Authors Note: I wrote this story for a class. This was inspired by a musical called Dear Evan Hansen by using the characters to imagine to write this story. I'll saying its more than a loosely based off story. So most credit goes to Dear Evan Hansen.
Many of their neighbors, colleagues, friends, and family viewed them as the perfect unit who could do anything. The mother handled her husband, children, and her own life with ease. The successful father made his family proud by the work that supported them. The son to fulfill their desire to pass. A daughter perfected her grades and kindness, which made her flaws unnoticed to her parents. A perfect house on a hill with a cul-de-sac led to their long-curved driveway. They were considered a popular and wealthy family, so many people that knew them had described them as well off and happy.
But everything was far from "perfect".
The family had its normal flaws and strengths. But the son was also noted by the same group of people as "crazy," "angry," and "strange." The family heard every saying possible about their son's personality. Did they defend him? The answer was always yes, but hardly enough to help. They tried to fix him, but all he would do was turn them away each time they came to him. He didn't want to be fixed. He was his own person who didn't want help from others. Their son went to therapy, but that only lasted for what felt like a few minutes.
He was diagnosed with several disorders that varied from several doctors and people who didn't have the right to diagnose him, diagnosed him. Whether they were true or not, he believed them. People needed to label him to show why he "acted out" and why he needed to be fixed. Almost everyone labeled him, even his own family.
His father called him an attention seeker.
His sister used the word bully multiple times.
But his mother—his mother— tried to understand him every way she could. She let him do whatever he wanted to do thinking that he might find something that would cure him of his temperament. His mother was the only one who tried to find the positive in her failing son, but the only problem was that she was labeling him without even knowing it. She was the only person he could go to, but even she wasn't enough to reach him, to save him.
His community failed him: teachers, classmates, his parents, his sister, counselors, and the various other people he had met. Maybe they were the problem, and it wasn't him that was at fault. People want to find the flaws in this so-called "perfect" community, so they found him, the outlier. His problem probably wasn't their fault, but it was the way they were raised that made them look at him. He could have blamed them for his falling out, but he never did-not once.
He just looked down and smiled at what he was clenching in his fist, which was a familiar orange and white container. It was time… to eliminate the problem that the community had with him, to make their problems with him just fade away as a distant memory. He just looked blankly into the mirror with no emotion to be found, not even his eyes displayed life. Was he ready to disappear?