie’s when it’s revealed to me. I look forward to sharing more of the journey with you as Cassie and I find our way to the ending of this part of her story.

Till next we meet, stay safe and keep creating!

CSA

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