Bleeding For Winter

Chapter One

Who You Are Is What You Are

"It's surprising how many people in life don't know who they are. They know their names, and they know things about themselves, but otherwise... they basically classify themselves. Almost as though they can't go on their own completely. Even the ones who end up "free" or "different" classify themselves. And if a person can't classify themselves, they allow themselves to be classified, which in return causes them to be one of the many people who completely don't know themselves. So how exactly do you be your own person, when doing that would put you in the classification of 'those who are their own person'..."

I... am going to get an 'F' for sure. I interrupted the silence of the dead class room by the sudden roaring of ripping and crinkling of paper. After a couple of dirty looks, I controlled my inner demon that repeated, "Throw it at the teacher... do it.. come on, she has it coming...," and I put the destroyed paper in the corner of my desk. We weren't allowed to walk freely in the classroom during class time, so papers were to stay with you and if your pencil broke, you were to use your own blood. Curtesy of Ms. Genny, Voldemort's long lost wife (probably on purpose).

I looked at the blank peice of paper in front of me. I was preparing to write a 8 to 10 page essay - damn the man who came up with college rule paper - describing who I believed I was. Ms. Genny did not appreciate a play on words, which explains why I believed I would get an 'F' on the first try. I chewed on the eraser of my pencil and started writing, my fore-finger nail trying to dig through the tape rolled around my mid-thumb for protection, my second try:

"If I were to tell you in an impressive description as to who I believe I am, it would simply be a longer, more tiring version - in which professional educators eat up like oxygen - of a simpler verified sentence. This sentence would simply be: 'I believe I am a person who does not know who I am'. And so, taking that phantasmagoric sentence, my diction being used to "blow your mind", I will make eight pages of constant babble that merely tells you what each word in the sentence means, along with testing the English language and stretching the ablility of the sentence to higher lengths, along with examples of persons who also would think they knew who they were without actually knowing. I will do this merely to irritate your ability to be easily irritated because I hate that wart on the brim of your abnormally large nose..."

I cackled, interrupting the silence once more, but I once again ignored the evil demon that told me to finish eight pages of the essay and turn it in. I ripped up the pages, adding more noise to the room, and the room shuffled with uneasiness. It was a clear warning, and I stopped ripping the pages in mid-rip. I peered up at Ms. Genny, and sure enough... her evil, yellow-brown eyes that held Hell's fire behind them were directing their flames at me.

"Miss Truit, seeing as you like ripping paper, would you like to replace my shredder and rip my everyday excess papers of eight hours of English classes after school," Ms. Genny asked with a strangely normal woman's voice that held even kindness - a lie so well done that it's hard to hear the distinguished evil behind it. Ms. Barbara Genny had a face of a fifty year old, but she was only 35. Nobody knew what her body shape was, besides the towering tallness that helped her eyes in making you two inches tall, because of her style of clothes: extremely baggy professional-dress clothes. Her hair was untamed and apparently she didn't feel a reason to fix that.

"Sorry for the noise, Ms. Genny. I promise I'll stop," I answered, replacing my blank face with a look of terror and beggance for my life. I could just show my inner demon voice's face, but I preferred not to be a shredder for the rest of my school year. Then again, I was also controlling the urge to add, 'I merely want to write the perfect essay for you because you're perfect. I worship you. I pray to a shrine of you everynight, and I've sewn your picture onto my pillow.' That would be overdoing it, and I'd be a shredder while being placed in a shredder. Apparently my self-discipline worked because Ms. Genny continued looking at the papers on her desk without another word. But that could also mean that she'll tell me her decision of my servitude to her later on. So much for not being stressed.

I hated writing essays that were fake. They lose the voice. But apparently Ms. Genny liked it better when her students had no voices, in real life or on paper. So here came another long essay on what I am, as opposed to who I believed I was. It was time to lie to myself. Who I am is what I am. Lie lie lie.

What I am is a seventeen year old girl who wishes that she had adorexia. Life would be so much more simpler if you didn't care. Then again it would be a life wasted if you didn't care about living. My name on my birth certificate would be Hailence Wyn Truit. When I asked my dad how exactly my name appeared, he said my mother had a beautiful talent of being able to be satisfied with names only when she could make them hers. So she had taken the nice name, Hailey, and messed with a pen for awhile to come up with Hailence. So instead of sounding like Hay-lence, it came out more like... Hail-ence. And my middle name came from my dad, who loved Winnie the Pooh for about ever now. So my mother didn't care much about what my middle name was as much as my first, but my dad wanted it to be spelled pretty. Now my mom was satisfied with a weird yet pretty name while my dad was satisfied to be able to call me Wynnie... which he could add 'The Pooh' at the end. And to annoy both of them, my friends agreed to nickname me Hail because Hailence was too pretty and Wynnie sickened them... and Hail sounds like Hell.

I figure myself a little short, being 5'2, but I blame my body's yearning for death of suffering for that. Still, I believed I had an average body. It was the kind in which my ass and boobs looked big no matter what I wore - which makes girls jealous, guys happy, and me annoyed - and my belly didn't go over my pant's waist while my love handles had no problem in sticking their issues past the barrier. I can't mention my fat thighs or I'll lower my self esteem fifty points in my thoughts of their fatness. I have self-esteem issues, though I'm told I'm pretty. I believe it's because I grew up obese and my body had refused to hit physical puberty whilst my face decided to go ahead and pop up with the acne. That made for a couple of years of insults before the acne and fatness cleared, which has probably damaged my mental state for life. I have my... someones hair. I get confused. Sometimes I think it's my dad's color when he didn't go bald, which was horse brown, and for awhile I had thought it was my mother's hair... but then I was reminded that she was blonde. So I have copper hair, which is when it wouldn't decide between brown or red, so it blended together in harmony. It's not even fixed fantastically. It's just straight to my shoulders and layered, along with off centered bangs. Wow, right? And as for my eyes, they're just brown. Normal and boring. They're kind of dark, but not so dark that anyone could mistake them for black. They're just... brown. No swirls. No specks. Brown.

As for where I've found myself to reside in, I was born and raised in this sort of small town of Merit, Missouri. I believe it's a rather insane place to live. You know, the kind where it looks normal on the outside but ends up being completely screwed up on the inside... like insane people? But I guess it could be worse. It wasn't as if I'd actually ever heard of people occasionally being shot on the side of the road in driveby's everyday. Still, one day I was planning to hop out of here to better things, but I've always had a feeling that I'd just end up right back here to raise my twenty kids by myself in a sewer because their alcoholic father preferred trash cans. That's why school is here; for a life of safety until they throw you out in the middle of a highway.

My family is really small. I have no grandparents, and both of my parents were the only child... who had parents that were only childs. So ultimately, I may have distant relations somewhere, but they're not known. In fact, I'm an only child. Once I was going to have a little brother, but before he could breathe a weeks worth of oxygen, he was in the ground. I think they said it was S.I.D.S.; Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Still, Seanel (Shawn-el) Bartholomew Truit had an impact on my small family in those few days of his life. With his death came the death of my dad's faith in Christianity, my mother's happiness, and ultimate death of the three Truits in the Truit family. We're not technically dead, but to make this short, my mom ended up high-tailing it out of our lives to as far as 2, 000 miles away before she was happy where she was. That was when I was five. Not that I was that damaged by it. Sometimes I wish she had stayed so that life would have been less confusing... say, like, in the custom of puberty. But then again, that's what school's for. Otherwise, I've always felt as though my mother's return would be the thing that would damage me and cause me to murder innocent people for fun. And so I lived in a two bedroom, one bathroom trailor with my dad, Bartholomew Truit. Everyone calls him Bart, though.

So, name, age, looks, family, and living arrangements... it's safe to say that I go to Merit High School and I'm recently finishing the last week of my school year as a Junior. That's right, Ms. Genny assigned us an 8-10 page essay on the last week of school. She's like that. It's due in two days, too. But other than that, I guess I've got to cover friends and future...

My future - or what I would like it to contain - includes actually thinking of something to become. I'm almost a senior, and I still have no idea exactly what I'm wanting to do with my life. Probably something that doesn't involve a lot of physical exercise. I guess it could be something in the feild of boringness, such as accounting, estate, or ect. Otherwise, I have a dream of owning and raising a black or black and white Newfoundland (male or female) and naming it Saint Jude. Why? Because St. Jude was a guy who would find people who were lost and showed them the way, one of my favorite Saints, and I was hoping I could give the dog the theme song 'Hey Jude' by The Beatles. Oh, and I'd also like to witness a moonbow before I die. It's like a rainbow, except it's made by the moon, not the sun. So it's at night. The problem is, how do you see a full moon on a rainy night... through the rain? I guess the only way a moonbow is going to be witness is if I go to a nice big waterfall at night, such as Yosemite Falls over in California. But I have a whole life to go do that, so it's just on my list.

And my friends, my people, are very special. I guess you can say that I like to move with the emo, punk, rock, and goth crowd. Though I don't even try to dress as special as they do, seeing as I'm more of a jeans and a t-shirt person, I've never felt weird around them. Plus, hanging out with them all these years confuses people as to why I would consider them my best friends. I guess having no peircing, no abnormally large obsession towards dark colors, no drug usage, no self-affliction, no criminal record, no sex, and no failing classes while hanging out with a bunch of people who do all of the above can confuse people. At least I'm not dubbed a poser. I consider it a kind of inner demon satisfaction type of thing. I may never cuss and I may refer to Jesus a lot, but I still like listening to screaming on the radio. It satisfying. I'm sure everyone has a little demon in them, some just don't hold it back.

I'm a person who likes writing. It doesn't matter what I'm writing. I like when the teachers give me essays, reports, or even simple open-responses to do. Unless the teacher's name is Ms. Genny, who doesn't appreciate writing unless it's exactly what she wants it to say. I even have a notebook in which I write different things. Sometimes I'll write about a subject, such as a controversial subject like gay marriage or abortion. And sometimes I'll write about random things, like the subject of time - if it's even correct, if maybe there's actually suppose to be 25 hours in a day, 8 days in a week, 13 months in a year - or questioning the world in whole. Sometimes I like to go back to those, so I'll put a continuence on another page. And sometimes I'll even pick a random word and start defining it in my own terms. Maybe even state what I would do if something had happened to me. Then I have poems I write on some pages and the beginning of both my life and fictional life stories. But I'd never finish them. Only professionally taught people could write stories. And the only thing I've been trained in is what adjectives and verbs are.

I like animals - exotic or normal, it doesn't matter -, orange, music, singing, cheese pizzas, orange soda, and running. I run in the school track team. But there's no more meets for the rest of this year so I'm left running around the park for exercise. I like wearing skater shoes, even though I prefer roller skating over skate boards. And since the only way I blend with my crowd is with my love of jewelry, they gladly present me with a variaty of skull, demon, and metallic jewelry necklaces, rings, bracelets, and earrings. The only makeup I wear is eyeliner and lip gloss, and not even a lot of that. I like to party, but I'm not allowed to drink alcohol in fear of death. And drugs would probably aid in that as well. I don't own a cell phone, and the only time I get on the internet is for important school work. I would be an all A student, if it wasn't for the evil presence of History that always keeps me at an 89. I like reading, but it doesn't control my life. And when I have the time, I don't mind volunteering around the school.

I don't know who I am. But if who I am is what I am, I'm another person who is alive without actually living.