Lost Girl

Lost Girl The music blasted, vibrating my cherry red Toyota MR2. Thanks to my brothers installation of his old guitar amp behind the passenger seat, the car morphed with whatever tune was playing. When I used to sit as his passenger, the music would not only resonate emotionally but physically as well even at low volumes.

Now he is away at college, and I get to choose the music. Whenever I drive, I listen to my playlist at ear-deafening volumes. Tonight, Lost Boy by indie artist Ruth B. is the song of choice to dance around the fields of auditory understanding and to strum at the strings of my emotions. I am a choir student. Naturally, I sang along; however, on this late February evening I sang softly with choked words.

My phone chimed, and a text from Sarah lit the screen. I ignored it. Not because I was above texting and driving, but because I did not want to explain to my oldest friend why I left tri-school. The only dance where our two schools could mingle. Pooling with tears my eyes began to leak little waterfalls.

These tears were made of my mistakes, emotional burdens and plain f***-ups. My world weighed heavily on my chest, a type of anxiety I presume. I had been driving for roughly a half-hour all across town. From Bosque, way on the west side, to Tramway on the complete opposite part of Albuquerque. I allowed the lyrics to consume me: “There was a time when I was alone, nowhere to go and no place to call home.

..Peter Pan, that’s what they call me, I promise that you’ll never be lonely…

he sprinkled me in pixie dust and told me to believe, believe in him and believe in me…as we soared above the town that never loved me…

Neverland is home to lost boys like me and lost boys like me are free… run run lost boy they say to me, away from all of reality…” I related to the character that Ruth B. brought to life with her melodies and instruments. Her lyrics entangled my strange emotional mess giving some sort of form. I had left tri-school distraught. I felt disconnected and like everyone there was fake.

Girls were there trying too hard, with caked makeup and short skirts. They grouped together like scared kittens too afraid to wander off from their litter. Thus they would circle around, glancing behind each others shoulders to make eyes at a cute boy, longing for the day they could be independant. I thought this ritualistic dance was dumb. I did not want to be part of life’s biological requirement of procreation.

So I left. I left to think and understand why I felt marginalized. This was a feeling I was familiar with. I had never been able to label this emotional feeling before because it had always seemed to come and go. But tonight while I drove down 1-40’s poorly made road in the pulsating cherry-red Toyota, I recognized it for what it was, depression. I left the dance because I felt disconnected from my peers, like I was not be able to communicate on the level I wanted.

I would have liked to discuss existentialism brought up in english class because we were reading Grendel; however, others wanted to discuss Kim Kardashian’s newest Instagram picture and “who” asked “who” to the dance. I just could not understand why my friends and peers wanted to talk about such trivial things. Lost Boy was a song I could picture myself within because I felt like my community had never loved me and all I wanted to do was escape; “escape from reality.” A thought that had been hiding in my deep subconscious finally swam to the surface of my mind. What if I killed myself, would people care? I shook my head in hopes this suicidal thought would fly from my ear, float away and crumble to dust.

As the waterfall of tears turned to guisers, I decided to drive back to my home in Nob Hill. I sat in my driveway while my loud Toyota MR2idled, likely waking the entire neighborhood. My brother had removed the muffler when he installed the guitar amp. I didn’t care for my sleeping neighbors, I only cared for my new self realization. I recited my mental mantra,I am alone in this world and few will help me deal with this so-called depression.

I leaned my head forward letting it rest on the steering wheel. I sat like that for many minutes accepting this realization. Sighing, I shut the car off and exited, shutting the door on my past-understanding of self. I entered my house, opening the door to my new life hand-in-hand with depression.