She stood, weeping against the wooden fence that stood between the two houses, one was hers, the other was a rental that her father owned. She knew in her heart that she would never have children... she would never marry... For it she wept even as her mind reeled with memories and the feelings that she had been overcome with. Feelings and knowledge she could not explain.
Why am I cursed?! Her mind cried out as she sobbed quietly, there was no one around to hear her. No one cared... Oh she'd heard the "I love you" from relatives, but she didn't feel loved. She felt like a burden. A waste of space... of money... She cried harder, her body shaking.
A heavy set girl pushed by her in the school lunch line.
"Out of my way fatso." The girl was one to talk... she was a lot fatter... like... almost twice the size Kari was... She just stared at the girl in mild shock at the audacity of the other high schooler...
Another memory...
A boy with brown hair who had brown eyes walked over to her. He smiled. Well, that was new.
"Would you go out with me?" Kari didn't know what to say. No one had ever asked her out before and suddenly this boy had asked her out in front of her class- The boy started laughing. She knew she was red as a clam.
"Sorry, I'd never go out with you." He laughed and walked back to his place in line with the other middle school students. She was furious! How DARE he! She felt anger and humiliation and then... pain... oh God she wanted to just find a hole to curl up in and die as the laughter of her peers rang in her ears even after the true sound of it had died...
She cried until she had no more tears to shed. She went back into the house, eerily calm as she went through several things in the house. She was going to kill herself... She thought about how to do it... She could use her dad's pistol... but she didn't know where he kept that thing... darn. Okay, that wasn't an option then and it'd be too messy anyway. Suffocation? No... can't do that to yourself with a pillow... plus her dad would come home and save her from doing it in the garage and she didn't want to accidently kill her cats with her since they lived in that garage... poison... That was a good idea... but how was she going to do that without her system just throwing it up? She spent the rest of the week thinking about this... It was only one day when her father was out that she began working on it, unaware that her winter angel had stopped by to see what she was doing; it was cool enough he could be here with the cloud cover... almost about to rain. He peered in and watched with growing horror as she mixed a bottle of milk with other poisonous chemicals. He yelled, tried everything to get her attention but nothing seemed to work... He realized with an aching sadness that she was going to try and kill herself... Then, like a miracle, there was the sound of a car parking and with a curse she put away the chemical cleaners she'd been mixing and stuck the former pill bottle full of poisons in the freezer. The one place her father would never look.
Jack's heart pounded, he'd never been so glad to see another human in his life, even if the man was as obtuse at times as the night sky itself. His arrival couldn't have been timed better. He'd unwittingly showed up in time to stop his own daughter from poisoning herself... for now. He was shaking. The one person who showed signs of knowing he was even there and he had almost lost her... He didn't know what he could do or what he would if he did... How was he to fix this? She couldn't hear him... couldn't see him... could only feel his presence when she was outside... It wasn't even fall let alone winter... Jack stared at her through the various windows as much as he could. Most of them all he could see was a silhouette thanks to blinds and curtains.
"Please... please don't..." He whispered vainly as he stared though one of the windows. His eyes on the shadow that was her. She didn't hear him. She had never heard him, but it seemed that for today her attempts to end her life were at an end. He dreaded coming back here to find her gone... He stayed as long as he could but when the weather turned warm again he was forced away. He worried constantly and raged at the moon in his helplessness.
"Why HER?! Why can't she be happy?! Why does she have to suffer like I do?! What have we EVER done to deserve this?!" Jack rages at the moon that night. He snarls up at it, pleads with it to do something... anything... Like normal, the moon is silent in response to everything he has to say. Spent after several hours, Jack tugs his hood over his head and sits on the roof, crying a little. Not just for himself, but for the girl below him who is struggling with life; struggling to keep from destroying herself because it seems that anyone who might truly care, besides himself, is simply not there. Those who are there, seem to simply not care enough to see the truth of how things are. He knew she felt as invisible as he actually was. That she just wanted a way out of the life that she had been given; it was torture to her really, having no one around her to hold her or who truly cared to talk with her... The longer this went on, he knew, the slimmer the chances would be that she would become an actual adult. That she would live to graduate... That though made him shiver, as if he could be affected by the cold, it chilled his heart. He hated seeing that, more than anything... watching someone throw away their life... he'd seen it countless times and it never got any better... He never got used to it anymore than he'd gotten used to the wars people fought... and goodness knows he'd tried to stop a few with his blizzards during the early days... but they had persisted and fought through his storms. Humans had become more and more relentless in terms of war as the years had gone by and now it seemed his cold had very little effect on anyone. It broke his heart, it was as bad as not being seen by anyone. He held his arms around himself, just to reassure himself that he was here... he was real... He wasn't a ghost... he wasn't just nothing... He was alive... Well, as alive as one can be without being human.
"I just... I want someone to see me... to be seen by her... I want to help her..." He whined softly. How often through the years had he said that? It seemed to be a line he said more and more often; as the years and technology advanced, so - did it seem - were the young people who wanted nothing more than to take their own life. Sure, life had been hard in the older times, but people had been harder... they'd weathered all sorts of things no one today had to go through... so then... why did so many people not want to live? Why did so many of them long for death? Why? Why... ?