My name is Halla. Yes, it's an odd name, my mother wanted to pick unique names for her children. I live a very ordinary life, I live in a family of five including myself. Unless you are including my two cats, Poppie and Stewie. I am a very "blessed" person, I have everything I need and most of what I want. I have plenty of good friends and I'm a good student. I'll be going into my senior year of high school after this summer. I work as a lifeguard at our community pool and teach swim lessons. I enjoy reading manga a little too much and very much enjoy some smut here and there. I am bisexual and haven't come out to my parents yet, but I don't really think it's a big deal, like any of it, not trying to make a big deal out of the whole bi thing, but this information will be useful in the future. So yeah I think that's pretty much it. Oh, yeah and um one more thing. I'm depressed. Not trying to self diagnose myself or anything but uh pretty sure seeing as oh I don't know maybe the fact that I cut myself? Yes, you read that correctly, I have done self-harm. Aye don't worry, I'm fine for now, no one needs to call the cops or anything, I'm alive and breathing, I'm getting the help I need, but sometimes I slip up and shit happens. I guess that's the whole point of this though huh? To get my point across of how my brain likes to play tricks on me and tells me I need to do this in order to feel happy. Or to just feel something. But hey I guess that's just life nowadays. The world is fucked up and I'm just apart of it. I'd like to keep being apart of it as well, but sometimes the demons Inside my head make it a little hard to continue to want to keep living...
~
I guess we should start from the beginning. Isn't that how all of this works? Every story has a beginning, or maybe just a memorable starting point. It was sophomore year, not sure exactly when, somewhere in the middle I believe, I had just finished play practice and was waiting to be picked up as I couldn't drive yet. I enjoyed performing in the theatre department and still do it, the musical that was going on at the time was very stressful and I was glad that practice was over with. Show dates were coming up soon and everyone was rushing to get the finishing touches done on everything. I waited at a conveniently placed table in front of one of the main entrances to the school. I played on my phone and waited a good amount of time for my mother to pick me up. At the time she worked for the army and she couldn't always be on time, in fact, she more than a few times had to stay at work way past her clocking out time. The parking lot is empty and I have a pretty good view of the drive leading up to the parking lot and could pick her out in an instant. Finally, I see the signature silver Ford pull down the drive and stop in front of the doors. I pick up my belongings from the table and put them in my backpack, which was placed in the chair next to me on my left. I hoisted my backpack over my right shoulder and let the other strap for the left should hang loose behind my back. I casually walked out of the two sets of glass doors and made my way to the passenger side door, just ready for the day to be over with and to lay in my bed and read some comics. I opened up the passenger side door and got in without saying a word. This was normal as the ride home wasn't that long and my mother usually had music playing or was on a phone call so it was just natural to keep quiet during these sorts of car rides. I can now distinctly remember something feeling off, but at the time I didn't put too much thought into it and was eager to start reading my comics, so I decided to start reading some in the car. I'm not exactly sure how the conversation started but I do remember where it started, we were at the entrance of the drive up to the school parking lot, and this is where my whole world was shattered. This was where my mother had told me that one of her close co-workers had died. Now, I didn't know her personally, and can't remember ever meeting her, but I knew enough about her to know she was someone important in my mother's life. Important enough to make her start crying the whole while she told me these events. She immediately got chocked up at even mentioning anything and started to cry right then and there, right at the entrance to the drive up to my school. She never broke eye contact with the road the entire drive home, I'm not sure she even looked at me once... Or maybe it was the other way around, I just couldn't face her the more and more she told me about what had happened. Looking back I feel awful, as I did continue to keep reading for a brief moment of time and wasn't paying too close attention to what she was saying, but when I looked over at her at that spot, at the entrance, I knew that I should put my phone away, look straight ahead, and not say a word as she talked to me through her streaming tears. She told me that it was a motor vehicle accident that involved multiple soldiers, I won't get too deep into what all went down. But my mother surprisingly explained everything to me in great detail, I learned a lot that day in the 10 minutes that it took us to get home. She then proceeded to tell me a story of a very good friend she had way back before I was even born. I remember hearing his name mentioned before but still can't quite remember what the stories were about, what I do know is that he was a very good man and that he deeply cared for my mother and father. He was a friend to both of them and was also in the army with them. I can't exactly remember the story that she told me that day in the car, but I know one thing that will forever remain in my mind. She told me the last thing he ever said to her before he was sent off and died.
"You better show me that baby when I come back."
And that baby... was me.